Painting Flowers

This weekend is Mother's Day and Mother's Day makes you think of flowers.  Ever since I started painting I loved it when I had a bunch of flowers, often bought from one of those roadside stands that you find in the country.  This would start me off on the challenge of creating something equally wonderful on canvas.  Some of those paintings from the 1990's and early 2000's are presently in a small show at Oeno Gallery in Ontario.  

However, eventually I decided that nature always had one up on me.  It was too difficult to capture the essence of the colours and textures; I would set that challenge aside. 

After 20 years I took the risk of trying again.  During the pandemic, I went crazy with single blossom abstractions, loving the thin texture of the wash and the graphic quality of the edges, against a white ground.  This goes back to when I was starting to get obsessed with painting.  Watercolours were my first choice of medium; the transparency and delicacy of watercolour painting has affected my approach ever since.  I try to resist but it creeps back in.  

My most recent efforts have been on a different scale.  A friend of mine paints mostly in small sizes and does really striking paintings that way.  I thought I would try to see what I could do.  Being in the midst of condensing 2 studios into 1, small also seemed practical.

Here are examples of what I have done on a small scale - some of them look like flowers, but I think of them more as Signs or Signals.

(The first painting has a ruler to keep you in mind of the actual size of these canvases.)

                                    

                                                                   Takeoff, 8x8", 2023

                                                                    Startle, 8x8", 2023

Alert, 8x8", 2023

Diamond in the Rough, 8x8", 2022

Rattle, 8x8", 2022

My First Studio outside of my Home

 My first studio downtown was in the Gault Building on Water Street.  They made work clothes and overalls during the depression and Second World War;  my uncle told me that one of the workers was killed when he fell down the freight elevator shaft and the next day there was a line-up of people out the door and down the street, hoping to get the job.  

One brave day in 77 or so, when my kids were finally in school full time,  I ventured down to Gastown to meet an agent about renting a space for a studio.  This building eventually became a fine part of the Gastown restoration project, but at the time it was pretty empty above the bottom three floors.  

For around $75 a month, I was able to rent a great space on the top floor and my husband came down and built a wall so that I could lock my door.  The view out the window was the Vancouver waterfront and the North Shore mountains.  

Because I was paying the grand sum of $75 a month, I hurried there at every opportunity that I had.  I painted the view out the window, I painted from sketches and watercolours I made around the city, and I set up still lives to paint from.  I painted and painted and painted.

When you are painting that much, eventually you build up a body of work that you would like to exhibit. In 1979 I approached The Studio Shop in West Vancouver and they gave me my first solo exhibition.  Recently I counted up and I have had 55 solo exhibitions since then and participated in over 65 group shows.  

I have had some nice studios over the years, but I think that was my favourite.   

On the Question of Changing Your Style

 

                        Photo from 'A Life of Picasso The Minotaur Years, 1933-1943' by John Richardson

I was so surprised to see that these portraits of a woman's head (I forget which one it was, maybe Dora Maar) were both painted in 1939.  Look how different they are!  One is a somewhat realistic depiction of a woman with a cute green hat.  We would know who it is if it were a friend.  The other one however is a strange contortion of a head and body, sort of surrealist, and only the people on the inside know who it is intended to be.

Many times I am chastising myself because I keep changing my 'style', if you can call it that.  I go back and forth from a more realistic depiction of a landscape to a minimalist abstraction with only a few clues as to what it is.  For instance, here is a lake that I painted inn 1999:

Chaperon's Lake, 38x54", 1999.

You can see it is sort of an impressionist lake scene with shrubs and bushes in the foreground, then the water of the lake and the view across it.  However, here is another lake that I painted in 1988:

Lake Shapes, 40x50", 1988.

It is so different. There was time to change because they were painted 10 years apart.  But Chaperon's Lake is more similar to the work I did in the 80's when I was first starting out; and Lake Shapes is hinting at what I went on to paint in the early 2000's.  I guess I sometimes I have to remind myself that I can still do something, to reassure myself that I am still me.  And it is actually really boring if you are just repeating yourself.  When you are in your studio regularly you have lots of ideas and you want to try them all.  Many famous artists do it with no qualms at all.  Look at Gerard Richter - his two different styles are extremely apart from each other, all abstract to photographic reality.  

Painting in a Pandemic

 Lately people have been asking if I am still painting.  The world has been in turmoil for a while now, however most of us artists just carry on as usual.  We go to our studios and pick up a paintbrush or whatever is our favourite tool. 

After I sent my paintings to Newzones Gallery in Calgary for my landscape show in March (yes, that March and no I wasn’t able to attend the opening), I returned to a series that I had started in 2019.  The subject is something new for me, or new/old.  Years ago I painted flowers, flowers by themselves or flowers in still lifes.  I had some success with those paintings and was very happy with them.  Eventually though I decided that I couldn’t compete with nature, nature had more sophisticated tools than I had, and I turned aside from that challenge.

 

It seems that this past decade of exploring colour – and simplifying detail to do so – has somehow led me full circle, however. Looking for a new starting point I started tentatively thinking of flowers again. In the same way that I had simplified the landscape, I saw how the flowers could be a beginning. This wouldn’t be an attempt at verisimilitude; this series isn’t really ‘of’ flowers.  The flowers with their radiance and intensity initiate the act of putting paint on canvas but they don’t control the result. The result has more to do with the curious act of ‘painting’, playing with hue, surface texture and markmaking.

You can see Neil Wedman's essay in my previous post.  He explains it much better than I can do.

Influences

Recently someone asked me who were the artists I looked back on; which were the ones who had influenced me.  There are so many that I can't even begin to say this one or that one was crucial to the course I took in my work.  Here are a few who are presently tacked to my studio wall:

Agnes Martin; Georges Braque; Paul Cezanne; and Paul Flandrin. You can what they have taught me, whether it be in the trees I have painted, the road trips, the lakes, or anything else.

Cheap Brushes

These are the cheap brushes that I use for mixing my colours.  I put some paint into a container and use a plastic spoon or a little whisk to get started, but in the end I grab a brush like this because it does the job so well.  Recently I realized I could actually apply the paint to the canvas with them also.  However, there is no pleasure in the application; it is quite scratchy and rough.  A good brush with good bristles slides over the canvas in a luscious way.    

Sir Anthony Caro passes away

Tony Caro will be missed by many artists, especially the Canadian ones who met him at workshops here in Saskatchewan at Emma Lake or in upstate New York at Triangle.  He was a great role model, with his engaged approach to making sculpture and his enthusiasm for new work.  When we went to London, if we phoned him we would be sure to get an invitation to his studio to look at what was going on there.  Afterward, over an hospitable glass of wine, he would enquire after our own progress and  make us believe that everything was possible.

Here is a photo of him at Triangle Workshop:

That is Darby Bannard closely examining a sculpture, while Tony keeps his council directly behind; in 1983 he already has his white hair and beard.  Clement Greenberg is the one in the hat, but I can't remember the names of the others.  That is me on the left, thinking I was very cool I guess.  The photo is courtesy of Cora Kelley Ward, who documented much of that workshop.

Sketchbooks

Here is an example of how I work in my sketch books, recording things around me and taking them back to the studio:

This was part of an installation called The Primary Mark at Diane Farris Gallery as part of the Vancouver Drawing Festival in 2010.

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.