memory drawings

 Memory drawings x 3, April 30

I am thoughtful and thoughtless as I really remember few key bits and blank out on the rest of the information. 

Like the jacket tied around his waist. I knew it curved but only when I looked at it a 3rd time I saw that lovely shape dropping below the rest.

I wonder if I will begin to see more as time go along or if my brain only has capacity to retain so many bits of information at a time. 

WAG Store consignment of my artwork

 Yesterday I had an appointment to see Sherry Van Went at the Winnipeg art gallery shop. I had previously contacted her about selling working the gallery and we finally met. With masks on and staying 6 feet apart, we chatted about by PaperWorks. 

She was extremely thoughtful put on her white gloves and took her time thoughtfully looking through my art to choose ones she thought would work or the store. 

For me, it was interesting to see everything spread out, the full series. My paperwork for often just contained within the sketchbooks. 

I have not been represented by a store before. Oh Well ...except for the store at the Mendel Gallery in Saskatoon. I don't think the Mendle exists anymore. Back then I had a business with my partner called Clank. We sold welded metal candleholders and bookends. 

I was very tired afterward because it was emotional to put my stuff out there. Sherry chose ones but I will wait and see if the public chooses to buy some. A real-world test to see if my work has salability. I would love to have my work in people's homes and places of work. Hey yes! My work is saleable because people keep direct messaging me on Instagram to buy it even though I have been too lax to post it in my store. Thank you to all those people who are collecting my work out there I greatly appreciate it!

rework it #1

My Dragon's Hoard

I have hundreds of paintings in my house. I don't think everybody has this many paintings. Strangely I have a very few on my walls they're all in plastic boxes in the basement. I analyze paintings so seeing them when I am trying to rest is not restful. I am going to start reworking some of the ones that I want rework, older works. I am a different painter now. I used to use acrylic and now I am using oil paint. My skill set has grown as I have been teaching painting for years. Problem solving others paintings builds skills.

This is the first one that I have re-worked. Originally it started as an in class demonstration. I always loved it's strong boldness. It's graphic quality made by the simplification of shapes and the strong brown black against a bright yellow. But I could see lots of pencil outlines underneath the transparent yellow and it just never seemed quite finished even though I really liked it.

Here is my rework I just added tons more stuff:

I tucked 3 baby goslings under the wing.  

I patterned the wing.

I added more fluffs from the nest coming forward.

I added landscape with water.

One of the biggest changes my work and the last couple years is that I like to put distance in my painting to let the viewer have freedom and escape into it. I used to like flat surfaces that would block and be a wall but now I like this false distance, a meditation part of a painting. I have the river curve around the bend, I have the perspective of the further shore being paler and tree lines reducing the distance.

I hope this is a good idea. I hope I not wrecking all my old stuff but when I have so many paintings I really I think that some of them could be better. If not better just feel finished to me.

My Dragon's Hoard of my past paintings. Hey that's a good title for this!🐊

flower garden bouquet

Today I continued painting the robin, darkening the tummy, reworking the breast patterns, going over the branches making dark purple lines in the shadow and lavender and green yellow lines in the light and then speckling little spots of lichens and bark patterns.

I don't usually do this outlining stroke but I was teaching it the other night so I am trying to stretch myself. I was trying to build this confused high contrast area in the very bottom a weighted part of the painting and then lift it up with light airiness floating way out the top.

Then because it was so futzy to work on the robin and I just ordered 25 new eight-by-ten gesso boards, I splurged and started a new painting. I found a photo of a bouquet from someone's mother's flower garden on paintmyphoto.com. It is so full and sloppy and lots of roses. Midway through the phone rang and Delta art of Edmonton said that Ampersand hasn't fulfilled any of their orders since November seven months ago. They only had seven to sell me. I don't know what I'm going to paint on when I run out. I think I will switch to canvas paper wait and see what happens.

Happy Birthday painting

 

Yesterday was my daughter's 17th birthday! I woke up at 7 to bake her a white cake her favourite and one that I have made almost every birthday. Well there was a time when all she wanted was ice cream cake but now she's back to the white cake. It took 12 egg whites! 

In the evening I taught a Zoom class on how to paint Robins and simplify the patterning of the background. My Robin I made like it was in a birthday party with confetti like colours and patterning all around. I chose this Robin from paint my photo website. I loved it because the bird is open mouthed eating the berry.

 It's a work in progress I'm trying to concentrate on and finish it. I seem to be starting lots of work these days and slow down when finishing. There's such freedom when I start a new work and such fussiness when I end it.

When I came out of my class at 9:30 I saw this on the kitchen table, what a fun surprise! My two daughters had iced the birthday cake!

Land-Body 1

1

East Point Saturna Island BC

rainy and had to return another day to finish

30 min in the rain and 3 hr in the sun painting

July 7 and July 16, 2019

6" x 8" oil on panel 2019  Brenna George

 I am in the seam of the rock locked in place. I feel weighed down with open freedom way above me. The green oval rocks locked in place in the cliff radiate around me. The rock is scratchy sandstone. I use a bristle brush to make scratchy strokes. 

In front of me is an amazing view of the ocean. I find it hard to just pick just one point of view to paint. The deep ocean with seals swimming looks like a more appealing choice than staring at a sandstone cliff but I chose it and I stick with it - geology is lovely too.  A cliff swallow's nest is above where I paint. The second time I come back the babies are gone. A lot changes in 9 days.

 It is so fun and inspiring to have others to paint with and kind of them to jumpstart my project by painting alongside me.

 The first-day, Robin S. of Instagram feelsbyseals 

 and Jasper my nephew 

 When it rains it is so dangerous getting out. The sandstone becomes slippery and slopes right into the deep ocean with strong currents. Jasper my nephew is wearing runners with bad treads falls and scrapes his wrist.

 On the second day my son, Marshall paints with me. I set up the new easel and pallet that I bought especially for him, now our painting gear matches. He paints fast and thick. He is covered in blue paint when he is done. 

6" x 8" oil on panel Marshall George 2019

Couples - Belle and the Ghost

There is a playmobil ghost and a disney Belle figurine that have been sitting together on my mantle, casually put there by the kids but I kept thinking about them. This is the start of my idea for this series. I began to think of them as a couple, an unusual couple and this led to thoughts of other pairings.

I liked this idea because it seems like a natural flow from my last series where I made plants into romantic novel covers. I see these as being a snapshot or a novel cover into the imagined relationship of these people and animals.

Belle and The Ghost, 9" x 12" oil on canvas 2017

With this painting I work with the idea of solid and transparent and make a solid body and a ghost body. I like her long gloves that have her hand reaching to touch his heart. Her dress I imagined had a subtle plaid pattern in yellow and I love the fluid brushstrokes of those lines. I am thinking about life and death and loving being alive to the fullest because death is there beside you and you touch upon that idea but with gloved hands. Also there is just the fun thought of a women being in love with a ghost that she can see and talk with.