Fit to paint

Today's video: My thoughts on art and strength

Hi Everyone,

I head back to school part time tomorrow. It's been
absolutely beautiful here for the past week, and today
I saw people walking in T-shirts and shorts. That's
funny, because if it was real summer, they'd be bundled
up and complaining of the cold. But it was so magnificent
and comparatively warm that people were jubilant.

That kind of weather makes you want to get on some
kind of fitness regime. Usually when I think of being
fit it's for reasons of vanity. Wanting to look good to
be able to wear great clothes is certainly an impetus
for being in good health, and strong. But what about
the connection to art? In this little video tonight
I talk about a friend of mine, a wonderful artist who
joined a gym specifically to be strong enough to
paint, and do all of the tasks connected to painting.
She regularly has to lug massive easels around to set
up for her painting classes at a local art school.

Plus she carried folding chairs and tables and backdrops
to interesting create scenarios. So strength matters,
and she's sick of getting terribly tired from the
sheer physical labour of teaching and painting.
I get it.

My thoughts are in the video.

Have a super week. I got a new pedometer today,
and I'm going out to walk the dog around the block.
Then I'm doing some free weights while I watch
the Oscars.

Have a being-a-strong-and-happy-artist day.

Saturday night is all right

Thinking across space
Skype drawing
black marker on bond
10 x 12 inches
Barbara Muir © 2010

Hi everyone,

I don't have a lot to say tonight. It's very late
and we have just come home from seeing
the Movie The Blind Side. That's two sports movies
in two weekends covering different but
similar themes. I thoroughly enjoyed the
movie, but I'm super tired now.

I did the line drawing I'm showing you tonight
a few weeks ago talking to my friend Tamara
on Skype. I thought perhaps after the density
of painting, a very simple line drawing would
make a nice change for you.

I hope you are having a beautiful weekend. The
weather has been spectacular here, and everyone
is in a true ready for spring mode.

Have a oh-boy-it's-Sunday day.

Up to my ears

Mother and Child
Stage Four
acrylic on canvas
30 x 30 inches
Barbara Muir © 2010

At this point I am up to my ears in paint. I have
dreams, ambitions, high lofty ideals, but it's
like the beating stage of baking a cake. You
put the ingredients in a bowl, and you're pretty
sure it will be delicious, but you have no idea
how it will look. That's the stage I'm at with my
mother and child. I haven't had a great deal
of time to work on it today, so I concentrated on
the mother's face. I am not there by any means,
but I have started.

My son sent me a very lovely video today of
his girlfriend and her sister making a spectacular
cake. If I get permission to show it to you I'll
put the link in.

When I'm working on a little painting, it feels
like the painting flows into me, and I do it.
On a larger work I feel like I am 100% in the
painting. I've lost my gloves, a cheque, pens,
you name it today, because the rest of the world
is a blur. Whether I'm painting or not, the
painting is on my mind.

(Yes, I am lucky and I found everything... But
believe me on days like these I need the lists
I mentioned the other day.) It was a glorious
day, and I cannot say it often enough, I am
so grateful to everyone here in my home town,
out in the wider world, and in the blog world
for helping me stay on track. Thank you.

Have a wow-this-is-going-so-well-and-it's-almost -spring-day.
P.S. I never show a client a portrait while it's
a work in progress. I am fairly certain most
people would be shocked at the backwards,
forwards, this colour -- no that colour nature of
painting, so I turn the painting to the wall and
we go and eat cookies and drinks either juice,
pop, coffee, tea or champagne depending on the
day and the age of the sitter. But we're all friends
here right? I thought so.

Making lists

Mother and Child
Stage three of the painting
acrylic on canvas
30 x 30 inches
Barbara Muir © 2010
(At this stage I'm altering the design,
thinking about the design, and
starting to work on the skin, with
the baby first.)

Mother and Child
Stage two
acrylic on canvas
Barbara Muir © 2010
(Blocking in big areas,
and the underpainting for the
mother's hair, and baby's hair.)

So it's my Reading Week eh? (I thought I'd give you
some down home Canadian talk.) So I am not teaching
for a whole week eh? Heaven right? Almost. I teach
the use of lists to keep students organized, and I've been
making little lists all week and crossing things off.
I've had some major triumphs -- like getting the switch
fixed on my husband's bedside lamp, so he wouldn't
have to turn it on and off by unscrewing a hot light bulb.

But there have been the tasks that just don't go as
quickly as I think they will when I write them down
on the tidy little list. What are you supposed to put on
the list? Six things -- just six major things per day. I
always go over, putting on as many as ten tasks,
and a few years of trying this have proven that six
is probably exactly the right number.

Dealing with the telephone company is an anomaly.
In my mind I think, "a quick call to clear up an obvious
mistake," and in reality I'm stuck on the end of the
line while the company pumps out irritating jazz,
and works overtime on frustrating consumers.

Painting is the solace on these days. I have a couple
of stages to show you on my painting. The design will
change, has changed as I move through the work,
but I am going slowly. For the most part I'm
blocking in areas, and thinking it through. I started
work on the baby's face, hand and foot today. Mom will
have to wait until tomorrow. I'll keep you posted.
Painting a large work takes longer obviously, uses more
paint, and seems to require more thought. I need to get away
from the work to be able to come back and see new
things, decide what to change.

Thanks for coming with me on this process. And
thanks to my wonderful printer people for helping
me with the reference photos, and being kind and
understanding.

Steven and I had a "date" dinner at Ikea tonight.
If you haven't tried their super dinners, and you
don't mind eating with many other families, you
should. The food is good, and ridiculously
inexpensive. You've got to love that. At the end
of the meal both of us were in great spirits, walked
through the store and bought toys for the cats
and headed home to work again.

Have an it's-okay-I-am-so-cool-with-everybody day.

Art Gallery visits

Mother and child
Preliminary sketch
acrylic on canvas
30 x 30 inches
Barbara Muir © 2010
(I started a large portrait on
canvas today of a mother and
child. I've had a couple of
visits with them, and
now I'm using photo
reference. I drew the whole
drawing once, realized the
placement didn't work, and
did it again. The great thing
about charcoal is it both rubs
off and washes off. I've
begin putting on the
underpainting in several
places, and when that stage is finished
I'll show it to you.)

It's been an unusual week because after a couple of
months of not setting foot in a gallery we visited
our city's Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) twice in one week.
We love to go and sit in the member's gallery,
part of the original gallery building called The
Grange. So on Sunday we sat in front of one of
the tall windows looking out onto the park
and the Ontario College of Art and Design, one
of my alma maters, drank tea from tall white
porcelain thin mugs, and ate madeleines. All
very civilized we felt. After that we wandered into
the Renaissance Gallery and I lost Steven. (The
AGO is huge.)

I could feel that instant panic at being lost
overcoming me, and then I thought -- wait - let's
be rational, and decided after searching through
several galleries, that if he thought I was lost he'd
go to the galleries he knew I liked. So I went up
to the Group of Seven floor, scoured that pretty
thoroughly, and then remembered I'd said I
wanted to see the big cathedral-like walkway on the
street side of the gallery. By this time, more than
forty minutes had passed since I'd seen Steven, I was allowing
myself to be both curious and logical. I asked a
guard how to get out into the second floor walkway,
and it turned out that the huge cedar levered doors
opened, so out I went. I'd quit thinking that
every tall, dark haired man in a black wool coat was
Steven. Until I spotted what looked like his silhouette
at the far end of the space, which seems like more
than a block long. I felt my heart give a lift of joy,
and sure enough it was him.

So maybe I really do know my husband of all these
years, because he did do what I thought he'd do,
and tried to think where I would be likely to go.

Tonight on quite a different outing, we attended
a members only opening of a new exhibit about
time. It was filled with mind moving sculptures
and installations to provoke the viewer into
thinking about our place in time. We enjoyed
the exhibit, then headed down to the Lucian
Freud and Rembrandt etchings exhibit, which
I absolutely loved. Freud is one of my all time
favorite portrait painters, and his etchings are
powerful and incredibly intricate in line.

I love the Art Gallery of Ontario. When you come
to Toronto you must visit.

Have an-enjoying-an-art-museum day.

The first Robin

Art Group Sketch
acrylic on canvas
14 x 16 inches
Barbara Muir © 2010

It doesn't seem entirely right to be hearing the first
Robin on the second of March, but I did. It
was one of those glorious days that feels so much
like spring. You understand why we need snow,
because the small amount that fell last week is
melting, and the streets are noisy with rivers
running down to the storm sewers.

And the birds are going crazy with sound,
signalling the whole, mad, wild spring thing is
about to begin. Both cats insisted on being taken
outside for a few minutes today. The dog hung around in
the sun on the back porch and wouldn't come in
until she smelled food.

I decided to paint a little plein indoor scene from
an upstairs bedroom window, but didn't finish
it on time to show you. The sun was in my eyes,
and I opened the window to reduce the glare.
And there it was -- a Robin singing on March 2nd.
Wow! I was so excited that I put down my brushes
and went outside with the dog.

Tonight's painting is from my art group. It was
as always such a pleasure to see my friends there.

Have an-oh-boy-it's-time-to-clean-the-windows day.

Colour

Portrait of an artist
Skype painting
acrylic on canvas
8 x 8 inches
Barbara Muir © 2010
( This is not quite done. But
it underscores what I meant
about instant. I've worked
on this, and done several
drawings of my friend
Tamara who lives in
Holland. Each image is
almost right. But it sometimes
takes me a number of tries to
get every feature right.
I put the Ottawa River behind
her in honour of my
father's birthday yesterday.

The other day listening to Elizabeth Gilbert's book
Committed coming home from a delicious, grabbed,
mall chicken dinner (my night to cook after a
long day at school) in Steven's car, I was so
deeply moved that I had to sit still so Steven wouldn't
notice and be worried about me. It was a shock as
emotion often is. Gilbert was talking about intimacy,
about lying in bed with her beloved Felipe and
asking him to tell her stories based on a word. He
was describing fishing trips with his father, and
lying on his back in their bed acting out his father's
powerful swimming stroke, and I had a completely
vivid image of my father swimming.

She said that watching Felipe she felt like she could
hear his father, whom she'd never met swimming,
and listening I could hear my father swimming too.

When I was 13 my parents moved to Toronto -- a
move that was terribly rocky for me, and probably
for my brothers too. We had been very happy in
Ottawa, and were heartbroken to leave our friends,
our schools, and our neighbourhood. My father
was already in the city, and my mother told us that
she knew we'd be happy when we saw the house.

The house in a suburb was a real beauty -- the most
gorgeous house I've ever lived in -- far more
spectacular -- even designed than the tiny semi
where we are currently very happy. But the big
draw -- the one she was confident would make
all the difference was the pool.

It was beautiful, and of course after a few years in
high school we had adjusted. But no sooner had
we settled in and I was in university, than my
father lost his job, and after a few months of what
must have been terrifying instability with two children
in university and one about to finish high school,
my father got another job in Ottawa.

I am rambling so forgive me. All of this is leading
back to colour, and a stunning revelation I had
listening to Gilbert's book. My parents moved back
to Ottawa when I was in university, and my mother
still lives in that house on the Ottawa river. It had
almost nothing to recommend it as houses go, although
it's still more spacious and elegant than my little house
here, but it had a gorgeous view of the Ottawa river,
and... a pool. David Hockney has immortalized the
beauty of swimming pools better than anyone.

But to actually swim in one, to have it as the summer
focal point of a family's life is a different thing.
Late in my father's life my sister and I took the train
to Ottawa, with my son Christopher on our knees.
I can still remember my father standing hip deep in
the pool, swishing his hands back and forth
in the glorious turquoise water, the golden light from
the late day sun sparkling on the water and his
tanned skin, and listening to him talking about the
significant moments in his life -- giving that gift to
me and my sister -- maybe fully aware that he didn't
have many years left. And I can see him swimming
after this rare moment of intimacy, doing the breast
stroke -- his tanned face and elegant thick white
hair above the water, and the sound of his breathing
as he completed his laps of the small, kidney shaped
pool. I'm certain my love of the colour turquoise
started right then.

Have an honouring-your-memories day.