More Collage

More Collage 2020 is a series of 8” x 10” Mixed Media works on Canvas. They never were intended for sale, but have been part of the Quesnel Art Gallery Working Alone show in July 2020.

Paper Dolls

This series was done in response to Covid 19, to spending more time alone, and how our lives have changed in 2020. They were all done very quickly using mixed media clippings from my sketch books and clip files on a stack of irregularly cut hardboard I found in a cupboard. They were great fun to do, but were never meant for framing and are thus not for sale.

Joy

In 2019 The Thursday Painters had a show called Joy and these three paintings were my contribution.

Thank A Tree

Leaves in the Wind

Haida Gwaii

Woman as Tree Spirit

Spirits of the Forest is a series of ten acrylic mixed media collages on canvas, measuring twenty-four inches wide and forty-eight inches tall. Each one is an exploration of the variation of three elements: a tree trunk, a full length nude female figure, and one or more birds. The works are heavily textured through the use of handmade paper, shapes cut from cotton cloth, and layers built up of other fabrics, cheesecloth, and witches hair that grows on the trees outside my window. Spirits are known by many names. I have given each one of these ten a different one. Size 24” wide x 48” high Price $650.00 each.

 

Women

Female images constantly appear on my canvas. The women may be part of a narrative painting about women’s lives as in Shackled. Women may appear in the foliage, emerge from the abstract, populate a fantasy, become a pattern element, but they are unmistakably female.

 

Flower Forms

It is during the long white winter that I fill my house with fresh flowers that find their way on to my canvases. Sometimes they actually look like flowers, but often it is just a way of playing with colour.

 

Landscapes

The Cariboo landscape is before my eyes and etched on my brain. Whether I am painting outdoors, from my window, or in my studio, the lines and light and colours of the Cariboo, the earth and waters and sky of the Cariboo, appear in acrylics upon my canvas. But wherever I travel I see new images that find their way into new paintings. Sometimes the location is recognizable, but often new elements just are woven into the imaginary landscapes in my mind.

 

Seated Women

Seated is a series of ten square format acrylic on canvas images that continue the exploration of saturated colour, and introduces text for the first time. All figures are seated on versions of the same ornate chair. All explore the lives of women, their relationships to men and to each other, and the many emotions and changes they experience as they live their lives from birth to old age and approaching death. Some of these images are personal; some are portraits of real people; some are more symbolic. All evoke the pain and wonder of being female.

 

The Abstract View

For some time I have been working towards a more abstract image. These paintings emerged very quickly into colour and pattern, line and movement, to express the emotion of each piece. They are building on the work that came before, but will I hope, lead me in new directions.

 

People and Portraits

The human body is a great challenge to any painter. I watch people everywhere and they appear in starring and secondary roles, as themselves or simply as a pattern element. I photograph my friends and they appear in my paintings, sometimes as themselves, sometimes in disguise.

 

 

Birds of My World

My home on the side of the Fraser River is ideal for watching the daily life and annual migrations of many winged beings. There is always an eagle or two sitting in the snag beyond my deck. I speak to them daily as I pass beneath them and their songs echo up and down the valley during all the seasons of the year. Ravens are with me winter and summer: the sound of their wings overhead, their raucous calls of greeting, the sight and sound of their wild quarrels over a kill. White river gulls wing up and down the river morning and night all summer. The September song of the sandhill cranes is one of my favorite sounds. A flock of geese or swans or pelicans occasionally settles on the sandbar to rest from the long flight north. I wait anxiously for the he first flash of a bluebird, or another sighting of red and yellow tanagers. The return of the hummingbirds is reason for major celebration. Is it any wonder that they find their way into my work?

 

 

Artist’s Collection

In the work of many painters there are key pieces that mark a new discovery, a change in direction, the successful interpretation of an idea. Some or all of these have a special value to the artist; selections they are happy to retain in their own collection. These are some of mine, but these too are always for sale.