An Impromptu Artist’s Date

Yesterday morning I had to go out to run some errands - it was a beautiful day - sunny, spring-time warm and, for the first time in what felt like forever, the thought of having a little walk about was appealing.

After finishing up what I had to get done, I parked the car on Murray Street in the Byward Market area and walked over to the National Art Gallery…

This is a shot of the Beaux-Arts lane that I took a few years ago…one of my first ‘drive by’ shots taken out of the car window while I was driving past…















Here is a shot of the same lane from yesterday…















I can’t remember the exact day last fall, but at some point, while driving across the Alexandra Bridge into Ottawa, I noticed this sharp silver finger reaching up into the sky…I asked Cariño if he knew when it had appeared and what it was, but he didn’t know either…and that was how it remained until yesterday.

I walked past Louise Bourgeois’ Maman…the giant spider, and although I really dislike spiders, this one kind of grows on you. She is quite lovely. I believe there are 8 of these huge spider sculptures around the world.

Maman is one of many things that I keep returning to to try to get just the perfect shot…I’m not the only one, either…on any given day you can see someone or sometimes groups of people walking up to, away from and all around Maman trying to get their perfect shot.

I am happy with this one I took yesterday, but I am sure that it won’t be the last one I take of her!










As I walked around to the river-side of the gallery, I started to get a feel of just how tall this new sculpture was…and such a nice shiny silver.















I walked right up to it and all around it…I decided that I like it! I especially liked being right bellied up to it…




















































There was no plaque or anything telling me what the name of the sculpture was, who the artist was…when it had been installed…so I looked it up when I got home and my artist date became complete then – I had got out, seen something up close that I hadn’t seen before, had fun figuring out how to take some photos of what I saw…and then was inspired to come home and research about what I had seen…and, finally, to blog about it! That whole package goes a long way to making me feel good!

The new sculpture’s name is “One Hundred Foot Line”, was created by the New York artist Roxy Paine and is one in a series of trees that he has done in stainless steel called “Dendroids”. There are 4 interesting videos about the artist and his work. The first one that comes up when you go to this page is a talk with the artist about his stainless steel trees and rock sculptures. I’ll let you go listen to it instead of my paraphrasing what he is trying to portray. The other 3 videos (click on the little arrow at the bottom right of the video to get to them) show the process he uses in his ‘paintings’ – really kind of neat – he has an elaborate computerized set-up that then allows the paint to do what it will do.

There are some more videos that show the installation of his mammoth Dendroids – the first in the list shows a time-lapse video of the installation of One Hundred Foot Line.

After getting to know the new sculpture, I continued walking around this area called Nepean Point. This article from the Ottawa Citizen talks about both the new sculpture and Nepean Point.

I continued taking some shots…it was a good a good artist's date!















































To top the day off I played with Lily - who was 6 months old a few days ago...I can't believe how fast the time flies!!!

I never meant to lie...

I really did not intend to tell a lie. I honestly thought that I was on the verge and just about to, and I have felt that way ever since I wrote that last blog post back in late June of last year, but it hasn’t happened yet. Many other things have happened, some of which have made it difficult, for the time being, to have space and time in my studio, in fact, most of my paints and materials are packed up for now.

I still have lots of creative ideas, but the actual painting and creating of them will have to wait. They will have to wait until we move to a bigger place. One major thing that has happened over this past year is that I became a grandmother! This is proving to be a thrilling journey, little Lily has brought such joy into our house. Joy and happiness…and a lot of ‘stuff’! My daughter, her beau and the baby have moved in with us, so now we all need to move to a bigger place! We had been planning on moving anyway, so this is no surprise.

I have still been keeping creative, even if I haven’t been painting. I have been focusing my creative energies on photographic ones…last January 1st, 2010, I began a Project 365, and on December 31st, 2010, I completed it. I had so much fun that I am doing another one!

A number of us who finished up our Project 365 at the end of December were sent some interview questions…you can find my answers here at the 365 Community Blog. At the end is a slide show of all of my photos for the year:



I do miss writing my blog though. Through the process of writing it, I would reflect on whatever it was I was working on, taking the time to examine my creative processes, to look closely at how I came up with my different ideas and how these ideas would grow and change into more ideas. Blogging made me sit back and look over things in a way that I simply don’t do at all if I’m not writing my blog and I believe that process helped my creative growth.

I do still spend most of my free time “filling the well”, getting in all the eye candy that I can, as well as reading about and learning new things. My Cariño told me about this new Google project that he heard about on the radio – Google Art Project. I have just started to wander about in it and it is wonderful! There is a great video that explains the project and an article about it from ‘The Economist’ and you can find the Google Art Project here. I think I am going to be spending some quality time wandering around these museums. I love that, with some of the paintings, you can zoom right in and almost feel the brush strokes – and no gallery security guard is going to yell at you for being too close to a piece of art!

I am on the verge and just about to…

I have no shortage of creative ideas…just a serious lack of the “right” kind of time…it is kind of like when, a number of years ago, I wouldn’t allow myself to paint for over a year because we had to get our taxes done…the taxes never got done and I got progressively more grumpy because I wasn’t painting! Now our taxes are done…finally…we put 3 years worth into the system about 3 weeks ago…and we are caught up for the first time in about 5 years…I should be celebrating and painting my head off…so what is holding me up now?

It could be because I now feel that I should be doing all of the de-cluttering that needs to be done before LT will come to paint the house so we can put it on the market…but, like the taxes, neither the de-cluttering nor any painting is getting done!

You would think that I would have figured out by now (actually, I think I have figured it out…I just don’t act on it)…that I need to strike some kind of balance between doing what has to get done (in this case de-cluttering and packing) and what needs to get done (some serious creative play so I can function)…but balancing, scheduling and all of those basic organizational things have never been my strong suit…I seem to bounce from an excess of one thing to an excess of another…so that when there are things that really have to get done, like taxes and de-cluttering, I end up avoiding everything and doing nothing…except my mind never stops racing between thinking up creative ideas for paintings and berating myself for not getting the “have to get done” things done…I am my own worst enemy!

Yesterday, in my avoidance of all things, I wandered off down this trail…it all started with a newsletter from Photojojo…it was called “Unchartered Photography: 7 AM Portraits”…a fun “Sleep/Wake” project idea that Meredith Andrews came up with…this led me off in 2 directions…one was to look at Meredith Andrew’s website…I love her “Works in Progress”…I have a thing about repetition and collections of things that are all the same but different…the other was another link from the Photojojo newsletter that led to an article in the New Yorker about a series of photographs that Michael Putnam did back in the 60’s and 70’s about sleeping in public…they are wonderful…the book – called “Sleep” has been reprinted…I would love to get a copy…

It was an enjoyable couple of hours…and not wasted time either...I justify it by telling myself that it is all a part of the “filling of the well”…now if I could only get myself to pack for a couple of hours, paint for a couple of hours and blog wander, visit a gallery or go on a photography excursion to fill the creative for a couple of hours daily...well…then I might find some balance…but, wait…how do I fit working into that?

I Have a New Toy…!

I can’t remember, exactly, when my elder daughter and I took a weekend workshop at the Ottawa School of Art…it was a few years ago now…but I do remember the content of the 2-day workshop! It was my first introduction to encaustic painting…and I loved it…

For one reason or another, and likely because of a great many reasons and life ‘stuff’, I haven’t been up to paint in my studio since the last mad flurry before my show back in March! I have been photographing and I suppose that this has kept me stimulated enough creatively so that I haven’t felt an overwhelming need to be painting…but I do miss it…

I love oil paints for their richness and the way they blend…but with the way that I paint…using tons of paint and slathering it on thick, with lots of texture…it takes years for my oil paintings to fully cure…that was why I switched to using acrylics…and I love the different acrylic mediums and the ease of clean-up and all…but they aren’t oils…they just don’t have the same luminosity and richness…encaustic painting combines oil pigments with molten beeswax…the depth and sheen of this amalgamation is simply amazing…plus this medium has endless possibilities…you can build it up with many layers, carve into it to reveal the layers below, add elements to it creating a collage, create a layered mass of it and then carve away at parts of that…artist Laura Moriarty does some pretty wild things with encaustics…this video shows her working on one of her sculptural paintings…

Another encaustic artist that I like is Susan Wallis…

Ever since that encaustic workshop, I have wanted to explore this medium further…and our visit to Su Sheedy’s studio in Kingston back in April woke that urge up again…

While at Su’s studio, she showed me her tools and materials…one main tool was a blow torch…with a self-igniting switch…how cool is that?...

It has already been 2 months since we visited Su’s studio…but the idea of doing some encaustics hasn’t been far from my thoughts…and a couple of days ago, I finally used up some of my Canadian Tire funny money and bought myself this…

Tulips and More Tulips…

I seem to be on a photographing flowers kick lately…this spring seems to be more visual for me…maybe that is because I have been doing the Project 365...maybe it is because the weather seems to be perfect for the spring flowers…I have been photographing way more…loving my new camera…

So here are a bunch more tulip pictures from the other day…I'm hoping to be able to get out to photograph some of the artists that come out to paint the tulips plein air...I also have some daffodil ones from a week or so ago…those will be next…

I’m afraid that with this weather we’ve been having, the tulips will all be finished before the May 7th beginning of the Tulip Festival in Ottawa…

Sometimes things just all fit together and a wonderful time is had……

Cariño and I just had a very nice weekend…filled with the best of things – family visits, nice weather, good food, wine…and a healthy dose of eye candy and inspirational art talk!

As is often the case, what started as a small overnight away, turned into a multiple visit weekend mini-holiday…I didn’t do any of the driving, so it was all much easier on me!

Through an act of kind generosity, my sister-in-law-to-be decided to give Cariño and me her car…this couldn’t have come at a better time…our van, which we had hoped would make it through to the end of Cariño’s university degree was fast failing and the prospect of having to buy another vehicle at this time was daunting, to say the least!

It’s funny how a few seemingly unrelated things can come together and form into an elaborate, but do-able event…

It just so happened that my art show at the Stepping Stones Gallery ended last week (Cariño, my younger daughter and I had taken it down on the Wednesday afternoon) and I needed to deliver the painting that my Mom had bought...she lives in Mount Hope…it also just so happens that my brother’s fiancé lives in Ancaster...very close to my Mom…it further just so happened that my brother was going down this weekend to a pre-wedding party at his fiancé’s parents…add to this the fact that Cariño and I had already planned to go to Napanee to visit my Dad and his cariño…

So all of these various things kind of melded together into a master plan…Oma said she would watch the dogs for us…so Cariño and I drove them out to the Oma’s Happy Hermitage on Thursday afternoon…we stopped on the way home so I could take some shots of this beautiful little creek that winds its way through the woods…













Early Friday morning found my brother, Cariño and I heading out of Ottawa in my brother’s truck…we made it (a 6 hour drive) to the garage in Mount Hope, where the car had been taken for its safety and emissions tests, in time to pick up that paperwork, go to the licensing office and do that paperwork, then back to the garage, slap on the plates, fly by the wine store, and be sitting at my Mom and her cariño’s place for a glass of wine by about 5pm!

This is the painting that Mom bought at my show opening…it is the latest in my Flow series…


















Mom and her cariño took us for a delicious dinner at a little place called Lemon Grass Restaurant…then a good sleep, leisurely morning, nice visit and we headed off on the next part of the trip…

Just before Dad’s there is an old abandoned barn…it makes me sad to see these beautiful old wooden farm buildings being left to fall to pieces…they are so magnificent…but they also take a lot of maintenance…we had one of these wood barns on the farm that I grew up on…Dad tells me that it was endless upkeep…that he could go out at night and hear pieces of the barn falling off…still…it seems such a shame that so many of these old beauties are being left to fall to the ground to be swallowed up by the brambles…

I have tried a few times to photograph this particular group of farm buildings…I’m not sure if it is lighting, or the fact that I am a bit hesitant to go wandering in and around them too much…I have never seen anyone that I could ask permission from…the old farmhouse is abandoned too…but I have yet to get a picture that I really love of this place…here are my efforts from this past Saturday…










































































We got to Napanee in perfect time, once again, for pre-dinner drinks…yummy dinner and then later we watched the movie “Hachiko: A Dog’s Story”...it was very touching and had me crying…it was based on the story of a dog in Japan – Hachikō – who waited for nine years for his master (who had died while at work) to return to the train station where the dog had met him after work each day…of course I am a sucker for a good animal yarn…plus the facial expressions of an Akita are amazing…

After brunch Cariño and I began the trip home…on the way, we stopped in to visit one of my Dad’s cariño’s daughters (my step-sister) in Kingston…Su Sheedy is an encaustics artist…my elder daughter and I took a weekend encaustics workshop a few years ago…it was so much fun…so for a while now, I had been wanting to get together with Su to talk art with her and to see her studio…it was a wonderfully inspiring visit…

Here are some shots from around her studio…what a fun place...full of neat things...







































































After picking up the dogs from Oma’s outside of Wakefield, it was late by the time we got home…I woke this morning to the welcome feelings of happiness and being inspired…it was a very nice weekend and I want to get back to painting!

Out running around today it seems that Ottawa is starting to burst into colour with blooming tulips…they have started to open over the weekend…masses of vibrant colours…I think they will be in their full glory before the beginning of the Tulip Festival…I’m going to have to spend some time this week out photographing them…this is what I got on the way home from errands today…