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Happy Spooky Season all.

Did you know that I send out a newsletter a few times a year? I include sneak peaks of what I am working on, updates about sales and exhibitions and behind the scenes studio news. I find the newsletter is the perfect forum for me to explain more about the ideas behind my work in a way that social media just doesn’t allow. I also like the direct connection with my subscribers and love it when people respond to my newsletter with their thoughts and comments.

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Taking the plunge into a New Series

Exciting News! I am embarking on a new series. I will be off Instagram for a little while because I find it hard to post there and focus on my painting too. I wish I could do both but when I do, it feels like my brain is trying to be in two places at once and I can’t make it work. I will update my Journal and newsletter with progress as I go.

For this series I will be looking at the archetype of the Witch and I plan to write more about this in the future. I have been experimenting with this idea for a while now with some smaller pieces and I am ready to turn it into a body of work. With my detectives series I used several dreams that featured the same characters as inspiration. This time I am using one dream only and I intend it to evolve as a kind of visual dialogue between me and the archetype of the witch. I hope that by working this way it will give me more freedom to explore ideas and images as they come up through the process.

I just finished the little 18″ x 19″ shown on the easel and today I get started on a large 30″ x 30″. I feel like a deep sea diver sat on the edge of a boat about to take the plunge – wish me luck!

Watercolor and Mixed Media Demo with Opus art Supplies

When: Aug 26th from 11:00 am -12:30 PST

Join me for an online demo as I take you through step-by-step the techniques and tools to create a watercolour, mixed media work of art. Media demonstrated includes collage, ink pens, pencil and graphite paper. Experiment with these techniques to create your own colourful and creative compositions.

Register on the opus website.

See you there ?

Under the Covers

“UNDER THE COVERS.” Presented by The Chapel Gallery, St. Matthias Church, Victoria, BC, March 4 – 20, 2022.

Samantha Agar, Rose Cowles, Rhiannon Davies-Willson, Jessa Dupuis, Jennifer Rae Forsyth, Alesha Fowlie, Jessica Jean Kuyper and Amber Lomax, a group of established and emerging artists, have come together to celebrate the tunnel book.

I am so excited by the work I have seen these ladies creating for this show, they really rose to the challenge of creating in their own personal style and using the format of the tunnel book. There is something magical about peering into a little 3-d world and I can’t wait to see all the ‘books’ together in one place.

I hope you can join us for the opening reception on March 4th 6-8pm or stop by during the show which is open 12-4 fri and sat and 12-3 sun until March 20th.

Tunnel Vision

I have been preparing for a group show at the Chapel Gallery that opens on March 4^th. It is a celebration of the tunnel book.

What is a tunnel book?

Tunnel Books (also known as a Paper Peepshow or Theatre Book) have a long history and there are examples in the V & A museum dating back to the 19^th Century. I recommend checking out the selection on the V & A’s website. Tunnel books create an optical illusion of a world that recedes away before your eyes. They are in fact layers of images that are held in place by a concertina of paper on either side. Popular in the 19^th Century as souvenirs they then fell out of favour to be re-introduced in the 1950s as paper theatres for children. Artists have taken the idea of the books and put their own stamp on the original construction. I put together a selection of ‘books’ on Pinterest and they range from the traditional to full scale room sized installations.

I think the format is magical and together with Rose Cowles, we decided to get together a group of artists and challenge them to create their own take on the tunnel book. The work that I have seen this group producing is inspiring, whimsical and imaginative and I am grateful that they were brave enough to depart from their usual creative work and take on the challenge.

I have posted some images of my journey in constructing my books – it took some figuring out – especially choosing which paper would tolerate watercolour and not be too difficult to cut. I also had to work out how to display the books because the paper makes them quite fragile. This led let to me constructing boxes for them to give them a sturdy base to allow them to be shown on a plinth.

If you are interested in having a crack at making your own book I recommend checking out this guide from the V & A: Make Your Own Paper Peepshow.

They are a lot of fun and can be as simple or as complex as you want to go. I will be sharing more about the show in the next couple of weeks.

St. Ives and London

After 3 years, I finally got back to the UK to visit my family at Christmas. It was so good to see them all.

St. Ives

I managed to squeeze in a trip to St. Ives because it is one of my most favourite places on earth and to visit the Tate. I saw Petrit Halilaj’s exhibition: Very volcanic over this green feather. It was built around drawings Halilaj made aged 13 whilst living with his parents in a refugee camp in Albania, displaced by the Kosovo war. The drawings are magnified to a monumental scale, soaring birds, animals and symbols of faraway places are entangled with fragments of conflict. Walking through the drawings was like walking through a hallucinatory dream. The contrast between the tropical landscape elements and scenes of conflict made the scenes of conflict more horrifying to me, as I saw them as looking through the eyes of the child that witnessed them.

Petrit Halilaj – Very volcanic over this green feather

London

At the end of my visit I spent the day in London before flying back the next day. What to see when you only have a day? I decided on the London Grads Now. 21 at the Saatchi Gallery in the morning and then onto the Hokusai exhibition at the British Museum. I loved the grad show at Saatchi Gallery, it was really inspiring to see the range of work and innovative mediums being used. Also at the Saatchi Gallery was an exhibition by Ally Mcintyre ‘Dog Day Circus’. Dynamic and vivid paintings incorporating media such as glitter and hair spray.

Ally McIntyre – Clown

London Grads Now.21 – Camilla Bliss – Test Card

I was avoiding the underground to try and minimise my covid risk and walked across London from the Saatchi Gallery to The British Museum. Stopping for lunch at a coffee shop along the way. The show consisted of 103 drawings by Katsushika Hokusai which were made for an unpublished book The Great Picture Book of Everything. I kind of encyclopedia of its time. The drawings are exquisite – imaginative, creative, sometimes humorous and sometimes spiritual. Many of the drawings were not much bigger than a postcard and they conveyed so much information and energy in such a small space. I also got to see in person various prints of The Great Wave off Kanagawa which if I am honest it’s a picture that feels so familiar to me I found the illustrations for the book far more interesting. I am in awe of Hokusai’s level of detail, observation and economy of line. It was a wonderful show and I am grateful I got to see it.

London Grads Now. 21 – Saatchi Gallery

Katsushika Hokusai – Illustrations for the Great Picture Book of Everything

Right now I am prepping for a group show of tunnel books coming up in March – more details to follow.

Until next time London x

Fair Art Pledge

November saw the creation of the Fair Art Pledge. I couldn’t be happier about this movement for equality and inclusion in the art world. The Fair Art Pledge is a collective, public promise that museums, galleries, art fairs, and organizations are invited to sign as an indication of their commitment to representing the full population in their collections, exhibitions, programming, and management by 2030.

Did you know that despite the fact that 70% of MFA recipients are female, only 14% of artists with gallery representation are women? A recent survey of the permanent collections of 18 prominent U.S. art museums found that the represented artists are 87% male and 85% white. The statistics always shock me – how is this acceptable in any way? I hope the pledge will go some way towards accountability for galleries and museums to diversify who they represent and who they collect. If you are interested in reading more I have listed a couple of articles that go deeper into this subject.

I hope you had lovely (if maybe downscaled) Christmas and I wish you all the best for 2022.

Winter Small Works Show and Sale

I am thrilled to have three of my 100 day project swimmers included in the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria Winter Small Works Show and Sale. Pieces are at a size and price point perfect for gifting or treating yourself. The Show features the work of 70 local artists, so get yourself in the festive mood and go check it out. The show runs from November 19 to Jan 29.

Refilling the Well

September has been a month for refilling the well, taking a vacation and visiting art shows. We went to the mainland for a week and squeezed in a visit to the Vancouver Art Gallery. I very much enjoyed seeing the group exhibition Vancouver Special and Jan Wade’s Soul Power.

From Vancouver Special – Manuel Axel Strain – Me cutting through a white lady to reveal my mother picking medicine in our home territory, 2021.

Also this month I attended Rain Cabana-Boucher’s show, Distance, at Xchanges; Her work included a really powerful selection of monochromatic paintings and sculpture depicting among other things her experience of being part British settler and part Michif, memories of home and reflections on homelessness in Vancouver during the pandemic. It was a pleasure to talk with Rain and learn about her practice. With the first Truth and Reconciliation Day a few days away this is a timely show. Her work ‘Repeat’ made comparisons between the hunting of buffalo to near extinction by settlers and history repeating itself with the current decline in salmon stocks. ‘Article 10’, a work designed to be displayed as a flag, highlights the continuing abuse of land rights granted to the First Nations. Truth and Reconciliation Day is about readdressing history and acknowledging the suffering caused to Indigenous Communities, Cabana-Boucher’s work makes it clear that that these injustices are not a thing consigned to the past.

The second show I got to was Fear and Distemper by Kyle Labinsky at Errant Art Space which continues to October 10th. It was really interesting to gain an understanding of the political commentary underpinning the paintings which at first glance seem light and colourful. Many of the paintings were worked on un-stretched canvas which had been hemmed at the edges. I loved the incorporation of sewn elements into the work. Glitter and googly eyes provided an interesting contrast to more serious underlying political narrative.

Kyle Labinsky – Elegy for the Rainbow Coalition

In my studio I continue to experiment on my next series. I am still not quite ready to share this just yet. There has been some slowdown in the work rate in September. I have struggled with poor sleep due to allergies and asthma, which is always a problem this time of year. After a couple of days of heavy rain, my allergies are gone and I am starting to feel like I am coming back to myself again.

Painting BIG

Painting BIG – In June I was fortunate enough to assist fellow artist, Rose Cowles, with a large three story mural. The mural is intended to welcome the Olympic Basket Ball teams arriving at the Delta Hotel for the Tokyo Olympic qualifying tournament. Having never painted a mural before I got to see how things are set up for painting BIG. It was a welcome change from the solitude of studio life and fun / interesting to interact with people passing by as the mural progressed. Luckily the weather was clear and warm and our wall was in the shade. It was physical work climbing up and down the scaffolding and the next day I really felt like I had done a full body workout. A new fitness class is born – ‘mural-a-size’. I would like to say a big thank you to Rose for including me in the project. Swing by the Delta and check it out.

Virtual Art Guide – I am happy to be included in the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria’s TD Artists Guide for the annual Moss Street Paint-in that will be happening (virtually) in Victoria this month. Click here to view the guide.

Studio Journal