Baaa

The owner just sent me a photo of this painting in his office.  What a nice surprise it was to see it after all these years!  The sheep looks very comfortable in that setting.

In the mid-80's I had a lot of fun using animals as subject matter for my paintings.

Going Somewhere?

Although we haven't been in each others' studio for many years, it is curious that my friend Loraine Stephanson and I are both putting roads in our paintings. Roads are something I used to ignore because they seemed hard to integrate into the composition and also because they are man-made, uninteresting.  Now roads are almost central to the painting.  Here are two small paintings from a few years ago, while the two bigger ones that you can't see properly are from this year. Sorry that they are upside down and partially out of the picture.

Workshop Progression

When we were setting up in the studio at Emma Lake this summer, my friend Becky (Rebecca Perehudoff) offered to take a photo of me in my space.  Everything looked pretty clean and tidy at this point:

By the end of the week, things had changed slightly:

Here are some of my paintings:  (You can see that trees are still my inspiration.)

We had a pretty good time; weather wise, there were some big storms alternating with sunny days.  The professional artists' workshop being only one week this year, it felt as though we were just getting started when we had to pack up.  As always, it was interesting to meet some new people, while re-connecting with old friends.  The guest artist, Elizabeth Macintosh, who teaches at Emily Carr University in Vancouver, shared some provocative professional experiences with us through her stories; and she also introduced us to new faces through her slide shows.  Eating our meals on the closed-in porch over the lake was more congenial after she pushed all the tables together.

Exhausted after my long drive back, which thankfully was very uneventful, I am left with  good memories of the scenery and the people.