Back in the Groove.... Game on!

It’s taken a while.  I am not sure why.  I wonder if it is because I doubt myself in terms of my ability to draw.  Or maybe I just got a look at what other folks can do and felt small and insignificant?  Or maybe I just got busy being a mom, and working full time, and organizing events for the Arts Council, and trying to come up with activities to keep 13&14 year old girl guides interested for 2 hours every Thursday night?  Or maybe I was just tired.  Really Tired. You know the kind of tired that creeps up on you when your nose is a bit stuffed, and your sinuses ache, and your throat is scratchy, but you aren’t really sick enough to justify taking a day off work.   Tired.

Whatever it was I lost my groove.  I lost my inspiration, I lost the desire, it trickled out  and every time I looked at a blank sheet of paper… it was just that… BLANK! Empty! Daunting… even my scratch pad next to my phone at work sat sterile,  a few quick names, numbers jotted down in short clipped script.  Not one embellishment, not one doodle.  Empty. 

But I’m BACK! I’m ready, I’m excited again. And as mysteriously as my inspiration died it has come crashing back!  It might have been the Creative Jam – where I got to meet the lovely Ms. Redhead who can get seriously excited about painting!  And taught us all how she pours her paint.  (see image below).  Or it might just be that the pressure of organizing the Creative Jam has ebbed.. and with that stress out of my life I can bloom again.  Or it could be the upcoming Arts and Culture week in April where we are hosting a PostCard Art show on the theme of “Hello Neighbour!”  Or maybe it was finding a whole new line of Children’s Books – Barefoot Books and some spending some time looking at the wonderful illustrations that grace their covers. (http://www.barefootbooks.ca/)  What ever it is it feels great!

Sentinel Spirits

poured watercolour from workshop by Leslie Redhead

(leslieredheadart.blogspot.com/)

Watercolour

© RiverWalker Art

So the first bit of inspiration was that my spice collection needs a new item.  Cioppino – a versatile fish stew that is a classic of the West Coast and related to various regional fish soups and stews of Italian cuisine.  Traditionally it is made from the catch of the day, which can look like a combination of Dungeness crab, clams, shrimp, scallops, mussels and fish in a tomato based broth.  My painting – a small 5x7 watercolour!  Now to add the text, do a little digital magic and get the envelopes printed! (oh yeah and place an order to my favourite spice dealer!)  What fun!

Cioppino

Watercolour

© RiverWalker Art

Perhaps even more exciting than Fish Stew with a fancy name (although who doesn’t like a good fish stew) is that Wyken, Blynken and Nod are back on the Easel!  I’ve got one more painting almost finished – one ready to apply paint, and 2 more full-sized sketches that just need some fleshing out before I will be ready to transfer them onto the cotton watercolour paper and add paint. 

Wynken Blyken & Nod

Watercolour

© RiverWalker Art

Creative Jam in a Weekend.

Tired… I said I wanted a weekend now that I survived the actual weekend.. but what I think I really want is a room with a view and a big bed and 2 days in which to curl up in a nest of blankets and warmth and sleep on and off like a cat in the sunshine.  No interruptions, no responsibilities and no organizing.   I’m tired.  The kind of tired that makes the grubby brown floor in my office look like a comfortable place to lay my head.  That little alcove near the photocopier looks remarkably like a good place to nap.  So does just about anywhere. 

It’s been busy.  I mean really really busy.   It takes at least five people to organize the Creative Jam. One for each discipline… and one to over see them and worry about them.  Two of our organizers left town.. for destinations as exotic as Cuba and as obscure as Oona River (tiny little town of 30 or so people on a tiny little island in the middle of nowhere).  So that left three of us to pull off the event.

And we did it.!  Photography, Quilting, Painting, and Creative Writing workshops help simultaneously over a weekend, with roughly 50 in attendance.  The Quilters lugging their sewing machines and creating havoc with threads and pins, the photographers snapping photos and dragging tripods.  The Painters with stained fingers literally watching paint dry while others scribbled in their notebooks a written record of life. We started after work on Friday hauling tables and easels and I found myself at 7pm on Sunday night vacuuming up the last evidence of all that had transpired.

It was worth it. I might finally have my artistic inspiration back.  The rain hasn’t stopped, the grey sky hangs as low as ever and the wind howls at night – but I seem to have been re-inspired.  My paints are wet again and I’ve put brush to paper.

Here is a look at what the lovely LeslieRedhead helped me create in her Watercolour Workshop: 

Piece from weekend workshop: Sentinel Spirits.

and my mind is crushed by the pounding rain...

I talk about the weather a lot. It’s a Canadian pastime, and there truly are people who can’t hardly start a conversation if it were not for the weather.   Although I do spend my fair share of time commenting on the weather, I try not to complain about it overly much.  But holy rain batman!  Seriously. We are less than 2 weeks into the month and already we have had 246.8 mm of rain – they measure this on top of city hall and every hour or so the number creeps up.  That is over 20mm of rain a day for 11 days straight.   If we were to compare the amount in snowfall – you are looking at about 8 feet of snow in the last 11 days.

(and while I admit conversion is sketchy with averages varying between ratios of 1:6 to 1:10  - t it turns out in weather forecasting they use the 1 to 10 ratio in order to make snowfall forecasts.  That's because the computer projections can tell us how much liquid will precipitate out of a column of air, but not how much snow. )

My yard is a swamp. Thick spongy moss which normally soaks up the water has drank up more than it can hold and so it sits there – growing puddles on a hillside –yes it is possible.  Patches of what once was grass are now thick mats of slippery dark green slime as the algae grows in mats.

My dog has thick fur that takes hours to dry.  Even going outside to do her business three times in a 24 hours period means she smells like wet dog pretty much always.  And inevitably I find damp spots where she has laid down… like on my pillow…  *sigh* 

So far I’m not finding inspiration in this rain, I’ve not touched my sewing machine except to hem a pair of pyjama pants, and I’ve not lifted a paint brush in weeks.  My goal to sketch more and let myself be free about it has stalled… although I did dig out my sketch book and I did rummage through my stuff to find the accouterments of mucking about in a sketch book… felts, pillbox-sized painting pallet, pens, pencils, erasers, ink, and glue (you never know what will need to be stuck in) now if only I could put aside some time….

Watercolour on cotton rag paper  ©RiverWalker Arts 

Maybe if it ever stops raining…. ? 

a sad little worn down town

I wonder about where I live sometimes.  I know my fair share of people that have left to get away from the rain, the isolation,  the disproportionately high property taxes,  they have fled to more southern pastures, bigger centers, drier, less remote. More than a few have pangs of loss,  feelings of regret, remorse, and of not realizing how good it was….

I was looking on line last night at much newer homes in much more desirable locations.  I was looking at housing prices and amenities.  I was wondering what it would be like to decide to move.   It’s not like I’ve been planted for a long time.  There was a time when I changed communities and hopped from one province to the next on a whim,  rarely more than a year in one place, sometimes not even that long.   I followed work and I moved easily,  everything I owned fit in my little red two door hatch back.   But now I’m here.  I mean really HERE.   I have a house, filled with furniture and all the paraphernalia that comes along with that.  It is not so easy to throw the skis on the roof of my car and leave. But also I’ve put down some roots….

Fragile ones at first but I’m part of this community now. 

I went for a walk at lunch the other day.  The rain had stopped and it was dry enough to take a walk to clear my mind.  I tried to look at what I’d miss, I also tried to look at what a tourist would see.   I wandered over cracked sidewalks, and past potholes that could hide small Volkswagens,  I noticed the bricks missing in the paving stones,  I wondered how many others noticed the green algae and slime streaks that ran down the side of the buildings.   How the windows in the second story of the Chinese food restaurants and over empty storefronts were covered in cardboard and the black scum of too much moisture collected in the corners.   I looked at the cracked concrete walls and the abandoned store fronts. 

It was a sad picture I saw.  One of decay, of neglect.  Of a sad little worn out town at the end of the road.  A town I wouldn’t choose to visit. But somehow it’s still home. While I would not miss the mould, the decay, the rot, the neglect and the sense of abandonment… there are still things that make this place a good one.

I think about what it would pain me to give up – friends certainly, the 7 minute commute to work, the slower pace of a small town.  The fact that I know more than half the shoppers in the grocery store on any given day.  The winds that howl like mourning women and send the garbage cans tumbling end over end down the street.  The storms that are wild and raw and powerful and we withstand them month after month without declaring any sort of disaster.    I would miss the ease at which I move within this community, the ability to get things done because I know who to ask and where to go.   The other thing that I have here is that I’m known in my own way as an artist.  I’m not just another one of dozens of people who dabbles in doodles but some people in this town actually know me for my art, and my art alone.  (how cool is that??) 

The more "NEEDS" you put in the way of your art, the less art you will do.

We have passed the darkest day of the year.  Now the light should be coming out sooner – and staying longer.  But who am I kidding, I still go to work in dark, and leave it once it is dark again.  The fact that I don’t have a window to look out of means that there are in fact days where I don’t even get to witness daylight.  This also bodes ill for the dog. She needs a bath – she is starting to smell… like a dog.  While I accept that she is a dog , that doesn't mean I want her to smell like one.  My realization has been that in the past I walked her more often, and thus needed to hose her down more often to rid her mud and other less savory odoriferous articles she had rolled in, and therefore she did not get a chance to smell like plain old dog.

While I am not one for new years resolutions, I have decided that I do need to spend some time and walk the dog more often.   Which I suppose you could call a resolution – but what I really have thrown out to the world is a commitment to spend more time with my sketch book. 

There is a movement afoot. It is called “Art journaling”  this isn’t really a new thing.  Or even something very defined.   Basically it is about the creative process of pulling together color, words and images as you wish on a page. The nice thing about it unlike many other forms of art, it is not about the outcome, it is about the process.  I need that.

For some people art journaling is more like scrap booking with ephemera (clippings from old textbooks, maps, receipts, recycled stuff from other art projects, product packaging, scraps of scrapbook paper quotes, lyrics, lottery tickets, Polaroid photos, grocery lists... ) all glued into collages.  For others it is an experimentation of mediums – pens, paint, pastels, chalk, crayons all mashed into colourful explosions. For others it really is a journal about life, done in words, and sketches.  Go ahead Google it!

©RiverWalker Arts

For me. What I want out of the exercise is a place to free up my art.  A place where I can sketch without the pressure of completing a painting or a drawing, a way to write down my thoughts, and to loosen up!  I need to work on putting aside the pressure of completing an “art work”.   The more art we do the more constrained we seem to get. …I’m finding myself less free with my creativity and more critical of my work.   Fear - perfectionism - procrastination - pick your poison  are all standing in the way -  between me and my sketch book. 

 I have come to the conclusion that I need to loosen up, and give myself permission to play with paint, and pencil and pens on paper… to make a mess, to make mistakes, to worry less about “ruining” my sketch book.  My  Art should be a river of imagination....  2013 is a blank book.  Today is but a page waiting for ink. What kind of chapters will spring forth. 

 I might even share some pages if I’m happy with the results.

My Christmas Bonus.

I work for a living.  I spend my days in a beige cubicle staring predominately at a computer screen,  sometimes at documents, and other times at spreadsheet data.  Occasionally I meet with clients or the public and largely these are thankless meetings.  While I do my best to balance conflicting wants, often at the end of the day no one is happy, and I’m exhausted after being yelled at. Yes you read that right – yelled at. It is then that I look forward to the next time I can stare at little numbers in the silence of my spreadsheet without my phone ringing. 

No one ever thanks me for a job well done, and there are no Christmas bonuses.  In fact downsizing and budget cuts took out my last job while I was on maternity leave and I was lucky enough that there was a vacancy in another branch I could slip into.  Others haven’t been so lucky.  More than a few folks in my office will find themselves out of work come the new year.  Some have over 15 years of service… but it doesn't seem to matter. It is the “new” way of doing business we are told. 

My life as an artist – is one of pursuing a passion.  It is not a way to put bread on the table.  So I will not be giving up that beige cubicle any time soon.  However there are moments when I do manage to sell an original painting where upon I jump up and down and run to my husband and say… “GUESS WHAT???!!??”  “I sold and original!!!”  Some one actually likes what I do enough to want to purchase it for what it is worth and put it on their wall!   These are my bonuses.  These are moments of redemption – but they give me hope in a world driven by the economic bottom line.

So to whomever made my Christmas a little bit brighter, I thank you.  I really do hope you enjoy your new piece of art.  It was made with love and brought me joy in it’s creation – I hope it will bring you pleasure in it’s new home.

So you ask – what was it that sold?   It was a winter scene – so apt given the recent weather.  

When Snow Came A Falling
Watercolour on Cotton Rag Paper
Original: SOLD!! 

Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind

Christmas is a day of meaning and traditions

It is not thanksgiving, and yet it is the time of year I am the most thankful for family, for friends, for health, for the safety, warmth and comfort of my home.   I will not wade into the debate about Christ in Christmas or the modern debacle of rampant consumerism.  I have instead chosen to embrace the muddle.  A blending and melding of traditions, celebrations and faith.   

I love the story of the nativity.  It is symbolic for me on so many levels, it is about family, and love, and giving to those less fortunate.  It is about being thankful for what you have and celebrating life.  While candidates for virgin birth include Osiris, Mithras, Dionysus, and Krishna, it is Mary and Joseph that have found their way into the songs I sing to Chicken Little and the traditions of our home.

©RiverWalker Arts

Watercolour on Cotton Rag Paper

Original Sold 

  

I also enjoy the more heathen rituals of winter solstice, of feasting with family and friends and the dragging in of a tree into ones home and festooning it with lights and ornaments, not to mention the pagan practice of adorning houses with lamps and wreathes of laurel and evergreen.  This all blends quite  nicely with the Persian winter celebration of Yelda and the shared feasting, reading  of poems out loud, telling of stories, dancing, and the serving of fruit in the form of pomegranates, nuts, and dried fruit.  The red of the fruits, symbolizing the crimson hues of dawn and glow of life,  in several cultures and for those celebrating the splendour of Mithra (a deity once popular with Roman Legionaries).  These traditions are further evocative of other ancient mid-winter customs invoking various deities  to request protection of the winter crop.

©RiverWalker Arts 2009

Pen and Ink on Paper. 

Living in  21st century North America I also get to luxuriate in the more modern fantasy about Santa  (a blend of Christian crusader, pagan god, commercial idol, not to mention really great marketing by Coca-Cola.) and how this benevolent man spends his time crafting toys for all the little boys and girls the world over. Maybe I love the story of Santa so much because I wish it could be true that all over the world children could wake up to a little something special just for them,  no matter what country, no matter how poor, or how disadvantaged. 

My heart is thankful, my door is open, my glass is raised, and I toast to families everywhere, to your health and mine, to the virtues of love, peace, joy and giving.  

May the spirit of Christmas bring you peace,

The gladness of Christmas give you hope,

The warmth of Christmas grant you love.

Merry Chirstmas to all.

In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it 'Christmas' and went to church; the Jews called it 'Hanukkah' and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank.  People passing each other on the street would say 'Merry Christmas!' or 'Happy Hanukkah!'  or (to the atheists) 'Look out for the wall!'  ~Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping:  A Survivor's Guide"