Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends

Class sketch
acrylic on canvas
14 x 16 inches

Tonight I'm including an image of a fast sketch I did at the Tuesday
night art class. I liked the look of the subject, but only started
liking the painting a few months after that evening. The painting
was drawn in charcoal, and recently I washed most of the drawing
off to discover that I like the painting without the heavy lines.

Birthday cards from my son's students in Korea

At the beginning of the week we received a huge package from
Korea in the mail. Our birthday gifts were inside -- a lovely
video of my son's typical day, slippers for Steven and for me,
like the slippers my son wears at school (super warm and
comfortable), a pretty scarf for me, and a fleece for Steven and
lots of birthday cards drawn by Christopher's six year old students.
I am always both moved and charmed by children's drawings.
Isn't strange that everyone's an artist at 5 or 6 like these
kids, and then poof -- someone waves a critical wand at them
and they lose their power? I hope that never happens to these
children. I have some more cards that I'll post another night. They
are such a treat.

Speaking of children, one of the family traditions I really
like about Christmas is getting my kids, and their close
friends chocolate filled advent calendars. The idea
of a chocolate every day in December seems like one of the
most civilized of Christmas traditions. So -- I have a few, displayed
where we normally set them up against the china hutch in the kitchen.
When Sam comes home near the end of the month he'll probably
eat all of them at once -- and that's fine too.
This week we also have spectacular deep orangey red day lilies
from our favorite flower store.

I'm still in intensive marking mode, and I'm enjoying it.

Have a there's-so-much-to-celebrate day.

I'm still standing -- and that's a good thing

Hi there,

It's going to be a short one tonight. Wednesday is my
long day at school, and I am soooooo tired. It is
actually a great accomplishment to be still
standing in every sense of the word, when I
look back on the months when I couldn't stand
at all because of my broken ankle.

Bowl of apples from my tree

So...here's an image from the season "of mists and
mellow fruitfulness!" (Keats, Ode to Autumn) that
I've always wanted to paint. One year we had
exceptional apples on our little tree, and luckily
we photographed them. I've been looking for
a set of bowls like this, so if you know where I
can get them -- in Toronto -- let me know.

I hope I'll have some new art for you tomorrow.

Have a pleasantly poetic day.

How busy are you?

Hi everyone,

There's a degree of busy that just tips the scale into "okay
this is a little crazy," and that's my life today. I spent
the day marking, then trying to organize my photos for
the wonderful fellow who is designing my web site. He
needs the images, names, sizes because it's end of term,
and my web site is a school project for him. I have been
having trouble getting everything to him because I
am a professor at another campus that's part of the
same college, Seneca(which is how I found
out about this great program), and I am marking round the
clock.

Plus tomorrow my students are taking tests all day, and I
am preparing those tests. I have been doing my best
to stay positive, staring fondly at my paints, which will
have to wait for another day. And a couple of things
made staying upbeat a challenge. First of all, my
internet connection has been faint to nonexistent again.
Then I put all the images and titles carefully together
in a file on my Mac, we burned a disc, and guess
what my husband's IBM couldn't read the Mac data.
The web designer is an IBM person, and here we go
again. So my husband carefully and painfully re-configured
all the names, and edited the images, and burned a new
disc. I think he's going for sainthood, and if I were in
charge he'd get the title.

A bird eating the seeds from our
backyard feeder. Today
all the snow melted, but there will be more
tomorrow

Yow! Deep breath. So I'm including a photo of one
of my favorite little birds sitting on the snow eating
seeds in my backyard, because the picture, taken by
Steven, calms me down. Tomorrow other things are
happening, but I'll tell you all about that then. It's
bedtime.


Have an it's-all-going-to-work-out-just-fine day.

Painting happiness

The catch -- if there is one -- to painting happiness,
is that the painting stays happy, perhaps for hundreds
of years after the happy day, event, moment, couple
are just a memory. Not only that, the painting holds
the memory more potently than most photographs,
even though it isn't a photographic record.

Reading together
watercolor

This painting of some friends of mine,
done back in my watercolour days is testament to
that phenomenon. Sometime after this painting
was made, the couple, who I think were happy when
I did this work, split up. Does that matter now? My
friend, the woman, doesn't understand why I keep,
and even like the painting -- but do you? I love this painting,
not because of the unhappy breakup that happened
a couple of years after this lovely moment, but because
it conveys what I'm always trying to capture --
joy, happiness -- the part of the human condition
that works.

As a watercolour I like its imperfections. As a painting
I absolutely love the mood. I can't begin to compare
myself with songwriters like Paul Simon, but some
of his songs are about relationships that are now
over. The songs can be loving, happy, moving and
stand alone. I hope the painting does too.

I wanted to share it with you, because it makes me
happy. Just that. Nothing more. I'm not a political
painter -- just an image maker.

Have a loving-your-own-work day.

Pretty pink poinsettias

Today after Steven and I took Sam to his bus back
to school, Steven decided to get me some flowers
to cheer me up. I always get a clutch in my heart
and at least the possibility of tears when I see
someone off at a bus station, train station, or
airport. We had a short but sweet visit with
Sam, and I love having him around.

Steven bought me a huge bouquet of pale pink
roses, and I bought him some brilliant fire engine
red roses, and some lilies in a reddish colour. Now
the house is filled with flowers. But while we
were in our favorite flower store we saw huge
pots of deep pink poinsettias.

Pink Poinsettias
7 x 9 inches
acrylic on watercolour paper

I think it's too early yet for poinsettias -- they
just scream Christmas -- and I usually buy the
creamy white ones -- three plants for my hall
table. But I remembered this little painting I
did a few years ago, and I'm including it tonight.
If I have time I'll take a better photo (no shine)
and put it in tomorrow. I like the red ground
peeking through, and the unexpected blue sky.

The whole pace of Christmas is coming back to
me. When the stores start pushing it the second
Halloween is over, it seems insane. Then I get
caught up in work and forget about it, and
suddenly it's happening next week, and I haven't
sent cards again, and the house isn't decorated
again. However if you ever do get so swamped
that it's december 23rd and you haven't begun...
there are crazy financial advantages to decorating
at the last minute. I got my front door wreath,
and a big wreath for the front of the house last year
for a dollar each. I'm just saying.

Have a loving-the-colours-around-you day.

Sketching a Skype

I haven't done much in the way of art today, and yet
most of the day's been devoted to art work. I met
with the man who's designing my web site and we
discussed colours and treatment. He and his wife,
live in a condo with a spectacular view of the whole city
and the surrounding countryside. He can see
the wide sweep of Toronto, the blue hills to the
west, and Lake Ontario gleaming in the sun.

Their space has high bright windows and the sun
spilled into the room while we drank mint tea out
of perfect white china. So that was fun.

My son is home and his girlfriend came for what
was our official birthday dinner, with all of us
opening presents from each other.

Sketch of Flora
Doehler, done while we
talked on Skype through our computers.
This was my view of Flora in her
kitchen.
Sharpie, Staedler Permacolor,
pencil, coloured pencil,
Sharpie Highlighter

But before supper I talked to my friend, Flora,
who lives in Nova Scotia on Skype, and did this
little sketch of her. So while we were talking,
I was sketching. I kept showing her every 60 seconds
or so, and she was egging me on saying,
"let me see, let me seeee!"

So here's the result -- instant gratification - just
like Skype. This was my wonky view of her in her
kitchen, with the shelf to the right. Of course it's
got that caught in the headlights feeling that a
Skype image has, but it's also got a nice,
"are you really drawing me?" serious look to it.
And it was a very fast sketch. If you don't know
about Skype it's the free long distance
phone service and if you have a camera in your
computer you can see the person, which is really,
really lovely when people are far away.

That's all for tonight folks. I hope my American
friends are having a happy Thanksgiving weekend.
I've got to sleep.

Have a permission-to-relax-sir day.

Hunting squirrels

It's been a strange and wondrous day in ways I can and can't
describe. Some of my shyest students gave great, brave
presentations today. One of my fellow teachers read an
eloquent passage to me from a book he wrote. When I
got home after driving beside a spectacular sunset, I saw my
youngest son and his girlfriend briefly before they went out
for dinner, and my son looked extremely happy.

We watched the end of Season I tonight of the 30 Rock DVDs
my sister gave me for my birthday, and really laughed a lot.

Zoey "hunting" squirrels

I found this picture of our dog Zoey hunting squirrels in our
local park and it made me think of a book I've joked about wanting
to write for a few years now called, The Philosophy of Dogs.
Most of the book would be about how dogs always think it's a
good day if you're in it. At the risk of sounding as corny
as Sarah Palin, my dog Zoey and her obsession with
squirrels seems like the perfect allegory for what most of
us do in life, especially in art. Zoey pursues a squirrel
with slow and careful deliberation. She doesn't run or
carry on until she's a few feet away from her target. And yet she
always misses. The squirrel always gets up the tree. Except
for that one time outside our house when by accident she
caught and killed a squirrel. I swear she felt badly all day
after that. Let me clarify right here that I don't
ever want Zoey to catch a squirrel, and I wouldn't let her
hunt them if I thought she would catch them.

I'm not talking about the thrill of the chase, which I know
is a tired cliché, I'm saying it's about process. Zoey puts
every fiber of her being into the process of catching the
squirrels she doesn't catch -- and here's the kicker -- she
loves that process. She is more excited in fact by hunting the
squirrel with great care on a beautiful day in the park,
than she was the day she actually caught one.

That's what I'm trying to learn as an artist. No painting
isn't a hunt, and I'm not going to catch a painting. But
painting is a focused attempt to catch an idea, and yet
the pleasure of the act is not in the completion, but in
painting -- watching colours come together to form
an idea that combines (for me) reality (the person,
object, landscape to be painted) and my own thoughts
and goals, to create a piece of art. Okay -- maybe it's
the end of the week and I'm just too tired. So
give me a break and I'll lighten up. I'm just saying.

Maybe what I'm talking about is this mania for
producing a great work of art every day that the
blogs seem to foster. You can go out every day
and try to paint, but you're just not going to bag
a squirrel every day. (Eee haw -- I do sound like Palin),
but you know what I mean. This whole concept would
have been preposterous to some of my favorite
painters of yore. They would have guffawed
heartily at the thought of artists turning themselves
inside out to make a workable work of art every
single day. Painting -- yes -- they'd get that, it's
a great idea to paint every day, but you don't get
a Sargent (my personal hero) in a day, unless
you're talking about the watercolours. He worked for
40 sittings with his portrait commissions. So
maybe some of us should give ourselves a break,
like Zoey does when she doesn't get the squirrel.
I'm going to start right now with myself, because
I'm turning in, and I haven't bagged a Sargent, or
even a laudable Muir today, but I've moved
brushes and paint around on a canvas, and thoroughly
enjoyed the process.

Have a loving-the-act-of-painting day.