Some of Lorna's Picks

Recently I invited myself over to a friend's apartment because she told me she had hung one of my paintings and was very pleased with the way it looked.  I was surprised to see how many pieces she has collected from me over the years.  There were quite a few still lives, two of them from the 'Studio Picnics' series, such as this one:

The painting she was so excited about was her most recent purchase from my 'Dock' series, and I had to admit it looked very happy where she has hung it:

I started the Dock series in 2009, whereas the Studio Picnics are from the late 1980's.  Lorna has been a loyal fan.

  

Winter Group Exhibition

Two of my paintings are hanging in a group exhibition at Art Placement in Saskatoon this month.  They are part of a series of small canvases I embarked upon when I started to use my new studio last year.  Each of them is 16 x 20 inches, and painted in oil paint.  Using a smaller scale and a different medium were a way to challenge myself and it did make me miserable for a while.  In the end the struggle always makes them more interesting.

The imagery came from my road trip paintings that I have been working up in strong colour,  on a large scale and with a simplified motif.

Artist in Williamsburg

I just got back from a visit to New York.  As well as haunting the museums and galleries, I had the treat of an invitation to visit Matthew Blackwell in his studio in Brooklyn.  Our friends Michael Matthews and Jane Crow were going to visit him and asked us to come along.

At the top of five steep sets of stairs and through a maze of twisting hallways, we found him busy making a pot of coffee for us.  The living quarters are what you might call cozy, or colourful, or claustrophobic but there is a great view out the window and he seems to have no fear of fire traps.

Here are a few of his paintings:

After looking at his canvases, you might wonder what kind of a crazy person created them.  However  he is a very charming, relaxed and friendly character.  He shows at Edward Thorp Gallery in manhattan.

Paintings Placed at U.B.C. Pharmaceutical Building

Three of my paintings have been placed in the  Pharmaceutical Sciences building at the University of British Columbia.  The very clean and uncluttered design of the interior of this new building is a good fit for the paintings.

The paintings seemed large in my studio, but the grandness of the scale of these spaces rather dwarfs them.  I am really happy to have them in such a compatible setting.

Which is Larger?

It is always interesting how what you paint on a canvas can make it look bigger or smaller.  I haven't quite figured it out, but sometimes a painting with lots of detail can look larger than it really is; and vice versa, a large painting with little detail looks smaller, especially in reproduction.

I was recently putting an undercoating on a canvas, and left it sitting side by side with an unpainted  canvas of exactly the same size.  Here they are:

Do they look the same size, or does one look larger than the other?

Colour!

Paul Klee is an artist whose work has always captivated me.  Recently reading a book on him, "Paul Klee Painting Music"by Hajo Duchting, I noticed this quote about colour:

"Colour was for Klee the 'imponderable' and thus individual element in the picture.  .....    As Klee once commented:  'Colour has always had something secretive about it that is difficult to grasp.  This mysterious quality penetrates the mind.  The colours are the most irrational elements in painting.  They possess something suggestive, a suggestive power."

Paul Klee, 'Fire in the Evening", l929, oil on cardboard.

Online Catalogue/Essay About The Retrospective "Painting This Place"

                                           1983         "Nocturne"      30x36"            acrylic



The Evergreen Centre has produced an online catalogue for my recent exhibition, with an essay by Gregory Elgstrand.  It is viewable at this link:  PAINTING THIS PLACE .  Please click on  Exhibition Catalogue.