White Barn at Windermere

5x7 Oil on Canvas

I love this barn, I'm drawn to it every time I drive by.

And when I'm painting it, it makes me think about one

of my favorite painters. Her name is Laura Daniel and

she teaches at the museum in Austin Texas.

The Bend at Windermere

8x 8 Oil on Gallery Canvas in Floater Frame

$200.00

I love how the N. Saskatchewan makes lazy turns along

the way. This is from a photo I took just south of the

Windermere Golf Course on a beautiful late afternoon

last summer. The sky and water were just shimmering.

5 Sheds near Okotoks

Oil on 24x24 Gallery Canvas

I came across these sheds as I was coming back from a workshop at the Leighton Centre last year. It seems to be a common thing to have 5 red sheds and I love the feeling these simple farm buildings evoke in me. My grandfather homesteaded in Saskatchewan and I've heard so many stories about the challenges of building a life from bare land.

Linny D. Vine found she had the same feeling about grain elevators and from her west coast studio she paints the most wonderful serendipitous elevators interspersed with the coast scenes you would expect.

This painting is now available as it will now be painted in a large horizontal format for the collector. If you have any interest, please drop me a line.

Prairie Lakeland

A friend asked me to explore painting a prairie lake scene with canola fields in a diptych format on 24x24 canvases in floater frames. I liked the idea so I did these two 8x8 studies to play with it, having never painted a diptych. Two issues that showed up pretty quickly are palette control and keeping the horizontals lined up. When I'm working on the larger ones my plan is to put my two easels side by side and paint them simultaneously. I'll also premix large puddles so that I can paint both without remixing.

Mini studies-watercolour of Blueberry fields

Keeping with the thought of inspiration, I was given at book on watercolour journalling that gave me the urge to try watercolours! Yesterday I thought I would pull them out and see if I could paint anything that excited me, knowing that it will be necessary to pack lightly next week during the Olympics. I painted this little study of the blueberry fields yesterday and it was so much fun! The process is quite different than oil or acrylic. There are a couple of things I would do differently but on the whole it was exactly what I was looking for.

This is the book I was given in case you want to give it a try.

Inspiration

5x7 Oil on Canvas
Curlew at Water's Edge
This is another of the quick studies we've been doing since our trip to Calgary in Dec. I am loving this process. It forces me to load my brush and commit to each stroke. I'm also keeping a little journal to jot down notes on what I learn with each study. We painters look for inspiration wherever we can find it!

Quick Paintings

An early Christmas present was a road trip to Calgary to do a 2 hr. workshop with Doug Swinton and watch the Friday Night demo with Neil Patterson www.neilpatterson.com at Swintons Art Supply in Calgary www.swintonsart.com . The road conditions were crazy with cars in the ditch both ways but it was so worth it, thanks to Susan for driving! Neil's demo was amazing, he painted a 4x6 ft canvas fearlessly and beautifully.
Both Neil and Doug urged us to build a habit of doing a quick painting everyday focusing on visual editing, lots of paint, and strong values. This is one of the little ones I’ve done since coming home. I think this will prove to be one of the most important projects I have done. I'll post more on how I'm approaching it and what I'm learning over the next while. I'm moved into my new studio and soo happy to be there.