Up coming sale

Well just a few days to get stuff ready for the ReginArt sale at the Delta on April 30, May 1.  Each of the 8 participants are allowed to show ten works of art and there are some bueatiful pieces to be set up.  Move in will begin Mon. evening and the show opens at 11 am untill 9 pm so drop in early to see the best of the best in ReginArt.

Now to some new pieces or rather a new piece, I have been a little slow in my production over the last few weeks.  Had to sit the grand kids for a week and then recover you know.  At an rate, this is a 12x16 in. painting of a rapids on the Grass River between Wekusko Lake and Reed Lake in Northern Manitoba.  It is mounted in a floater frame, which means on close inspection you can see some of the canvas sides an so the painting wraps around the edges abit.  It is titled 'High Water".

Now that the warm weather has finally arrived I hope none of our local streams look like this.

If you get a chance be sure and drop in to the Delta, April 30 or May 1 and see some of my work up close and personal.

There are times that it is neat to look at different stages of a painting as it developes.  As is my usual I don't quite achieve what I want because I get to involved in the doing.  So here  I am doing a painting with some goldleaf background. The first shows the paintingwith the background colour and the goldleaf applied to about half of the canvas.

Then the subsequent layers of colour trying to get the sunset light lighting the weeds in a bright burning look to the edges of the weed and background.  finally the foreground of grass, etc.  There is also a spiderweb that exists on the right side of the canvas behind the white flowers.  You do not see this until the angle of light hits the fine gold etched lines

 

                                         The  next pic is of storm clouds over the prairie.  Sort of two different cloud fronts at sunrise.

 

 

 

 

 

New work

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These are the latest additions to my painting collection. Feel free to comment on the first two especially.  This is a diptick of yellow birch and the two pics show the same two canvases but in a different order, not sure which way I like the best.  I think I am calling it Yellow Birch Road, no it is not from Kansas.  The next is a pair of ravens, my favorite bird.  The background is really faded to make the birds feel like they are out in an open meadow, perhaps too much me thinks.  The last last is  a jackpine that grew out of what seems like solid rock.  The picture that I adapted this from shows the tree is actually alive and really distorted like my interpretation.  I didn't think the needles added much and just diappeared into the background.  After critique by my Fri drop in group and my wife and my son even added a valid point, I did some minor allterations not shown here.

That is about all I have to add but remember to put April 30, May 1 on your Calendar and come to  ReginArts first show at the Delta Hotel , Verdi Room between 11 and 8pm.  We have 8 wonderfull artists showing and selling  6 different types of art.  Paintings, stone sculpture, wood turnings, artistic furniture, fused glass hangings, jewellery,metal sculpture etc..  We have a silent auction going on with all proceeds going to Regina Transition House.  The artists involved are donating the art for that part of the show.
So Drop In, its free and you will definately see something you will like and we will try hard to make sure you take it home.  Who knows we may even deliver.
Till next blog, have fun.

A new look?

In these new works I am trying to incorporate the ideas that Andre has tried to teach me during our time together in Costa Rica.  I think the waterfall comes close to impressionism and parts of the cabin do. I do not often do stuctures like the cabin but that was one thing Andre was getting me to do.  It was also from a picture of a cabin at Herb Lake Landing which I had actually been in when I worked in Snow Lake, Manitoba.  Herb Lake Landing was an almost ghost town then with only a couple of commercial fishermen and trappers using the remaining buildings on a seasonal basis.  Now if I can find some reasonably priced frames I may show these at the ReginArt show April 30, May 1 at the Delta Hotel.  It is always nice to get public reaction to your work.  You are all wecome to join the seven Regina artists in this our first of what we hope will be an annual event.

Well it has been a while since my last venture into the blog o sphere and now Christmas is done and our trip to Costa Rica is over so it is time to return to reality.  We had a great trip and I did some art study with Andre van Melle a painter from Montreal.  He tried to show me how to work in a looser impressionistic mode.  I'm not sur he succeeded but he certainly taught me some tricks as to how to look at design and composition plus the use of colour.  I'll be buying a few new tubes of paint for sure. We have been home a week now and all I seem to  have accomplished are some rather large pile of snow.  Perhaps a snow sculpture is in order. 
My next project is to help organize our art show for April 30 and May 1 at the Delta Hotel here in Regina.  This is a project being put together by seven Regina area professional artists.  We are calling it ReginA
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We could have called ourselves the Regina group of seven but that might be a bit presumptious so just ReginArt. Sorry no visuals this time but will show what I did in CR and keep you updated on the show.

Well these are the latest works.  The poplar painting is titled "A Forest of Trees" and is composed of two 20x40 canvases covered in goldleaf.  Artists refer to this as a diptick,  I call it two paintings, but what do I know.  I have learned that doing a diptick composition is quite a bit more difficult than a single in that you have to have each stand up as a separate composition and a good composition together.  Hopefully I have achieved that and the painting invites you to take an imaginary walk into this sunlit forest.

 

 

The painting of the bracket fungi on a downed birch log is a pallet knife and brushwork painting.   I like trying to use the knife to create texture and rough blend the colours together.  This gives a more natural look to mixed colour atleast in my mind it does.  I was trying to contrast the bark of an old dying tree to the bark found on the young birch in the midground.  I titled the painting "Renewal"

 

Well that's it for this blog and I'll probably only have one more before we head out for a winter holiday.  Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

December 8, 2012

I have been remiss in my postings.  Part of it has to do with the Wintergreen sale, which went fairly well, and me just being both busy and lazy after it.  The holiday season seems to get out of hand some times, it's a good thing my wonderful wife keeps me on track.  Art wise I have been back at the painting and trying some new varigated metal leaf along with some pallet knife work .  The pallet work has brought me a small commission piece so I must be doing something right.  I'm not sure folks know how to react to the paintings on gold, copper and now varigated leaf.  Some look sort of puzzled when they see the light changing the whole view of the painting.  At any rate here are some more examples of what I have been up to.