It’s astonishing how far the sound of the ocean can travel. My home is tucked away on a back road, but I can hear the roar or hushed swoosh of waves almost all the time. The ocean and its big open skies have become a living presence in my life.
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I’ve been working my way through a self-directed online painting class. It’s supposed to be a landscape painting class, but since it’s been snowy and cold outside, I’ve been painting any and every scene I can find around our Montreal condo. It’s been an unexpected treat to have these paintings to remember our place by when we move to our farmhouse in Nova Scotia.
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It has come time to say farewell to Montreal. I will miss the couple who sit on a bench in the park gently plucking their banjos, the people who ride or walk down our street singing (it happens so often we call it ‘the singing street’), the patchwork of houses and shops, frequent coffee shop windows, the tumble of gardens and green laneways…
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This is the first in a new series of featured Painted Stories. These are painted portraits of a home, business, or place that is important to someone and the story that accompanies it. I hope you will love seeing the spaces that are important to people, learning a part of their story, and seeing it in painted form. I thought for this first post, why not start with myself?
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Montreal is so beautiful under its blanket of snow. I have been savouring every minute of our last winter here in the Plateau. You learn so much when paying close attention to something and then making work about what you’ve seen.
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Many of my mornings over the past few months have been spent in the studio, painting. I’ve been going back to the basics – making work for myself – because I feel more alive, balanced, and grounded when I am creating images. I am keeping things simple: a few brushes, smaller loose-leaf pages, my favourite tubes of colour… and painting what interests me, for me. This has helped me to remember why I began painting in the first place and reconnect with the process of making.
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Time. It takes time and space for thoughts to percolate. It takes effort to slow down. I find a need to allow for quiet, for time spent working with my hands – repotting plants, doing a puzzle, baking something delicious, or going for a long walk. Also, that time is too precious to waste not being your fullest and brightest self – your health, well-being, and energy deserve respect and care.
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The story… This painting was of a childhood cottage that is no longer in the family. We discussed the cottage itself, various memories, and favourite moments. We went over the most important things to include and things that could be or should be excluded.
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I have recently been creating some pencil drawings of travel photos. I find pencil to be a wonderful medium for capturing a sense of memory, a softness around the edges and a richness of atmosphere. I used it here to accentuate the light and atmosphere that is sometimes hard to capture in a photograph. I worked to remain true to the subject while removing any unnecessary elements.
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Printmaking is something that I’ve been thinking about for a long time. My first and only real experience with it was in an overview class of several processes in high school. I loved it at the time, but was focussed on photographic printing in the darkroom.
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