baa art

i've moved!

2006-12-29T17:07:00.000-05:00

Many things have changed since my last post, now a shamefully long time ago! I've started fresh with a brand new blog. You can now find me over here at Sugar Mama. Hope to see you there!

illustration friday - skyline

2006-07-09T11:10:00.000-04:00

This became my 'signature painting' for a long while after I finished it... I imagined a dreamy, sleepy winter village, with storefronts lit up and people all warm and cozy inside their houses, maybe drinking hot chocolate or reading a good book. This is what came out! I didn't offer it up for sale for a couple of years, but last summer I sold it at Art in the Park. I had mixed feelings about selling it, largely because of the couple who bought it. I genuinely liked the wife, and she really wanted the painting. But... her husband, to be frank, seemed like a bit of a tool. He also tried to barter with me in a not-so-friendly way. If she wasn't standing behind him looking hopeful, I would have snatched it back and said thanks, but no thanks. Anyway, I hope it's appreciated and happy now!

illustration friday - rain

2006-06-27T19:35:00.000-04:00

an appropriate theme in Toronto today...

on rainy days I like to:
* curl up under a blanket and watch a movie
* put on comfy track pants, a.k.a. fuzzy pants
* devour a good book
* devour good chocolate and big mug of tea
* and, I wish I could be like this little girl who likes to put on her rubber boots and stamp in puddles

hazy, lazy days of summer...

2006-06-14T21:24:00.000-04:00

Holy cow it's been a long time since my last post... how unblogger-like. All is well, though after the long weekend I spent two weeks sick. First, a bad cold, then strep throat - yuck. Since then we've had lots of fun weekend plans and other things going on, and I've let blogging - and being on our home computer after work in general - slide into a hazy warm weather oblivion!

There's much to catch up on, here and over at other blogs I've been neglecting, but not now... for now I need to focus my energies and time on the upcoming Art in the Park show. As of tomorrow I only have a month left and oodles of painting to do - and a trip to Vegas in between!

I've barely done any painting in the past few weeks, and I don't know why this is. I love to paint, I whine daily about not doing it enough. This may be the last summer of shows I do for a while. So why am I procrastinating instead of burning the midnight oil? Am I just too tired/busy? Am I afraid of being unhappy with new work? Who knows, but it's starting to make me nuts! I need a plan and some motivation. I swore I would paint tonight, and even if it's only for a half hour before bed, dammit I will!

Will try to post pics of new work soon.

p.s. Gill if you stop by, thanks so much for the Project Spectrum ~green~ postcard! Great job with Photoshop, and love the story that came with it!

hangin' out

2006-05-17T18:56:00.000-04:00

These are two little 10" x 10" canvases I'm working on for the Art in the Park show, I'm calling them 'hangin' out'. Unfortunately you can't see the detail very well in these pics. I'm doing a bunch of these with different things painted in the middle. Silly me thought I'd be able to whip them off, thereby avoiding pre-show panic attacks and late night painting sessions, but so far I've finished.... 3. Um... yeah. Weekends have been busy, and during the week I've just been bagged at night after freakishly long commutes lately. So, maybe next week!

The next few days have lots of goodness in store... Tomorrow night I'm going to see Depeche Mode - sexyDave!! We'll be screaming, silly, singing, sweaty girls and I can't wait. Then on Friday we're heading north to a cottage for the annual first Canadian long weekend of the summer... yay Queen Victoria's birthday! About 15 of us will be up there. Usually there's only our usual crew of 8, so it will be cozy but fun!

show and tell

2006-05-08T19:54:00.000-04:00

As much as I would like to start off the week with a cheery, inspired post, I've got to be honest... I'm just not feeling it! I'm bummed because it's been a beautiful, sunny, warm day and I've felt totally lousy. Exhausted, no appetite until dinner, achy, mildly lightheaded, just crap... All the things you're supposed to feel when the day is gray, cold and windy. Now get this -- I haven't had a full blown cold or flu in almost two years, which until now was totally unlike me. Every once and a while I feel like this and think 'oh man... here it comes, now I'm gonna pay for past 2 years!', and then, miraculously, it just goes away. I'm like the girl who cried flu. So, who knows what's up in my body this time. I've also got that 'I'm totally overwhelmed by a lot of things and want to hide in my bed for two weeks' feeling. Anyway, I felt a bit better when I got home so here I am...

Instead of more complaining, I'll do a little show and tell of my recent knitting project. This bag was crafted over several nerd Friday evenings when Stewdawg was working and I didn't feel like going out. I saw it over on Mag Knits, and used Irish worsted weight 100% wool. The pattern called for 40cm circulars, but the nice knitting ladies at my wool shop wisely recommended 60cm ones, saving me much cursing. This was my first foray into felting and it was really fun. Here's the pre-felting shot...

And here's the after. A VHS tape was the perfect size to stick at in the bottom while it dried, to help shape it. The brooch pinned to the front is a 1920s find from an antique mall ($3.50!) that just seemed meant for this purse.

illustration friday - fat

2006-05-05T18:10:00.000-04:00

This week's theme for illustration friday is 'fat'... I may be biased, but what is cuter than a fat, fluffy sheep? This is Emily, she is painted in acrylic on canvas, 11"x14" (click for a larger image.) When not posing for portraits, she enjoys leisurely walks with friends, reading, and eating chips.

under the sea

2006-04-28T19:44:00.000-04:00

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

2006-04-23T14:30:00.000-04:00

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?

2006-04-20T19:20:00.000-04:00

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

2006-04-01T14:36:00.000-05:00

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.

man, i feel like a woman

2006-03-16T19:08:00.000-05:00

So, today I experienced a major milestone as a woman. At the age of almost 31, I finally bought my first pair of high heels. I know, shocking isn't it? Wedge or loafer style shoes don't count, these are bonafide tan-coloured pointy-toed slingbacks with a 2.5 inch heel. They are beautiful. I needed some dressy shoes for spring/summer, and not only do I feel good in them, but damn they're comfortable!

My extreme wonder over my new heels makes me feel like such a dork. I think my resistance all these years was because I'm pretty tall to begin with, and didn't want to feel like some lumbering, towering monster teetering around. I was always one of the tallest kids in my class, which was a total nightmare when Stairway to Heaven came on at the school dances and I would wait in panic that for the next 8 minutes I'd be uncomfortably alone. Or, there was the kid who called me 'giraffe', and to this day when I see the giraffes at the zoo I feel a weird sort of bond with them.

But these make me feel feminine and more confidant, and they are officially my sexy shoes! Beaches says this will open up a whole new world for me, and that I'll start to have two piles - things to wear with heels, and things to wear with flats. A whole new genre of shopping I've been missing out on!

Now I just need to pick the right time to 'debut' the heels...

some baa art

2006-01-24T22:16:00.000-05:00

I wanted to get into children's book writing/illustrating (still do, someday) and worked on some portfolio pieces including this 'emily' sheep. The other one ended up with sheep in it by accident (really.)