Art Show - Part Three

All right, and now let's take a little walk down one of the newer wings of my virtual gallery.

Unfinished

acrylic, 2007

Back in high school, we were required to hand in a weekly drawing for art class. The drawing needed to fill the entire 8.5 X 11 page. If the picture you were drawing didn't have a background, then you had to make something up, even if it was just shading and shadows. 

Since that time, I've become a little obsessive compulsive about filling the page... or canvas, as the case may be. I never consider a painting complete until the entire canvas - including the sides - are completely covered in paint. And as I explained in my last post, I also don't like starting a new painting until I've finished the last one.

Therefore, sometimes a painting will sit on my easel for over a month or two (or more) until I feel inclined to go back to it. That being said, there is almost always unfinished art haunting our place, which is what inspired this piece. I made it with the intention to break my own rules and just leave it unfinished. 

Of course, after a year or two of having it hang near our entrance, I couldn't help but feel that it subliminally sent a bad vibe. An unfinished painting sends the message that you can't finish what you've started. So now it hangs behind my bathroom door, with the pseudo-rationale that the bathroom mirror is the one place where we look at ourselves most often. And much like our bodies, our minds, our souls, we grow older, wiser, deeper over a lifetime. We are never a finished product. We are each an unfinished work of art.

Magnolia

oil paint, 2008/2009

I have no excuse why this painting took me forever to finish, except that it's done in oil paint. Unlike acrylic, which takes only a few minutes to dry, depending on it's thickness, oil paint can take a few days to a few weeks. So if I want to touch something up without the colours blending, I have to wait a while. Within that time, I often get distracted or simply lose my craving to paint. So yeah... this one sat on the easel for a long, looong time. 

Anyhoo, there's no real story behind this painting, except that when I first moved to Kelowna, I fell head over heels in love with the magnolia trees. It's such a shame that beauty so brilliant should also be so brief. I wish the magnolia trees would display their stunning blossoms year round, instead of only for a month. So this is my little ode to the magnolia.

This painting also breaks one of my other high school art class rules - never use black, because black is not found in nature. Even though I used black for the background in Power, I somehow felt rebellious using it for this tree. In fact, I liked the stark contrast of the black on white so much, that I decided to paint the ground plain white instead of swirly green. 

Tulip

acrylic, 2009

Last March when I was back home, (a year ago to the date, actually), I spent some time in Ottawa visiting my good friend Heather. While I was there, she mentioned how she had been trying to find a picture of tulips that would match her shower curtain. Ideally, she wanted a set of three, but at the time she hadn't even managed to find one. 

In retrospect, I probably should've taken a picture of her shower curtain. Instead, I took a mental snapshot. Pinkish-red and orange tulips. Good enough.

That summer, Heather and her mom passed through Kelowna on their little wild west road trip. Their visit coincided with Heather's 30th birthday. Guess what she got? 

I forgot to take a picture, but Heather was kind enough to send these along to me so I could include them in this post.

By The Sea

acrylic, 2009

Keeping with the theme of bathroom art, last year my cousin Jodie and her husband Jeff completely renovated their bathroom top to bottom. Since she hadn't posted any pictures online yet, and I wouldn't be going back home anytime soon, I had Jode describe the new room to me in detail. The colours, the counters, the fixtures and mirror. As she described everything, she mentioned that they hadn't found anything they liked for the walls yet. 

Now, with Heather's gift, it was much less a risk. I had seen her shower curtain. I knew exactly what she wanted. But Jodie's bathroom... I had no idea. And even if I could get the colours right, whose to say she'd even like the painting enough to put holes in her brand new walls for it. Homemade gifts can be a little dodgy like that.

Anyhow, I held my brush and my breath and whipped up with this little seascape scene, hoping to goodness she might like it. I sent it off for her birthday in November, and fortunately, she loved it! *whew*  Jode said that it matched the room perfectly, and that she put it up right away. Yay!

I should also mention that neither Heather nor Jodie were actually hinting for paintings. I just pay attention. ;)

Ocean

acrylic, 2009/2010

Well, at this point since I had painted a picture for both Jodie and Heather's bathrooms, I figured I'd do one for Steph too, since she was in the process of redecorating her spare bedroom with a similar marine theme as Jode's salle de bain. 

Now, Steph has different tastes. She's obsessed with storms, hurricanes, tsunamis, and destruction at sea. I remember when she came out to visit a few years back, she fell in love with this huge painting at the Art Ark of a sunken ship. I swear the girl was pirate or something in a former life... then again, I don't know if pirates necessarily love storms? All I know is that Steph sure does.

Sooo... keeping all this in mind, I painted a little sailboat about to get swallowed up by a massive curling wave. Jim calls it my "Perfect Storm" picture. And fortunately, Steph loved it enough to actually hang it in her living room, not in the spare bedroom as I had intended.

Okay, I have one more painting to do, but I documented the entire process from conception to completion, so it kinda demands a post of it's own. 

Until next time....