Running, biking, mapping, journeys

For a long time I’ve had a love affair with maps. This must stem from my childhood experiences sailing the BC coast and learning to read nautical charts. The charts have found their way into my ocean scape paintings in the form of collage and photocopy transfers. Though this early exposure to charts certainly accounts for a familiarity and understanding of maps and their symbols I have yet to pinpoint my fascination. I find them both interesting to study and aesthetically pleasing. I love the muted colours of sailing charts, the numbers indicating the ocean depth, the repetition of line and the arrows that indicate current.

This collage [shown left] was created in a visual journal that I kept during my Bachelor of Education program at UBC in 2008. The first page in a new sketchbook is always exciting and daunting. This image representing the start of my journey is what grew on that first sketchbook page.

It seems natural that I have been thinking again of mapping and journeys since I moved from Vancouver to Comox Valley a year ago. Maps are essential to newcomers. I have found myself cruising Google maps for driving directions and to locate services. Since I took up running last January, I have been using Google earth post-run to measure my distances through the neighbourhood and track my progress. I’ve used a variety of locally produced maps to find running and mountain biking trails. The valley has a phenomenal number of well kept mixed use trails.

One of my favourite running areas - BC Hydro Puntledge River

So once again elements of mapping are entering into my artwork. I’ve continued the sketchbook project I started earlier this month though I haven’t been working daily as I had aimed to. I need to jumpstart my artwork practice again and keep myself engaged in creative activities through the long dark winter. This sketchbook is not one of those beautiful visual journals where every page turned reveals a completely new stand alone art piece. This book exists to quickly jot down ideas without feeling any pressure to necessarily make something pretty or fully realized. Perhaps it is baby steps back to painting as I search for a new core subject. In the sketches below you will see elements from charts. I also recognized after I’d done the sketches that the little barred paths are the wooden berms I find myself running across (not often riding as I’m a chicken on my bike) on the local trails. With the first page I was lost as to what to create – blank page syndrome. I thought of one of my Capilano College painting instructors, Marcus Bowcott, who always said that if you needed to pull a painting together, make sure to use a grid. If you look at the circles, which are the first elements that I painted, you’ll notice that they are loosely painted on a grid.

 

Comox Valley Art Gallery Gift Shop

I’m very excited to announce that I now have a number of small landscape and shell paintings for sale at the Comox Valley Art Gallery Gift Shop in Courtenay, BC. I fell in love with this beautiful gallery and shop the first time I visited in 2005. Now that I call the Comox Valley home, I’m delighted to be exhibiting my work in the community. The gallery is in downtown Courtenay and well worth a visit!

Sunshine-y Studio

Finally, a nice bright sunshine-y day in my studio! Prior to today it has been so dark and dismal that I hadn’t been painting even though I’ve set up my easel near the beautiful bay window. I have had this huge easel since college but I haven’t had room to set it up in the last few years. It is lovely to have it out again. I broke my paint pots in the move to the island, so my paints are now scattered across the desk instead of grouped by colour. I need to remedy this disorganization before painting again.

Today I am working on an abstract painting that is inspired by a watercolour that I painted earlier this year. I’m working on using thicker paint and more deliberate shapes in combination with blending. You can see that I sometimes keep track of colours on a sticknote. With this painting I was thinking of beaches, dunes and estuaries….a hybrid of Comox harbour and the Oregon Coast. There are aspects of the painting that I’m pleased with, such as the colours, however I will have to revisit another day. When trying new techniques it is best to give the painting a little breathing room.

Since I wasn’t ready to pack up my paints for the day, I continued with another little landscape. I thought it was going to be a beach but it seems the sunshine inspired golden fields instead.

Dancing Dragon Seaweed

I’m feeling smug that I made the decision to do some photography this morning as it is now snowing like crazy! Today I took advantage of a short window of time between storm clouds to visit Kye Bay on the Comox Peninsula. This past weekend I explored the beach with my husband and my friends from Nanaimo. We found it to be fantastic beach for beach combing and I wanted to return with my camera. This morning I found the rock and sand beach to be strewn with driftwood and seaweed. I used my Nikon D300 and a 105mm lens plus my handy Joby Gorillapod to capture the beautiful, vibrant colours of this seaweed. I have recently started painting again and I think that this photo represents my love affair with abstraction. It also seems like a great colour scheme for Valentine’s and Chinese New Year.

Morning Shoot at Mack Laing Park

This morning the clouds finally pulled back to reveal the much-missed sunshine. Though direct sunshine at 11am is not typically my preferred time to go shooting, I’ll certainly take the sun over sideways rain! Today’s photography stroll took me through Mack Laing Park which is at the end of my street.

Comox Harbour

Recently I’ve been lucky enough to spend a good deal of time outdoors exploring the landscape of my new home, the Comox Valley. Ideas for a new painting series are brewing but I have yet to put brush to canvas. While I let those ideas percolate I have started doing photography again. The last time I invested time in a photography project was almost two years ago when I created a slideshow/movie on mindfulness.

When the sun peaked out one afternoon this week I grabbed my camera and walked down to a beach in Comox Harbour. Like many projects I start I dive in with a general idea knowing a theme will emerge. On this day I was thinking about texture, movement and balance. With this shot in particular I was remember last August; I accompanied my husband on his week long photography workshop with Sam Abell at the Pacific Northwest Art School on Whidbey Island, WA. Richard’s project focused on the island’s edges where the ocean met the land and a sense of impermanence. Though I did not attend the workshop, I spent a good deal of the week shooting with Richard and discussing ideas from the workshop. Abell encourages photographers to think carefully about the spaces between the elements of the composition and the tension created. This is something I am familiar with in paintings too, and was what I was thinking of as I knelt in the grass and snow.

My Watercolour Window

This house that we are renting has a beautiful bay window in the bedroom that we use as an office/studio. I’ve set up a small table facing this window and the yard; I sit and watch the mountains, clouds, leaves, snow and birds.

Though watercolour painting is not something I was trained in, I do enjoy its quick and non-messy accessibility. I always keep watercolour cards and a block pad of paper in my studio drawers. This painting below is one that I  did for a friend’s birthday. Somebody at the party asked if it was Tree Island with Mt. Washington in the background. Then someone else noted that those two places could only fit in a frame if the artist was using a mirror….and possibly painting from a kayak or boat? So there I was; busted for inventing landscapes. I may take inspiration from a particular place or a skyline, but most often I invent and rearrange landscapes.

Mountains and Beaches

Inspired by walks in my new home town, Comox. The clouds merge with the mountains and the islands slip into the ever-changing ocean.

Birding for inspiration

As I slowly try to get back into the art-making saddle, I’m finding that I need to get outside for some inspiration. Today we went for a walk in the Cape Lazo Wildlife area where we met dozens of chickadees, nuthatches, LBBs (unidentified Little Brown Birds) and one frisky squirrel.