Happy Holidays

 It's hard to believe that another year has passed and my blog is two years old.  My art practice has been influenced by this experience and I look forward to continuing to connect in the new year .  Have a fantastic holiday with friends and family.  I'll begin posting in the new year hopefully with new work to show.

Branching out

Even as a child I was fascinated with tree branches.  Apart from being ready climbing frames, they gave me my first glimpses of various perspectives depending on which angle I was viewing from - looking up, looking down or just being level with the branch.  Even today I can't pass up a close inspection of trees or branches when  they are interpreted by different artists.

Jessica Hiemstra-van der Horst is a Canadian artist and writer  who is currently living in Melbourne, Australia.  I found her work by accident as you often do while searching some other topic on the internet.  I noticed she also showed at Cube Gallery in Ottawa where my work was in a show in the fall of 2009.  A coincidence !  I love the sparseness of her work, her breaking down the dimensionality of  branches into line and shadow.  It is the patterning of branches that appeals to me most as you can see in my Reading a Garden series on the Leyton Gallery website.

source 

Branches on Wall (2008) oil and marker on canvas 108 x 96 cm.

 

Sunlit Branches (2008) acrylic on canvas 40 x 32 in.

Sumac 3 (2008) acrylic, sumac, charcoal and oil pastel on plywood, 24 x 48 in.


Underbrush (2008) acrylic, raspberry & ink on canvas 18 x 60.5 in.

Twigs and branches

 Nature is often brought indoors at Christmas time.  I think natural materials make the Christmas season warmer and more homey not to mention thrifty.   What can be done with simple materials is limited only by ones imagination. I always have some aspect of my garden indoors or on my front step for the Christmas season.  This year's creations are below.

 I've been nursing these hydrangea bunches for weeks.  The poppy pods are always there and  keep getting new friends added. I love them with the dark outside as a backdrop.

 Outside on my front step - an arragangement of broom, pine, cotoneaster and goatsbeard stalks.

 On the other sideof my entrance is an arrangement of  the same materials with a few twig stars spray painted gold. I'm a little concerned what will happen to them when we have a great gust of wind. Falling stars?

In the living room is a stark and twisty arrangement of branches from my daughter's garden with the addition of two clusters of fake berries for a splash of colour.  I'm not sure where the third bunch have disappeared.
 
I'm not only thinking about branches and twigs for decorations.  I'm still toying with different ideas for my new masterpiece I want to hang over my mantle.  Here are my inspiration shots:

 This is what I see when I look through  my family room window.  Yep, I live in a subdivision.  The big maple outside the window is a great privacy screen in the summer and fall, but in winter it is stark and we are on display. While having tea the other morning I noticed the great lines of the tree in the TV screen which is opposite the window. 

What I loved about this shot was the minimal lines reflected.  All the visual clutter outside was eliminated.  This is how I wish I painted - paired down and minimal.  As you can see I'm still at the inspiration stage.

It's that time of year

Everybody I know is hurrying and scurrying about to accomplish this and that.  I'm one of them. Not much is being accomplished in the studio over the last few weeks.  I walk through it on the way to my husband's workshop where things are happening. We are in the middle of renovating our family room. Yes, we choose odd times to be productive .  Now that the room is almost finished (waiting for Don to make a new table) I've been thinking about creating a new piece of art for the room.  This morning while I had my coffee I had an inkling of what the work will be.  My inspiration is a series of bare branches on the tree outside the window which will hopefully lead to an abstracted image.

 This will be the second time I used the view outside a window to inspire a work that hangs inside. This is my other one that hangs in my summer house.  It is the bay outside my window there painted from memory.It's one of my few landscaped and even fewer ones that show a vista rather than a close up examination. I've captured the feeling of serenity that Duntara gives me.

It's about texture

Untitled, 6 x 6 in. encaustic, paper, pigment stick

I' m beginning to get a glimmer of what interests me most about using encaustic as a medium. It is absolutely wonderful for creating texture; being totally tactile this is an important characteristic for me. If you look back through my posts over the last several weeks you will get a sense of the interesting effects that can be created by utilizing different papers or fabrics as a base for texture.

By experimentation and not being tied down to the production of a final product, each of these sample boards have extended my understanding of the encaustic medium and how it relates to paper. I am thankful to my friend and fellow encaustic explorer Carol for giving me the paper I used in the work above. So it's all about process right now, but where will it lead me in terms of content? What do I want to say that is important? That's emerging to...

To take the pressure of me let's look at another artist.

There are always artists with similar interests and aesthetics but each one communicates "an expression in a voice most have not heard" says Robin Luciano Beaty. Her small abstracts speak to me of landscape- not the landscape of specific reproductions of space- but of the glimpses, sudden insights and impressions one gleans by observing the movement of nature.

Above and Beyond Series at Three Graces Gallery

Remains to be seen

New work

Untitled (6 x 6 in.) encaustic, paper, pigment stick

Continuing with my explorations in encaustic with red....

One of the fantastic qualities of encaustic is its softness which enables you to incise lines using various tools (stylus, pottery or sculpture tools, nails, skewers etc).

Once made, the lines can be highlighted by using a different colour of encaustic paint or by rubbing oil/pigment stick or oil pastel into the grooves . Residue left on the surface of he work can be cleaned by continuous rubbing with a soft cloth. An added advantage of using pastel or oil stick is that it also catches up in any imperfections in the surface and gives a more textured look. This is one of the ways you can move colour around subtly in a composition.

We Are Neighbours (2009) 9 x 10 in. encaustic, paper, pigment stick

You can also brush powdered graphite etc, into the groves, wipe off remaining powder on the surface with vegetable oil ,and seal with a thin layer of clear encaustic medium.

Another blog

Design is an important part of my life.

In my professional life I'm currently straddling the line between visual art and interior design. Luckily both support each other and both are enjoyable professions. Several times on this blog I've written posts that are more design oriented, but I've decided to keep both parts of my life separate by starting a new blog called Designing Home. I've begun with a re-post from this year. The blog is still bare bones but you'll get the idea . Take a look and visit again.