Taking it easy

Cat on the bed
acrylic on watercolour paper
8 x 10 inches
Barbara Muir © 2010

We are coming up to Canada Day. Canadians
are not as patriotic as Americans, but we do
love a day off. So we will all be heading to
cottages, and getting out the barbecue, hoping
to go swimming because it's a national holiday.
My big plan is to settle in with my novel,
then maybe go for a walk with Steven and our
dog Zoey, then have a super supper. I just got home
from dinner and a movie, and already feel in
the holiday mood.

Here's a little interior painting from my
sister's collection that certainly sets the tone for
what I hope to be doing on the nation's day.
I will curl up with a good book and my cats and
play hooky on the rest of my life.

Have a wonderful Canada Day!

Coffee, tea and look at your art!

The Chisholm family
6 feet x 3 feet
acrylic on canvas
Barbara Muir © 2010
(The paintings now hang in a pristine
modern living room, with brilliant light --
so bright the paintings were reflecting the
light in this photograph -- and white
walls like and art gallery. I was
delighted to see them when I had tea
there a few weeks ago.)

I do love visiting my clients and seeing where
they've put my paintings. When I'm creating a
piece my whole obsession is with what I'm painting.
But I'm lucky that during the commission process
I often form lasting friendships with my clients,
so when I visit I am thinking more about them, than
about the art I've painted for them. So it's
touching to learn where people have hung the
work, to see how much thought and care
goes into those decisions.

People often ask if I'll miss a painting when it's
gone. I do feel a small lurch when I pack a
painting up and send it off, either into the
client's car, or into the mail. But I still
have the experience of painting it, and the
gratification of pleasing my client. Plus I
sometimes borrow the paintings for shows
down the line, and then I get to see them again.

Still I love walking into a friend's house and
being told to look at the painting I may have
painted years before. "Ah yes, so there it is.
Hey!" That's a very sweet feeling. My thanks
to all of my clients who've given me that
privilege.

Steven and I climbed up our
cherry tree tonight on two separate ladders.
There is enough fruit in that one tree
for hundreds of pies, but we picked
enough for three -- 12 cups of cherries.
Each bowl of pitted fruit shown here
will become a pie.
I'm hoping we make two pies and a cobbler.
Sour cherry recipes anyone?

Have a knowing-you-are-appreciated day.

No Typical Day

In a dancing mood
watercolour crayon on bond paper
7 x 9 inches
Barbara Muir © 2010
(I was looking for reference
for a big, new painting and found
this and the watercolour crayons.
So I played around a bit.
Forgive the wrinkled paper. Bond
is not designed for water.)

Do you ever get that feeling? Is it just
me? Or are people acting in a bizarre
fashion? We go walking in the park, and
first we see a couple walking with a small baby
in a stroller and an aggressive pit bull. The
man says, "don't worry he's just a puppy," and
they walk off into the sunset. Pit bulls
are banned in Ontario. You're not allowed
to have a pit bull puppy, and older pit bulls
have to be muzzled. But the pit bull/baby
combo is particularly disturbing.

Then farther on in our quiet park, Zoey, our dog
is attacked by a pit bull walking with a woman
pushing a doll stroller. Steven gets the dog
away from Zoey, and the woman
says "I'm sorry, he is probably just guarding
my ferret." Zoey stops yelping in distress.
We inspect her -- she seems all right, so we head
for home. Steven repeats the woman's excuse,
"He's probably protecting my ferret!" She's
walking a ferret in a doll carriage. So the
night has gone sooooo strange that further
down the path we start laughing at how absurd
this walk is. I start singing the song
Season of the witch, (my birthday is on
Hallow'een so I know a lot of themed songs)
and suddenly Steven's flashlight reveals
three baby owls in the trees beside us.

The woods with the owls

Magical. Zoey seems fine. The ferret in the
baby carriage and the pit bulls are gone, and
we are seeing baby owls. How amazing!

A baby owl

I came home and did this quick sketch with
Caran D'Ache watercolour crayons. The drawing
is from photo reference for a portrait a few
years ago.

Have a seeing-the-miracles-everywhere day.

A strange week

Valentine Blue
Stage 5
acrylic on canvas
12 x 16 inches
Barbara Muir © 2010

Last week was a strange one, seven days out of
time that left me with too little time to paint.
I'm not saying I didn't have fun, but I am an
artist, and I need routine. Routine means
painting. I don't need a rigid schedule, but I
need to mess about with paint.

Oh? That doesn't surprise you. Yes, yes, this is
an art blog. True. Well a huge clap of thunder
tonight (the real thing) and heavy
downpour signaled the end of the invasion
of our town by world leaders, and vandals.
Maybe the rain made me feel renewed and ready
for intensive work.

Many pies have been made, and tasted.
The cherry tree has made us all fat and happy.
So?

Next? I have been painting all along, but some
paintings sit in a kind of limbo because I
haven't had the mental space to concentrate on
them.

The painting of the farm house in winter is one.
I am almost finished. I wanted to say I was
finished tonight, but when I took the picture I
said...not quite.

Have a getting-back-into-your-routine day.

Sad day in Toronto

A serious talk
watercolour and ink on watercolour paper
7 x 9 inches
Barbara Muir © 2010

The truth about this city is today that all around the
downtown core where the summit is, people
were living normal lives, doing Saturday
summer things. But the protests downtown
got ugly, and from what the newspeople say
it was just a handful of people who turned
a peaceful protest into a series of stupid
and wasteful acts of violence.

This could have been predicted. Everyone who
didn't want the summit here knew that these
summits attract violent activists. But I feel
sorry for all the legitimate protesters who
had their causes ensnared in the burning of
police cars, and trashing of downtown stores.
That is sad.

Steven and I sat in distress watching this unfold
on TV. Once again we went downtown to feed
the cats, and the mood felt frightening.
Helicopters filled the skies with noise.

I took a photo of this little ink and watercolour
drawing last night. It is a portrait of my son,
Christopher when he was quite a bit younger,
and it was one of the first paintings I'd done that he
wanted. I like the mood of it. He seems quite
thoughtful.

As for the city, I hope this insanity is over soon.

Have an enjoying-the-peace-you-have day.

Some summit

Bird on a nest
acrylic and marker on canvas
6 x 9 inches
Barbara Muir © 2010
(This painting was built on a
red ground, drawn in marker,
then painted in acrylics. Then
it was glazed with gloss gel medium.)

Toronto right now is looking a bit weird.
We're okay up here in our part of town,
but downtown near the lake where the
G20 summit is taking place, the city is not
its normal self. There's a high metal fence
around the summit area, masses of police,
helicopters in the sky, search lights at night.
We just went to feed my son's cats, and
it's a whole different world closer to the
summit center. The sound of helicopters
is a constant. Whew!

I photographed this little painting in my son's
apartment that I did a few year's ago for
the general show at our local Artwalk.
They asked for small work, and this was
mine -- it seems so appropriate in this
town today. Toronto is an organic, vibrant
town, posing as a T-cup. Get it? It's
looking fragile, and you have to treat
it like delicate, fine bone china. The bird's
eggs are the world leaders gathered in
the cup, and the squawking mother bird
is security, all the police trying to protect
the leaders. Nah I'm joshing you. When I
painted this I was into painting china
from my collection of antique cream jugs, and
my grandmother's tea set. We were asked
to paint on a nature theme for the show
(see Alyson Stanfield's gloss on the themed
art show) I believe, and this is what I did.

Meanwhile I'm glad to be in my quiet
house a good way from the summit meeting.
Toronto will breathe a sigh of relief when
it's over and we can resume our normal
outdoor, downtown, carefree summer life.

Have a thinking-good-thoughts-for-the-world day.

June 24th is our wedding anniversary

Steven and me today -- How
incredibly lucky we are.

Hi everyone,

I did not do a tap of art today. Not any. I
apologize. I am a very tiny part Italian, and
at Italian weddings it's considered very
good luck to have bad weather -- rain, storms,
all good. My point? I woke up this morning
a good two hours before seven hours of sleep
to the sound of loud insistent mechanical
thumping, a high pitched and very loud
machine whining and the house shaking like
it did yesterday in the earthquake. I went
back to bed. I'm not good on five hours
sleep. I actually partially slept until it was
seven hours then went downstairs to see
what new horrible construction event was
on for today -- our wedding anniversary.

The entire street has been under siege for
a few weeks, and the earlier horrors were
just a tester. Today huge holes were dug in
neighbours' meticulously planted and
cultivated front lawns and gardens. We
had three four foot deep holes dug in our
interlock driveway. If you believe in luck --
according to Italian rules this must mean
that the next year is going to be even more
fantastic than the last.

Yup. So what to do? We decided to have
dinner out of town, drove to Oakville and
ate in a restaurant on the lake called
Compass. We ate inside, but could see
sailboats, the people outside, seagulls and
even swans swimming close by the patio.
So lovely. The food was delicious and a
shout out to Julie and Wanda who treated
us like royalty.

So sorry about the art -- there will be some
tomorrow. Let this day be about love.
We loved getting away from our street, talk
of the G20 summit and loved sitting in a beautiful
spot.

My father walking me down the aisle
on the big day. How incredibly
happy I was. Yes I wasn't always
blonde.

It was and is a Happy Anniversary.