A Walk in the Woods…

It was a lovely fall day today…unfortunately the colours are past their prime and most of the leaves have already fallen…but it was still a wonderful day for a walk in the woods…sunny, crisp, but not too cold…beautiful blue sky...


















As we were sitting having morning coffee (late, since it was Sunday and we had both slept in), Cariño suggested that we go to Gatineau Park and find a place for me to set up and paint plein air…sounded good, so off we went…we drove out of Chelsea to the first parking lot we came to, walked down the path a bit, then veered off into the woods…we settled by a swampy pond…Cariño to read and me to paint…which we each did for a couple hours…





































































I didn’t end up with a painting that I kept…but it was fun anyway…and I figure…each time I spend out painting plein air is a time spent learning…whether I end up bringing something home or not…just the exercise of doing it…of being there…of looking and painting…colour mixing too…it is all good…it also felt good…being out in the woods for a few hours…it was very pretty…

This is the scene I was painting...

Project 365 – taking a photo a day…

I first heard about Project 365 through a newsletter that I receive…from Photojojo…this newsletter has some great ideas…it is one of the things that comes into my inbox that I am happy to see!

Photography has always been a love of mine…I really fell in love with it when I spent 6 months cycling around Europe in ’79…that lead, a couple years later (after my first ‘half-degree’ from the University of Guelph in biological sciences), to my spending 2 years at Ryerson in Photographic Arts back in the early ‘80s…but that was also back when the travel bug had a pretty tight hold of me and so, after 2 years of a 4 year course, I wandered off again…travelling across Canada that time, ending up living in the Arctic (Inuvik) for a year and a half…then, somehow I ended up with a partner and twins…but that is another story…

I tried to do Project 365 in 2008, but wasn’t able, for a number of reasons to keep it up…it isn’t as easy as one would think…harder still when you expect to represent each day with a ‘good’ photograph!...you can’t just go out day after day and end up with a ‘good’ photograph without a fairly intensive commitment…I am thinking of trying it again for 2010 though…

I did participate in a ‘Day in the Life of…” project through WetCanvas…October 4th, 2008…on that date, everyone who had signed up for the project headed out and documented our day…there were people from all over the world participating…then we were to post on the forum a number of our pictures and from that choose 1 to represent the day…I took 84 photos total and whittled that down to 35 that I quite liked…it was hardest to choose the 1 to represent the day…it was one of those beautiful sunny, crisp, windy fall days…this is what I chose…














There are all kinds of neat projects out on the Net, for just about every kind of interest, that you can join in on…for free!…another one that I would like to participate in is the SketchCrawl…set dates for going out…in groups or alone…all over the world…just like a photographic “Day in the Life off…”…but sketching…I have wanted to do this one for a while…but never felt confident enough in my sketching skills to do it…but after my plein air class and in the spirit of continuing that aspect of my painting, I think I could now…I have no idea who I would go with though…I have never seen an Ottawa group…I could go alone…here is the forum for the next date coming up on November 21, 2009…the 25th World Wide SketchCrawl…

These projects are just one of the ways in which I keep my ‘inspiration well’ full…joining a project or group that requires me to create…be it through painting trading cards or postcards, taking photographs or just committing to be ‘Creative Every Day’, gives me a focus and the push to produce…to get out and photograph or go to my studio or outside to paint or draw…and that simple act…the just ‘doing it’ has an amazing power to get the creative juices flowing so that good things can happen…another thing I do is to fill myself regularly with ‘eye candy’…but blog surfing, researching artists, reading and going out to art shows…

Here are a few more photos from my 'Day in the Life of...' a year ago...

It has been a year!

It has been a year since I started Tamarak’s Table…so…what have I learned from this?...

I originally started this blog so that I would have a space where I could put my stuff while I was participating in Leah’s Art Every Day month, which was November 2008…I have signed up for it again and am looking forward to it…the extra push it gives me…allowing myself to spend more time in the studio…

I have grown a lot through blogging and have gained some valuable insights and learning tools from it…it has really just been this past year that I have pushed myself to ‘put myself out there’…that was a big step for me and the blog was one of the ways through which I did this…

My posting track record has been irregular…no schedule, rhyme or reason...I posted when I could…usually I had much more to say, more entries that I would have liked to have made, than I had time to do it in…it takes me a while to get a post ready to upload…maybe I should post little bits more often…but I seem to like having a complete package of some sort before I post…it is different during the CED month…during that I am supposed to be tracking my daily creative activity…so little snippets are what is in order…

While I would love to be able to spend time every day painting, that isn’t possible…other life responsibilities are such that, at this point in my life, daily ‘studio time’ is still on my wish list…but that doesn’t mean I don’t have creativity in my life daily…I think I do…a lot of it still happens in my head though…

This blog has been my space where I take a longer, more structured look at my creativity…to look at my processes, my inspirations, my development…I didn’t know, when I started blogging just what it would give back to me…I have always thought about what I do creatively – whether it was my writing or my painting…I have always tried to step back and think about what I do…but I had never written about it…never photographed, written and then edited what I photographed and wrote about it to the point where I would put it out into a public place…about my creations, about my processes…about how I got to where I was, what inspired me along the way…not as a whole package, anyway…about 4 years ago Cariño and I did the Artist’s Way book in a group…that got me thinking about my processes and the ways in which I keep myself inspired…but, except for a very few people, I was still keeping all my ‘stuff’ private…

There were a few things that came together, all at the right time, which got me to step into the public realm…I had started painting in 2006…after one of my clients told me just to ‘do it’…each year I was painting more and more…and at some point in 2007 I started thinking that I might have to find a way to start selling my paintings so that I could buy more supplies (and make more space)…but it wasn’t until 2008 that I challenged myself to ‘put myself out there’…a huge and terrifying step…but a wonderful one as well…

This has been a great year for growth…for self examination and for stepping back and looking at what, how and why I do what I do…it has also opened a new channel of communication for me…got me back in touch with some old friends and opened up a new world full of fellow creative people…thank you all for your comments and support…I look forward to this next year with excitement about where it will take me from here…

Thanksgiving Cat Meld...

I spent this past Thanksgiving weekend at the Island...the same place I have been blogging about lately…my favourite place in the world…only this weekend was Thanksgiving…so a lot of the family was there…my Mom, my sister and her husband and 2 girls, my brother, my younger daughter and I. It was wonderful…family is such a good thing and spending time with them is bliss…

As well, we brought my younger daughter’s 7 month old wee bit of a puppy, Kaiah. Matisse – my sister’s family dog…a Papillion (even smaller than Kaiah) and their 2 Siamese cats…Whiskers and Lisa, were all there too…

Here are Kaiah and Matisse on our walk about the island...














It was a cold weekend, so we had the fire going almost all of the time…the 2 cats snuggled on a stool right in front of the fireplace...


















Whenever I would go near the fire…to put on another log, or to warm myself, I would notice the 2 snuggling cats…then I became interested in the abstract patterns of their bodies…I call it “Cat Meld”…

Spiders, Snakes and Shadow Waving…

Part of a cottage experience for us his identifying the various things – plants, bugs, birds and animals – that we see…there are a number of field guides at the cottage and LT’s beau brought some neat survival books that had insect, snake and plant info…

For all who know me, photographing this spider (which we did identify but I can’t remember its name in the aftermath of my fear!) was a major case of forcing myself to do something that scares me! I hate to admit that it was kind of fascinating though…LT and I watched it spinning a fresh web one morning…it took down and made a new web every day…and its web had a very distinct zigzag pattern in a couple places coming out from the centre…it appeared to be after the yellow jacket wasps that come in late summer and we even tried to kill and toss some into its web, but none stuck and I got too creeped out by it all…


















Now snakes, on the other hand, don’t scare me at all…I do have a healthy respect for the Massassauga Rattlers that live on the island, but snakes don’t scare me like spiders do…so when LT and I were loading up the canoe after one of our painting sessions, I didn’t freak when I saw the snake lying under the canoe…right about where LT was going to step when she reached over to put the painting gear in…but she is afraid of snakes…so I said, very calmly, for her to step back from the canoe…now…and she did…so all was good!













The snake was a fox snake (even though the book says they only go up to Point au Baril and we are north of that)…on first glance, their colourings are similar to the massassagua, but fox snakes are longer and thinner…they ‘rattle’ their tail like a rattler though…I was going to pick it up for LT and my dog to have a better look at it, but it was vibrating its tail like mad and I had a momentary thought that went something like this - if I was wrong and it was a young rattler and I got bit out on this flat piece of rock and had to paddle back to the cottage before heading in to Britt (which would take about half an hour in the small motor boat) which is the closest place for the anti-venom shot…so I didn’t pick it up…

I take lots of pictures at the cottage…of the amazing landscape that I love so much…rocks and trees and water…I also take pictures of the tribe - people and dogs (cats when they come too)…a few years ago it was just my younger daughter and Cariño who made it to the cottage and I took this ‘waving’ shot…the lighting and location had to all work for this…it was taken out at the group of islands we call the ‘inner outers’…it is a great place to go for a shore lunch and if the weather is right, to play in the waves on the outer shore…as we were walking around I noticed our shadows following us…


















A couple years ago when I was up with my 2 daughters, 2 of their friends, LT and her Beau, the 4 kids and I had walked over to the other side or our island to see the sun set and I took this picture for my waving series…













Then this year, we all went out to another one of the ‘inner outers’ for a picnic and I took this shot of the group of us waving…I love how the shadows are distorted…















I also took one of just Cariño and me…


















I have years of dog pictures…some of my favourite pictures of our dogs have been ones taken at the island…here are a few of them…

Artists in their Environment ~ the Chelsea/Wakefield Studio Tour…

This is the 3rd or 4th year that I’ve gone on the Chelsea/Wakefield Studio Tour...it is one of my favourites…I imagine that is not only because I've seen some wonderful artists on it, but also because it is so close and is easy for me to get to, as well, it is a tour that takes you through such a pretty area…though I bet the Haliburton County Studio Tour is pretty amazing for both artists and countryside too…but it is a 4 or 5 hour drive from Ottawa…


















This time of year is not only beautiful with the fall colours, it is full to overflowing with studio tours…the Perth Autumn Studio Tour and the Merrickville Tour are both ones I wish I could go on…I’d love to go on all of them…but there is no way…even though Cariño is becoming a wonderfully seasoned studio tour goer and tour driver (this year 6 of us piled into our van and Cariño drove)…it was lots of fun, but if you tried to go to each and every one of them it would take all of your weekends for a month or so! If money was no obstacle, maybe…then you could travel about, staying in charming country inns, eating out…ya…dream on…the other thing, though…is that all that beautiful eye candy can become overwhelming…and it can get difficult if you see too many things that you just have to have and you can’t buy everything…these things can end up speaking to you and haunting you…I also get so inspired by all that I see that I can imagine, if I kept going and seeing without the time in between to get back to my creating, I might just explode…













I do love studio tours though…I love seeing artists in their environment…love looking into peoples homes…my job takes me into peoples homes to work on their computers, so I am used to entering peoples living spaces…some of the places on this tour were simply breathtaking…beautiful remote locations…in the woods, overlooking the river, on twisty, scenic back gravel roads…I saw more that a few places I would love to live in!














Of the 22 artists participating in this tour, we saw 14…that was all we could fit in on the 1 day that we could all get together to go…Cariño and I played the game of virtual shopping…deciding at each place what we would buy if we could…we spent a lot of virtual money! It would have been impossible for me to decide on only 1 virtual purchase from the day…it seemed that each place we went to became my new favourite…


















Now, after almost a week of it settling in, I think Marie-France Nitski resonates the strongest for me in the painting category…I love the bright, bold colours she uses and the wild and free expression in her pieces…I fell in love with her piece called “Bread and Roses”…but there are a few of Linda Wright’s paintings that I am still thinking about too…especially one that had wonderful aqua blue colours, textures and worn paper with a fish skeleton image and a canoe…also her impressionistic textured pieces that looked, to me, like landscapes were wonderful…her web site doesn’t show the pieces I’m talking about, but you can get the idea from her page on the studio site…and John Barkley had a massive portrait that he was working on…it isn’t on his web site yet…it was huge! I like the way he uses tons of paint…I love tons of paint…great globs of it…so I was attracted to that aspect of his paintings…


















We also saw Ross Rooke’s wood turning…absolutely beautiful…he gave us a tour of his workshop and I think I saw a glimmer of interest in Cariño’s eyes…maybe something he would like to do…Glen Foster makes finely crafted, unique tables…letting some of the natural form of the wood remain in the design…there was a sumac table where he had split the piece of sumac and mirrored it together side by side to for the table top…it was exquisite…Russ Zeitz, another woodworker creates wonderful mixed media, sculptural 3D pictures, rustic furniture and funky sculptures…
























































Diane Lemire is an artist I have admired for a few years now…her works in cement intrigue me…I fell in love with a bird bath I saw at her place a few years ago…it had different types of cement, leaf impressions and a blue and white china ball partly submerged in the bowl part of it…it has been speaking to me for a long time now…


















Something out of character happened to me on the tour…I usually don’t get overly excited about jewellery, but I fell in love with a necklace that Susan Glazer made…it was a scrumptious blue…she had made it by crocheting the coloured copper-cored wire…really neat…her dancing diva’s were fun too…


















We stopped in Wakefield for lunch at Chez Eric…had a lovely lunch and good wine…I had the quiche which came nicely presented…












The tour is on again this weekend if you are in the area and can go…it is well worth it…lots of yummy eye candy…I would have liked to have seen the rest of the artists on the tour, but right now I find myself sitting in another beautiful spot – my Mom’s cottage on the Bruce Peninsula overlooking a wild and restless Georgian Bay…from almost the exact opposite shore of my sister’s cottage…same bay, but so different on each side…


















I missed the Bruce Peninsula Autumn Studio Tour…but there are is a nice gallery just up the road a bit in Tobermory…Circle Arts…I should be able to make it to 260 Fingers though…

Plein Air Painting, Lamps and Miniatures…

So...for all the talk of cottage crafts…this year we didn’t have one! There were lots of creative things going on…but we didn’t have a craft organized that we all participated in together, like in other years…

LT’s beau had brought some of his metal miniatures to paint and that interested my 2 daughters and my younger daughter’s beau…so they worked on those over the course of our cottage time…the miniatures involved painting tiny details and each one took hours and hours to do…

My elder daughter also put together a sculptural piece from a piece from a falling apart, weathered wooden boat and some interesting branches; she painted it white and blue and made herself a really neat piece to hang her jewellery on…

LT and I had 4 plein air painting sessions and we also did some funky painting on furniture…

At first we thought that we would canoe all around and set up to paint at a different location each time we went out…but in the end we decided to set up in the same place each time, paint the same scene and see how we progressed…it isn’t that easy to just bop about painting plein air…you do get so that you can carry everything in one load – we had got to that point part way through our course in Haliburton…but it still takes at the very least 3 hours per session…our first 2 and last sessions were 3 hours, our 3rd was a bit over 4…it would be a different matter if LT and I were there solely on a painting trip for ourselves…but we couldn’t just disappear on everyone…so choosing a spot right close-by worked well…

We settled on painting one of the out buildings on the island…we call it the Ice House – it was once used to store the ice that was chopped in the winter…in the days before refrigerators, when people had ice boxes…it is a cute little structure perched on the rocks with cedar trees beside it and pines behind…also, it was just a short paddle across to a flat island where we could set up…

What a beautiful place to paint! Here we are all set up and the view around us...














LT Painting...














Our session 2 paintings with the Ice House in back...














My dog would swim beside the canoe and stay with us as we painted…he was a good painting companion!














Shea on location...keeping an eye on the island...


















Of the 4 sessions, 3 of them were in a row and I really noticed progress in my paintings…then we couldn’t get out for a few days…my 4th painting has improved perspective…but I found that unless I moved from doing the monotone-initial-roughing-in-the-lines-phase into adding colour, then I would get too carried away with monotone details and didn’t want to add colour…

Here is my session 1 painting...


















Our session 2 paintings about to go into the ice house to dry...


















LT's session 3 painting...


















My session 3 painting...I am gatting happy with my rocks (one of my goals) but my trees are a bit wild!


















Here are our paintings from the first 3 sessions up in the ice house drying...













My painting from our 4th session...


















LT working on her 4th session painting...


















I am a long way and many practice paintings away from producing anything anywhere close to being ‘finished’…but it is nice to see progress in the little bit that I have done!

As our gift to the cottage this year, LT and I painted 2 lamp stands…we are also going to paint one of the couches but only managed to get it primed this year…the lamps took way longer than we realized they would…they also are not finished, but are looking pretty good so far!

The lamps before we started...


















Here they are so far...


















The couch as far as we got this year...we primed the parts we are going to paint...we are going to leave the arms and the front board natural, so those got sanded down and one coat of varathane applied to protect them until we get back to it next year...