There is an exciting opportunity coming up that I want to share with you…

Nicholas Wilton, is about to begin his annual Art2Life Online Workshop. It begins on March 4, but free registration is open now! 

It is an entire week of teaching from Nicholas, designed to help you make art that is stronger because it is work that 100% reflects who you are – hence the title “The Art of Your Life”.

Because it is held online, you can participate from home — no matter where you are in the world. And… it is completely free!

Click here to save your seat in the free Art2Life Workshop!

I am going to be following along with the workshop again this year, and I would love for you to join me. This will be my fourth or fifth time through but who is counting.

You might wonder why I keep coming back. This workshop has been a Godsend to me rekindling my creative juices every time I participate. I have reconnected with myself and my love of colour, line, texture and expressing myself with paint. For me – living through the grey west coast of Canada Winter – it is like the return of the sunshine in Spring making art-making much brighter and reinvigorated.

Nicholas has been teaching this workshop since 2016, and in that time, has helped well over 100,000 artists to push their art to exciting new places. The free workshop has recently been revamped to include all-new examples, stories and more. It seems like there are exciting changes afoot in the Art2Life world and I am eager to join in again.

Specifically, the free online workshop will explore exciting ideas like:

• How to use a ground-breaking concept called Differences to quickly make your art more arresting and impactful  

• How to use the principle of Value to create art that is instantly more balanced, refined, and striking

• A simple but surprising approach to creating amazing Color and a sophisticated sense of harmony throughout your work  

• Exactly what to do when your art feels stuck or incomplete (this will revolutionize the way you think of mistakes forever)  

• Ways to make your creative life feel more spacious, joyful and personal to you… even if you’re in a creative funk or short on time

Even if you just take ONE insight away that helps you shift your art… 

I know it will be well worth your time.

And it might just help you see your art (and yourself) in a whole new way.

Here’s the link to register for the free Art of Your Life Workshop again.

Hope to see you there, 

See you in class.

Collage done right can be a brilliant addition to a work of art. I am dipping my toe into using collage and collage elements in my work. I have huge respect for those artists who do this well. Jane Ash Poitras is a Canadian artist who uses collage to make work that is powerful and still great art.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) were such a source of pride to me in the past. I remember seeing the RCMP Musical Ride and having my heart swell seeing the bright red uniforms.

What I was blind to was the full history of the origin of the RCMP.

This Global News article gives background that the history I was taught did not mention. 

To some Canadians the RCMP is a sacred cow. This painting may look radical in its stance as if it is calling for the obliteration of this police force. Rather I suggest that it is a prompt to take off the blinders and approach the changes needed with full awareness of how the history of the origins of the RCMP are still in play in policies and attitudes at all levels.

An early iteration of this painting alludes to the vast Canadian landscape of rivers and trees with collaged elements of asphalt referencing how cities have paved it over.

The text is a tongue in cheek version of “This Land is Your Land”. It did not work for me. Too contrived and not as clever as I thought.

The red was a more impactful choice and played against the red of the mountie uniform used in photo ops.

I am still finding my way in exploring these topics as well as trying to invite others into these questions through something visual.

I have been trying to educate myself on my own biases as well as how racism is built into our cultural norms and into our systems of governance. Ignorance is a chain around our necks.

There is so much I understand better now after following and learning from Black and Indigenous thought leaders and yet still so much that I can’t grasp that sends me into a world of confusion and despair.

Racism takes a different form in Canada, where I live, than in the US. Some Canadians like to think we are immune, but that is sadly far from the truth. Our brand of inequity is masked by politeness and embedded in our colonial roots. For the most part we are blind to it if we are white. Because we don’t experience it, we think that it can’t exist.

Our biggest shame is what colonization has done to the First People on whose stolen land we live. People argue that we can’t change history. The trouble is we perpetuate the impact of that history everyday in our policies.

I feel the pain of this deeply, but I become inarticulate when I am talking to someone who buys into the myths colonization has created.

This painting speaks about the white folks who cannot see beyond themselves to see the need to combat a system that is not working for all. This is about those who can’t help but centre themselves in the conversation.

I’m not racist.

I have Black friends.

I visited a First Nations Community once on a summer job.

I, I, I. It isn’t about you. It isn’t about you being good or bad. It is about the systems that compliance and/or indifference supports. It is also about the fact that if you are white you can ignore this conversation entirely and go on with your life thinking only of I, I, I, (me, me , me) and the ones that matter to you.

And worse in a way, if you think you are “woke” and then still make the conversation about you or take centre stage on topics of race or social justice when a Black or Indigenous person stands in the wings.

Here is an example of how it can be done by producers and actors  in two animated TV shows, “Missy” and “Central Park”.

“We sincerely apologize for and regret our original decision to cast a white actor to voice a biracial character. We made a mistake, took our privilege for granted, and we’re working hard to do better moving forward. We are proud of the representation that Missy has offered cerebral, sensitive women of color, and we plan to continue that representation and further grow Missy’s character as we recast a new Black actor to play her.”

Shortly after Slate’s announcement, the Central Park team announced Bell’s step down from the role of Molly — also a young character who has a White mother and Black father.

“This is a time to acknowledge our acts of complicity. Here is one of mine,” Bell wrote on her Instagram post sharing the production team’s statement. “Playing the character of Molly on Central Park shows a lack of awareness of my pervasive privilege. Casting a mixed race character with a white actress undermines the specificity of the mixed race and Black American experience.”

There are many layers of paint on this piece even though it is on paper. The figures and marks are crude and raw which is how this topic leaves me feeling. I was hoping to achieve and edginess that grabbed attention but yet was cool enough to keep people wanting to engage.

Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, followed this success with Blink,  about the choices that we make in the blink of an eye without the time for thinking. How some people can make good choices and some make egregious errors. 

Decisions, decisions…
Together we brainstormed some options that would work for subject matter for paintings and helped narrow the decision down to 3 choices to present to the larger extended family. We put newspaper up the size that the paintings would be to see if they would “hold” the space adequately.

Getting ideas:
Here is one of several shots I took from right outside their door:

These are the questions that motivate me and make me want to grow and that fuel my creativity. This is not the path that all artists take but it seems to be mine.

The spark for this painting came from committing to a show in October that will feature the work of artist members of Verity, a women’s club/haven/community in Toronto. Since each participant will have 3 pieces, this became an opportunity to try a new direction or a least a new medium.

That meant … cement.

Cement meant Andrew Crane.

I know Andrew because I follow him on Facebook and have been continually inspired and intrigued by his work.

Thus began a cycle of trusting and reaching.

Trust – if Andrew could do cement I could do cement.

Reach – if a Google search for “how to” use cement on canvas turned up Andrew Crane as the only resource, I could dare to ask him for advice.

The reward – an encouraging response from Andrew with complete detailed steps.

Trust – that I could find the equivalent of the materials that Andrew was using in the UK in cottage country Ontario.

Trust – that I could find my way not only with the material, but with what I wanted to say – surely I needed something new and significant to say.

After several rounds of practice on recycled boards and old canvas, I had a sense of cement but was at a loss for what I wanted to express.

Reach – this was a combination of letting things come to me and exploring out in the world so that there were points of contact for subject matter to arise.

Trust – the thing was that I trusted that the attraction to the immediate and very raw aspect of cement was bigger than my not knowing what to do with it – just yet.

BINGO – I needed to to harness my own raw emotion and that of the people I was responding to on Facebook and raw cement provided the perfect medium.

I am content with what I have done – I trust it to be recognized or not and it doesn’t matter. It feels good that I am not concerned with the opinions of others – at the moment. They may not dig cement on their walls and that’s OK. I get it and have an inner chuckle at the multiple layers and hidden meanings at play in my mind.

Pure cosmic fun!!! That is a reward worth appreciating.

Years ago when I was taking courses at the AGO (Art Gallery of Toronto) teacher and artist Doug Stratford worked in 2 distinct series. His paintings of Italy were smaller gems in oil and if I remember correctly were framed alike in charming frames that complimented the work. The cityscapes that Doug did were edgier and presented in a larger more contemporary format. Doug created clear distinctions between the two and had distinct clients for each series.

Sometimes the struggle is a gift because when it is extreme enough it is clear that something is wrong. If the issue is composition no amount of applying technique can fix a bad composition. Hallelujah – get out the gesso and start again.

Then there are times when you have a niggle that something isn’t working but you can’t quite put your finger on what is bothering you. Whether I love a painting or have a niggle, I love to have the time to hang a painting in my foyer so that I get to walk past it several times a day for a few weeks.

During this time I do not analyze and critique what I have done, I simply let the visual information percolate as the piece comes in and out of my awareness. At some point I am ready to make a decision and the painting either gets a finish coat of varnish, a tweak or gets recycled with a coat of gesso.

I thank my unconscious for the quiet consulting.

Paintings aren’t sacred. They are done when they are done. Or not. Even two years later I might have an epiphany and take something off the wall for a fresh look. That’s just what happened with the painting in the image above. Think of it as a remix.