My handmaiden named Anxiety.

Light filtering into the studio recently..

"A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety."~Aesop

Sometimes I wonder if it is better to be frayed as an artist, or to seek the stitch.


I am a type 'A' personality where 'A' = anxiety. T.S. Eliot once wrote: "Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity". What a wise man he was. Yes, anxiety can be a huge hindrance to creative flow, output and inspiration. If you are naturally predisposed to anxiety it can be a regular guest in the studio with you. A few years ago I was having some health struggles and remember being so anxious that I couldn't even paint at times. So, how do you work through anxiety with regards to your work?


Fortunately my anxiety rarely centers around my paintings but other thoughts that drift in and out of my mind while I work. Ideally your creative space should be a refuge, a crucible of energy that you can distill you work into, unfettered by anxiety and worry. However this is rarely so. Thus we must make the best effort we can. I like to listen to music, television shows or movies that I know well. I can paint away while enjoying a film and this serves to dissipate anxiety while providing entertainment too. 


Also, if you can mix exercise into your workday I think you will notice an improvement in anxiety/mood and certainly fitness level. Exercise is a panacea. It is better than any medication in my opinion. It is natural and your body doing what it was meant to do. I wish I had mountains within reach every day but I enjoy a good jog along Lake Ontario as well. Everywhere has its own unique beauty.

Here is a photograph of some flesh tones I was mixing on my palate recently. There are so many variations of colour and value that go into anything, let alone skin. When I first started to paint many years ago, I used about three variations of the same colour for the skin of my subject. Now there are innumerable ones. It is all a part of learning. It is evolution. It is not a fast process...but with time it will happen and your work will blossom. When I am painting, I strive for a subtle edge. This can refer to creases or areas that recede from the eye. If you mix a colour just a value or two away from the one adjacent to it, you can effectively "mix" the colours but in a more segmented way. Yet when you step away and move back your eye will naturally blend them together. See Lucian Freud's work for the best example of this ever (RIP Lucian).

Yes, this is a photograph of the isolated chaos that is my palate and paint tubes. Are you one of those artists where paint flies everywhere? If so, let me know. I'm a very "quiet" painter. I've wondered about how many artists are really "Pollocky" out there...a hurricane of paint etc. In fact I'd love to know or see photographs of other artists' studios...feel free to send them to me if you wish. I work in a VERY small space which is a part of the larger space where I live. One day I will have a room devoted just to painting/work. I can't wait :) Until then I realize I could probably paint in a linen closet if I had to.

And finally here is a photograph of a section from a larger piece that I recently completed. It will be featured in my upcoming solo exhibition at Abbozzo Gallery in less than a year's time (it takes a long time to paint a full show!). I hope to see you there! This show is an exploration of the theme of waiting and the human condition (two favourite topics). In this painting above, you can see the work of applying different tones and values with minimal blending on the panel. Skin is one of the trickiest things to render I find, and therefore quite  intriguing. 


I hope this day finds you well, anxiety-free and smiling....:)


Heather

"Joe"

"A man is a success if he gets up in the morning,

and gets to bed at night, and in between

he does what he wants to do."~Bob Dylan

Recently I had the opportunity to crash at my friend Joe's place in Chicago. It was my first time in the Windy City and I was captivated by it. I stopped by on my way to the Midwest and then back again on the return journey. Each time we spent time up on the roof of his warehouse loft in the Fulton Market area. It is filled by day with lots of activity: meat packers, milk and egg distributors, etc. It also has a smattering of quaint little bistros offering some pretty amazing craft beer. It is very close to the downtown area yet seems to be removed and in its own little world. 

As a thanks for letting me stay at his place, I painted this little portrait of Joe. He's an old soul living in the body of a 23 year old. He is, among other things, a philosopher, a great photographer and a professional barista with Intelligentsia coffee. 

We met each other via a mutual interest in the life of Christopher McCandless. Our friendship has subsequently been enriched by a love of photography and the beauty of the world around us, good coffee and living a life of exploration. 

 Joe standing atop his apartment pointing out the various landmarks around his place..

"Joe", oil on panel, 10"x8", 2011, is a little thank-you for great hospitality. It is earthy and humble, like Joe. He has a favourite chair in his apartment, a chair in which he photographs all of his house guests before they depart. I sat in this chair and he took my photograph, and then I had him sit in the chair for my own photo reference. The "Joe" painting is the result of that photo shoot. 

The end to a great evening of great conversation, with the Sears Tower in the background

I haven't painted a direct portrait like "Joe" for a long time. To paint someone directly, to scan their features and try to interpret them in a meaningful way is difficult and thrilling because of its difficulty. The challenge is to see if one can infuse some magic into their features, to breathe life into a person that already lives and walks the earth. Many artists paint people, but the true test is to see if we can place the person's character into the piece, to mix some of their soul in with the pigment. 

Over the last few months I have concentrated on painting the figure in a more oblique way; mixed in with folds of sheets or silhouetted in doorways. They are in their own world, they are a part of the narrative that surrounds them. However to paint a simple, direct portrait one must abandon the accoutrements of the person's environment and simply focus on their features. The set of their brow, the curve of their mouth--these things are all who they are, and like no one else in the world. It is beautifully confounding and enticing.

As time passes I am trying to paint more people in exchange for travel or other great opportunities. It is a great and symbiotic exchange. It is a way of expressing thanks...it is what the artist can offer as our own appreciation to others for their kindness. It is the best currency of all.

On my return trip it was stiflingly hot in Joe's apartment. He pointed out his neighbour's hammock in the loft next door. He has slept here upon occasion and offered it to me as a choice of place to lay my head for the night. I knew it would be an interesting experience and I was right. I woke up to the El trains starting their day at 4:30am, then the birds starting theirs around 5am, and then the hum of the forklifts around 6am. It was unique and wonderful. Here is a photo of the view I woke up to...

5am view of the Chicago skyline from the hammock on the rooftop..

Have a beautiful day/evening/morning, wherever you may be...

"We shall not cease from our exploration and at the end 

of our exploring will be to arrive where we started...and know

that place for the first time."~T.S. Eliot

"Gayle, Somewhere Else"

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."

~T.S. Eliot

I have traveled a lot over the past two years. A LOT. I believe travel is the best education certainly, yet there is a time and place for it. As a painter, I need a quiet studio, without frenetic energy, in which to create. Some artists thrive on chaos in which to make their art, but not me. To gather moss is not necessarily a bad thing. Moss is productive in its own right. But the "rolling stone gathers no moss" maxim has an important message. Do not stagnate. Stay active, even when you are still. 

So, travel. Experiences outside of the studio: Camping in Denali and Yosemite National Park, The Mediterranean, Cappadocia, Vancouver Island, The Yukon, Manhattan, The Outer Banks, the Midwest, the desert, the ocean, fireflies, many moons. All of these experiences have enriched me enough to last a lifetime. I cherish each memory. But the most important thing I have gleaned from these two years is that I need to return to the figure. I want to re-examine what can never be truly understood. Painting a form, a person, who may be somewhere else, far away, but appears to rest, that is the undiscovered country that I want to explore. 

Many people have commented that my self-portraits and figurative work convey sadness. "Gayle, Somewhere Else", oil on panel, 40"x48"is no exception. But she is not sad. Or maybe she is. My goal is not to paint someone 'posing', someone aware of the viewer. I want to capture the quiet moments of solitude. Often in solitude we are not smiling from ear to ear, and sometimes we are. Thus my portraits are contemplative yes, but, by and large, not sad (to me). And to be sad...is that such a horrible thing? Without sadness how could we appreciate the happy times? Just saying.

Here is the first stage of the painting. I wanted to include these so that you could see how it all developed. For the first couple of painting sessions I just tried to cover the white of the canvas. I should do an underpainting, but I'm too impatient. I try to move around the canvas and work the entire piece as much as possible to retain balance. I mix each brush stroke or two with new paint. I never work with a pre-mixed batch of a certain colour. Again, no patience. It is funny how we get into habits, routines. Perhaps we are not meant to break them :)

Stage two finds the colour spreading as the drapery starts to take form. 

Below you see the painting almost completed. I wanted the drapery to encircle her, as it protecting her. I had worked quite a bit on the skin tones here but still was dealing with rendering the sheets to my satisfaction. One friend has commented that the sheets resemble the folds of one's mind. I like that metaphor. She is quite oblivious to the outside world, or appears so, and instead is negotiating the terrain of her mind. 

Upon completing this painting I was filled with a sense of happiness to be back doing what I love most...capturing the figure in quiet moments. The next year will be filled with more of these paintings, as well as completing some commissions. I know that I will always travel, always need to get out, camp, hike and see new places. And be aware that this blog post is coming to you from Fairbanks, Alaska! But happily, I will take off my hiking boots soon. It is good. It is balance. And balance is everything.   

Have a wonderful day, wherever in the world you may be....

Heather

"Gayle, Somewhere Else" is also available as a print!  Check out the link here on Deviantart. Thanks!

Also, follow me here on Twitter! Facebook page too! 

"Reality leaves a lot to the imagination."~John Lennon

"Michelle (Cumberland Ave)"

"There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in

which you yourself have altered."~Nelson Mandela

"Michelle (Cumberland Ave)", oil on panel, 11"x14", began weeks ago, but I only completed it today. The reason for this was that in between the beginning brushstrokes, the blocking in of shape and tone, I traveled to Arizona, New York City and Turkey. It is a strange feeling to leave a painting that you are really enjoying working on. To see it sitting the easel as you pack your bags is hard. I have a quota in mind of paintings that I like to accomplish each month, each year, and I have to realize that this year there will be less paintings. I am ok with this fact because I will try to make the pieces that I DO complete count even more, and travel provides excellent perspective on one's life and career. Big time.

Recently I had a discussion with another artist and we talked about how travel affects our work, if at all. We both came to the conclusion that for us, traveling extensively has helped us realize what we want and don't want to paint. It is that paradox that I love to ponder: knowing what you DON'T want is just as, if not more important than knowing what you DO want. This also applies to art and the creative impulse.

Many colleagues and friends have asked if I will be painting people and scenes from my travels...I cannot definitively say "no" but these voyages have made me realize that I crave to paint the people and places that I have been painting for years. A yearning to return to the familiar has hit me, a desire to revisit old stomping grounds, see friends and models, walk streets that have appeared in paintings previously, and to paint the comfortable. Even comfortable is challenging. There is ALWAYS a new way to compose a painting, to look at a subject, to dive into the mysteries of how to paint and express ourselves.

Michelle posed for me and was so sweet and amenable to me asking her to look this way and that way. She had a whole selection of hats and jackets to wear, and I gravitated to this toque in particular. I loved the vibrancy of it compared to the washed out colours of that cold February day in downtown Toronto. This is the first time that I have painted Michelle. It is a fun process because painting someone new is just like visiting a new country...you are on unfamiliar ground and you need to learn what makes that place unique, what gives that person their special qualities, that individuality that is theirs alone. With some practice and a bit of luck perhaps that intangible quality can be felt in the final piece. I am happy and inspired to continue to try and do this...the act of painting, the journey is as much fun if not more, than the destination.

Speaking of new destinations, I am hard at work on new paintings to take with me up to Whitehorse in The Yukon Territory where I will be spending over a month in April. It is very exciting to take this step into solitude and in a new city in the Northern climes of Canada! I am so excited and know that some good work/writing and painting will come from this period of creative seclusion. Stay tuned and you can follow more frequent progress relating to my art and journeys on my Twitter page, found here.

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of our exploring will be to arrive

from where we started and know that place for the first time."~T.S. Eliot

"Father, Sitting"

"The world breaks everyone and afterward some are strong at the broken places."

~Ernest Hemingway

"Father, Sitting", 30"x 10", oil on canvas, was painted four years ago. My father is an intense person, yet almost painfully sensitive. To say he is complex is an understatement. I wrote awhile ago about my father in "Father, Hospital", which I have included again below. I think that both paintings convey the weight of his personality, or, at least I hope they do. 

With this piece in particular I cropped it in quite closely to accentuate the energy of his personality. He does nothing piecemeal and is never mealymouthed about anything. He is emotional, at times even mercurial. 

I have inherited this trait from my father. I hope to make use of this tendency towards tempestuous feelings within my paintings, because, truthfully, they can really test one's courage to go on. However, wouldn't you rather a roller coaster than a merry-go-round in this life? Would you not rather be more predisposed to sorrow, yet have bliss as a welcome companion too? 

"Father, Sitting" and "Father, Hospital" are heavy paintings to me. I see in my father the human condition in technicolour, in the flurry of emotions that accompany perennial rumination, and the often in the words of T.S. Eliot:

"There is a shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust."

~The Waste Land

I like looking at these two paintings next to one another. My style has not changed much. I would like to think I examine the subject more closely now, paint a little more carefully, and slow down, being more aware of each brush stroke. Evolution is lovely because it sneaks up on you, and before you know it, you look back on previous work and see that there has been progress, progress that was seamless, invisible and yet its effects evident everywhere you look. 

It is with great happiness that I note that my father is wearing his favorite sweater in each painting. Like the sweater itself, I find it comforting.

I am a painter of emotions, pure and simple. Each tree has a personality, in as much as you or I do. Each face that I paint is a landscape. They are connected. We rise and we fall, there are fires in the forest, fires within ourselves, and despite the painful times, there is a beauty and joy that makes it all worthwhile. That is what it means to be human, to be alive, to me. 

Have a beautiful weekend, whatever adventures you have in store.

Heather

"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment."

~ Marcus Aurelius

"Wyll, Madison Avenue"

"My friends are my estate"~Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson said it best. As a reclusive woman, her friends were very important to her. As an only child, my cousins and friends are my siblings. 

"Wyll, Madison Avenue", 2009, 12"x16", oil on panel, is a painting of one of my dear childhood friends who I have known since grade 7.

I have painted Wyll three times over the years, and I have included these paintings below. 

True friends are separated by neither time nor geography. They simply are a part of you, and you of them. True friends are weavers; when you meet after a long absence the threads of your lives are quickly woven together so that soon your dialogue flows freely and your only enemy is the clock, indicating when you must part again. 

There's a certain comfort in spending time with someone with whom you share a history. Its like a secret that you both carry with you as you walk along the street, as Wyll and I did leading up to the reference shots for this painting. It is as though your combined force can take on the world, that this bond is greater than the relationships of the multitudes who pass by on the street.

Wyll and I used to work on a ranch together, leading trail rides and relishing our time with the animals there. We worked for nothing, simply the freedom of having our own hour of time at the end of the day to ride whichever horse we chose. Money was irrelevant.  We were young, fearless and acutely alive.

But here we are now years later, in the depths of winter in Toronto. We walked up a side street off of Bloor and I took some shots to consider for paintings. I edited out some elements that I did not want to paint in the finished piece. It was freezing that day but we were warm, and the energy from our conversation over lunch sustained us, keeping the cold at bay. 

I used a lot of blue in the rendering of the snow. I paint rather expressively in that I have not the patience to render each window, each brick in the distance, each blade of grass,  but prefer to capture the value, shape and impression of the landscape while focusing with more detail on the figure, the subject of the piece.

Wyll is brilliant. She is someone who listens and gives beautifully insightful advice, provides inspiration to me as a person and artist, and truly makes the world a more beautiful place with her in it. I am thankful to know her. We are both only children and solitary by nature, yet this fact strengthens our kinship. We have a silent symbiosis which is rare and I appreciate deeply.

Here are two other paintings of Wyll I did in 2005. I will write about them individually at a later time but it shows how people and artists change, how technique shifts and personalities coalesce. Friendships, like everything in life, constantly evolve, so that, as T.S. Eliot once wrote "we shall not cease from exploration, and at the end of our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." 

  

"Bloor Street West Café", 2005, oil on canvas, 10"x30"

"New Place", 2005, oil on canvas, 16"x20"

Here are some snippets of paintings that will appear in my solo show on Newfoundland in November at Abbozzo Gallery in Oakville, Ontario. I am working steadily on new pieces each day. It will be an exciting show! You can find out more information about the exhibition on my website here. One of the paintings has already sold and the show is still 10 months away! If you are interested in seeing the pieces please contact Abbozzo Gallery. 

On another note, Bravo! Canada filmed a special profiling my work in 2007. It will be airing on Bravo! Channel all across Canada on Monday, February 9th at 8:30am Eastern Standard Time. I hope you are able to catch it! It is on at an odd time but thank goodness for PVRs.

Have a wonderful day,

Heather

"Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself."~T.S. Eliot