Grip

Grip

February 2012

30" x 30"

Oil on Canvas

$600.00 CAN

  I have experienced more life changes and made some hard decisions. Now life is reverberating the positive effects of those changes making my changes prove to be positive improvements.
   There was the birth of a son. The decision and incredible support from my significant other to shut down the classroom and to take a break from teaching for the purpose of focusing more on my career as a painter. If I do teach in the future it will not be to the same extent as I have been teaching in the past.
   I was teaching up to ten classes a week. I was quiet sucessful at teaching but it meant that the rest of my life suffered. Sometimes we are really good at things that we shouldn't be doing. Teaching comes naturally to me, it is easy (because I'm bossy and like to chat about art), and I would get a lot of outside praise for it. Just because I am good at it doesn't mean I should be doing it. I saw my own career as an artist start to suffer. I wasn't able to focus on improving my technical skills and work habits because I was having to focus too much on improving others. I'm too helpful to a fault, I guess.
   The word 'quit' is often equated to failure, but that was not what was happening. I am incredibly grateful to have been able to teach private lessons successfully. It provided the funds I needed at the time and I gained exposure for my work as well. Teaching was turning into a world wind and there were so many teaching opportunities for me. It was taking me where I didn't want to go. I am an artist, specifically a painter. I want to paint, I have lots to say with endless ability and skill behind me. Doing what comes easily is not always the path we should leap onto. Part of creating a phenomenal meaningful career is the journey on the way to being successful. I'm stepping onto that path that leads me on that journey to be a successful artist instead of the superficial easy path. My teaching would mean a lot to others but not to myself. Painting would mean a lot to me and the world forever. I want to be apart of the Canon of Art History not the person who introduces others to the artists in it. I don't remember the names of my all my art history profs and I am indeed grateful for all of my instructors and teachers that I have come across in my life. However I will always remember the names of Cassat, Picasso, Matisse, Kahlo, Freud,Warhol, Saville, Okamura, Barber, and others that have changed my life and made me want to be a painter.

   As soon as I had made the decision to focus more on my painting career I immediately received a call to do a commissioned piece (which I just started working on and am thoroughly enjoying paintings it). When I was toying with the idea of letting teaching go I was asked to be apart of two art shows.
  The above painting 'Grip' was shown at the Madplatter in Spruce Grove, AB this past spring. When I painted it I was in the throws of pregnancy hormones. It took longer than usual to complete because my back was very sore from my body being unproportionately heavy in the front. This painting reflects the changes I was facing in every aspect of my life, the relationships with everyone around me, I quit two of my day jobs that I no longer needed to pay the bills and eat up my time, and I was wondering if it was just my imagination or was my body that huge and distorted. (To my surprise, my body somehow magically reformed it's shape).
   While showing 'Grip' I received several comments and all seem to enjoy the work. I love how it meant different things to different people. It could be seen as holding on or taking action. For me it meant both.

Female Figure Paintings and Driven Landscape

 Figure on Blue

Oil on Board

January 16, 2012

$200.00 CAN

Figure on Orange

Oil on Board

January 14, 2012

$200.00 CAN

Driven Landscape

Oil on Canvas

12" x 10"

January 14, 2012

$250.00 CAN

   This past January The Paint Spot in Edmonton had an excellent idea to raise funds for new lighting for their gallery space. The Naess Gallery has been promoting local artists for a long time. Many years ago they gave me and a few of my peers at University the opportunity to show our work. It was a great experience as a fellow artist and myself were in charge of organizing the show. It taught me a lot about how to submit work to galleries and how to talk to the public about my work. It was an invaluable experience that I will never forget.

   This painting project was very interesting and I hope that they continue and make this an annual event. The Paint Spot asked artists to bring in their unfinished paintings and exchange them for other unfinished paintings which you then take and use as a ground for the creation of a completed painting to contribute to the show. I love the idea of someone creating a challenging ground to work from.
   The above paintings I see as great successes. Figure on Blue was originally a wiped out landscape which was mostly a gray blue with a bridge in the middle. I left bits of the gray blue in parts of the figure. Figure in Orange was originally just the orange background which I put a very thin layer of green on the top to give it depth and make the skin colors glow. I enjoy how the colors vibrated against each other. The last, Driven Landscape, was a landscape with a winding walking path down the middle. I kept the trees and sky and emphasized them, manipulating the sky line, added a road and placed my car in the foreground.
   I have always found that it is harder to work from a white canvas. Now with plenty of years of painting experience behind me I know that I always need to start by creating some sort of ground to work from. I cannot start a painting from a white ground, it needs to be loved up first. It doesn't matter if you just smear a bunch of paint on it no matter what color or how many colors, you just need to start of with something. White is too bright and in painting especially in oils, one usually leaves the white highlights to the end of the painting process (though there is always an exception to the rules).