Tuesday, 29 April 2014

A property nearby has been donated to our city to be turned into a park. A big Thank you to the elderly gentleman who has given his community this gift. The land is well over an acre. The original house has been torn down and what remains flowing out from it's footprint  is an overgrown, gone wild, utterly enchanting, garden.   In one corner a massive, at least fourteen foot wide, camelia bush is in full bloom right now.  It's blooms are dropping into the snarl of overgrown rhododendrons that crowd close, into ferns that are reaching high into it's legs and past the intruding wiry barbed strands of blackberry shoots.  The next few paintings will focus on the plants found in this stunning and peaceful spot.

Friday, 11 April 2014

One of the collections accruing in my home are pebbles, shells and miscellaneous wood bits.  Years ago they were the subject of a lengthy series of paintings.The work started out merely by observing and recording them, but then  I became fascinated by the idea that these little things were pieces of massive mountains now lying underfoot at the beach. The more I worked with them, the more I noticed how they had been worn into unique characters, their residual shape revealing the texture and strengths of their substance.  From there I began to muse about the relativity of the experience of time, which can range from the immeasurabilities of deep space, to the vast expanses of geological time, through organic time, to human time. Here is a sample of the first observational works completed in drybrush watercolour (approximately 2001.)


 Here is a link to my first attempt at pebbles and shell painting in oil on canvas...


Monday, 7 April 2014

A few years ago a sentence in the morning paper caught my eye, so it was hastily ripped out and stuck in a pocket.  That night, while getting ready to go to bed, I took it out and stuck it in small sprig of babies breath that was in a vase on the vanity.  The newsprint has long since gone yellow, and the babies breath shriveled, died and dried, but the quote by Plutarch, born in Greece long ago in 46 AD? has not lost it's potency.   "The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled." 
I look around my home and see all the things I have collected in anticipation of finding sparks. Rows of books to ignite my mind, collections of stones and feathers to excite my eyes, groupings of odd items acquired on trips and visits to stir slow embers of memory.  I remember the finding of each, but what about their affect?

 Time and experience have washed away at both my anticipation and intention, the mind smoothed flat with habit and assumption. It makes me think about the newsprint. Have you ever tried to light a flat piece of paper?  It will not burn.  It needs to be crumpled together just tightly enough to have fiber and air in perfect balance to interact.
I wonder if all my objects still hold the potential to kindle fires of the mind, ideas and questions? Or is it all just stuff that fills in space between these four walls. How does a fire start if it does not have enough air?