under the sea

lunenburg lobsters

Lunenburg Lobsters, acrylic on canvas, 12"x12"

This is my first illustration friday contribution, inspired from a 'lobster crossing' sign Stewdawg and I found on our honeymoon in Nova Scotia. We were walking along the boardwalk in Lunenburg, loving the water, the boats gently rocking against the docks, the heritage buildings painted hues of blue, red, yellow, purple, etc. This caution 'lobster crossing' sign gave us a laugh and reminded us to take deep breathe and enjoy how much more relaxed the lifestyle is out there. These lobsters are as colourful as the characters on land out there!

No comment about what we ate for dinner in the nearby restaurant that night!

deal or no deal

So here's the scoop with getting my painting cleaned (see last post for the tale). The gallery curator truly feels horrible about what has happened, and brought the painting to a conservator to assess. After examining it and making some recommendations, she said that when the artist is alive and because there is retouching involved, she feels it's always better for the artist to do the work.

Here's what the conservator recommends: Scrape off the excess paint, then rub some mineral spirits on the spot. This will also remove the acrylic paint, so when it's dry I'll have to repaint that area. She said it will probably not be perfect, but not bad. Given that the red splotch is on the background, a mix of cream and white I applied mostly with a palette knife, the repainting might not be so bad.

Essentially, it's not great news and not awful news. The Gallery would like to offer me some compensation for all this, and has asked me to think about what I think a fair amount would be. For them to go through their insurance and pay for the painting they would have to keep it, whereas I want it back.

My dilemma is that I don't know what amount to propose. Base it on a percentage of the painting's asking price? Assign a value to the materials and time to repair it? Consider whether this will affect me being able to sell the work after I fix it? The gallery is not a big one, and doesn't have gobs of money. I find putting a dollar value to art extremely hard to begin with, and frankly I think I'm pretty crappy at it, so this is tough. If anyone out there has a suggestion, please let me know!

a pleasure just being nominated?

So my fragile little inner artist ego took a beating recently and I just haven't had a chance to tell the story until now. Every March, I submit two paintings for a juried exhibition. The competition is stiff, there are usually 250-300 pieces submitted and about 30 get in (sometimes two from the same artist.) Every year, I pack up two of my babies, drop them off, pay my $20, and wait. It goes like this: If you get a phone call from the gallery before 8pm two days later, you're in! I typically spend that fateful day envisioning jurors pointing and laughing maliciously at my work. But, if your phone doesn't ring, you suck up your shame and go back the next day to pick up your rejected art.

My phone did not ring.

For the fifth year in a row, I returned to get my work. I have come quite close to getting in at least one year, apparently... I swear, I'm like the Susan Lucci of this exhibition. Now this year, there was a twist. Here are the two pieces I submitted:





The top one, you'll notice, has a lot of red in it. The bottom one, a lot of white/cream tones. Pay attention to this for later. As soon as I walked in, the curator (also a friend) looked panic stricken and proceeded to tell me that something happened to one of my paintings. Apparently someone submitted an oil painting, and did not inform anyone that it was still wet. Yes, WET paint. At some point this painting brushed up against mine, and... you see where this is going. As my eye darted over to my pieces, I saw that right in the middle of the WHITE background of ACRYLIC painting #2 was a big RED splotch of OIL paint. My painting, my rejected painting, had also been branded with a scarlet letter. Deep breathes.

The curator was horrified, and immediately promised to take it to a conservator to be professionally cleaned. No home remedies. I know it wasn't her fault, she's so nice, and this has never happened before. My first question was whether that person got into the show. They did NOT, which gave me some satisfaction.

So the painting is now being cleaned somehow. On the weekend Michna showed me a newspaper article covering the show, and the picture was from the jury selection process. You can see my work in the picture, so I still got 15 minutes of fame!

Anyhow, I'm not sure how I feel about these juried things. You never hear constructive criticism except that the accepted work all has a 'fresh, never seen before approach to the subject or medium'. Ok really, how subjective can you get? And what hasn't been done before?? I take some comfort that the jurors would have a very high standard this year, one of them was a renowned Canadian artist, curator and critic. At least he's seen my work, even if he didn't like it! There's just something about these shows that makes you feel like the kid who didn't get picked to be on the team in gym class. Sure it's rite of passage, character building and all that, but it sure makes you want to give your work a hug and then avoid the easel for a while.

Anyhow, to balance out my luck, yesterday I learned a juried outdoor art show is likely going to accept me for August (the jury is not quite the art elite of other shows, but hey that's ok!)

family album

I’ve been away from blogging for a while, because I’ve been dealing with with some things that I just haven’t been ready to write about yet. On March 19, at the ripe old age of 91, my grandmother passed away. My Nana was ill for a few years, and unhappy since my Papa passed away in 2002, and I know she has now been released from all of that. She was fortunate to be living in a beautiful senior’s residence with the most dedicated, supportive and empathetic caregivers who were wonderful to her. She was my last surviving grandparent, so while I want to celebrate her long life I’ve also been having a much harder time dealing with her passing than I anticipated.

I wasn’t able to put my finger on it until a few days ago, but I think I can finally articulate a strange feeling I’ve been carrying around. I feel like the bottom has fallen out of a big part of my life, and what’s left is uncertainty and a feeling of ‘what now?’ I can’t help but remember how my nana never really recovered from losing her husband, something I find so scary. And, unlike my father’s parents who died younger, I had a relationship with my maternal grandparents as an adult. However, she had a very difficult last year and other issues were really complicating the situation, so I also can’t help but feel relieved at the same time (which I felt guilty about, at first,) It’s a chapter ending in my life, so what I’m trying to do now is focus on the present instead of trying to look ahead too far.

My mom spent the better part of the last 7 years caring for both her parents, so while this is very hard for her, maybe now she can start to move forward. My family is small and I’m an only child. I’ve lost a lot of relatives not through death but through the fact that my father and I haven’t spoken in almost 8 years. I won’t get into all the details here, but my Nana’s passing has also stirred up emotions and unresolved ‘stuff’ related to that, which I didn’t anticipate.

I couldn’t get through everything without Stewdawg, who has been incredibly supportive in taking care of me. I’ve been glued to him as much as possible! I know he misses my grandparents too. His favourite story about my Nana is from Xmas one year, when we had finished dessert and just pulled out some photo albums of my cousins’ recent trip to Korea. My Nana had disappeared for a few minutes, and at that moment she walked into the room wearing her winter coat and scarf, all bundled up and holding her purse, and announced that she was ready to go home!

One thing I will always remember is that my Nana rarely just said ‘bye’ after each visit, instead she always told us to ‘keep the faith.’ On one particularly bad day around Xmas this year, I held her hand and told her she needed to ‘keep the faith’ too. It calmed her down for a few minutes.

I’m grateful to all of my Nana’s caregivers, they’re such good people and they make me feel closer to her. I think her spirit is actually feeling closer to me right now than in the last little while she was physically ‘here’, an emotion my good friend K was spot on about.

The funeral service was very nice, with a lot of love and support from everyone. I brought this painting called "family album" to the service, and it was on an easel at the door. I painted it last year from a photograph of my aunt and uncle’s wedding in Montreal, a photo that captures my grandparents on a happy day, laughing with family and friends in the sun outside the church. This is how I want to remember her.