Still Life, Tomatoes

Shades of Red, 6x8 Oil on Canvas/Panel Sold

The tomatoes are lush and plentiful this year and ripening madly in shades of greens, green-orange, orange, orange-red and deep rich reds. Unlike the perfect round specimens from the store homegrown tomatoes are alive with flavour and lumpy with character. Their colour and shape with it's lumps and bumps are just meant to be painted.

Sunflowers and Red Wing Black Bird

Secrets of a Fall Garden 16x20 Oil on Canvas
SOLD

This time of year is a sensory smorgasbord with geese calling their way south, birds feasting on berries, crisp apples right off the tree, yellow sunflowers, fields with golden swaths, and the crunchy sound and rich smell of fallen leaves. As if those aren’t reasons enough to love fall there’s a particularly soft and mellow quality to the light. It’s a golden colour that infuses everything with it’s soft warm hue.

Back and Forth Between Still Life and Whimsicals

Peony on a July Afternoon 6x8 Oil/Canvas/Panel

Peonies, such seemingly fragile blossoms yet in spite of wind, hail and pounding rain they've hung in there long enough to be painted.

I'm once again exploring still life after a couple of years of working on a series of whimsical paintings featuring wildcats, birds and flowers. I am, as ever, in awe with the way light plays upon flowers, fruit and objects. Light and me, it's a love affair that never really goes away, it just sits quietly waiting while the whimsicals with their bright color and opportunities for imaginative play keeps me captive.

Some artists remain faithful to one style and medium then there are others like myself who are a bit more fickle. I've gone from watercolor to a scratchboard/watercolor/pencil crayon mix, then turned to acrylic, digital and eventually to oil paint. My style morphed and changed too, going from realistic to a naive and whimsical style when I began illustrating and then returning to realism once again when I began exploring oils and still life. Each style has a hold on me for a time but no one style ever wins, I work in whichever style suits my mood and the subject matter.


One thing I'm sure of, different styles and mediums enrich one another and they are all rewarding, I'm not sure I could choose a favorite. What about you, what is your experience with working in more than one style? Or are you loyal to just one? If you are an art lover, do you like to see an artist exploring or do you prefer to see them stick to one style and medium? Curious.

Symbolism in Art

 Journey On
18x18 Sold

Recently I had a conversation with some friends about how paintings are interpreted. How much of the understanding of a work of art is based on the various elements the artists use to get across their concept and how much of the interpretation is really influenced by the viewers own life experiences?

Sometimes the message is quite obvious and other times it's ambiguous and very much open for interpretation regardless of the artist's intent. My own work has it's own symbology which I hope comes across to some degree yet I rather like knowing the viewer relates to it in their own way too.

Journey On represents the passage of time, where it takes us, where we've been, how we get there and with whom. The moon symbolizes the rhythm of the years, the boat represents life's journeys and was inspired by ancient middle eastern vessels, while the cat and bird, two creatures typically not seen as companions become shipmates in this painting, as they do in much of my work.

As an artist or collector what is your experience with the interpretations of art? Do you get the same meaning from a work of art as the artist intended? I'm interested in your opinions.

Orange Wild Cat Oil Painting

Que Sera20x12, Oil on Canvas
Sold
Another year has passed and with it some very good moments and along with some inevitable sad ones. We can't experience this great big wonderful life without having both, it's what gives life it's richness and depth. This painting is symbolic of our viewing of the past year, as we look back at the past and ahead to the future.