Blog

It's 2 weeks today & with family here from Ontario & a 6 day trip to the Okanagan I have to cook with gas to get ready for my next show. Luckily I'm somewhat organized from the last one and will be inside in the same room as last year. Familiarity is a bonus when it comes to participating in art shows, I've decided. All I have to do is get some matting and finishing on some paintings and organize the packing up the day before. That means I can enjoy the next week away!

Here's the details for Minnekhada--it'll be great fun & I hope to see you there!

Second Annual Minnekhada Art in the Park Festival

Historic Minnekhada Lodge

Minnekhada Regional Park, Coquitlam

Saturday August 21st and Sunday August 22nd, 2010 11 am – 4 pm

Discover the spirit of Minnekhada!

Inspire your senses at this unique event! Take a scenic walk through the park to historic Minnekhada Lodge where you will be delighted by environmental art installations, and a wide range of work by artists from throughout the Metro Vancouver Region. While at this event you can enjoy live jazz, be entertained by performers, explore the charming gardens, indulge your taste buds at the outdoor café barbeque, go on a guided nature walk, support local artists, watch ongoing artist demonstrations, participate in an art workshop, be part of the community, learn about First Nations history, and Voyageur history.

Free admission and free parking at the Quarry Rd. parking lot. There will be a free shuttle bus running between the parking lot and Minnekhada lodge for those needing it.

Presented by Minnekhada Park Association and Metro Vancouver

Directions: From Lougheed Highway turn north onto Coast Meridian Road and travel 2.5 km and turn right on Victoria Drive; keep left on Victoria to Quarry Road which takes you to the park entrance. Park at the Parking Area at Quarry Road Entrance.

For more details about this event and to find out about other Metro Vancouver programs, go to the event calendar www.metrovancouver.org

How the time does fly! I absolutely love this time of year, which is why I spend the alternating 6 month period where it's summer in Australia! The long evenings, the warmth, the summer flowers, living and eating outdoors...what more could a person want? It's really hard to get to work (not that I am exceedingly diligent or obsessed as an artist at the best of times!)

I spent last weekend on Vancouver Island, trying to catch fish. At least I got some great photos, I think I'll be able to paint some so I'll upload them onto here so you can see what I'm intending to work on. There were no fish to photograph so my career as a biological artist isn't going to happen soon! And the orcas that put on a great show for us near Active Pass, Gabriola Island, on the way back, were just a bit too far away to get good photos of. The performance, however, was spectacular, for a full deck of ferrywatchers ooh-ing and ahhing for almost 30 minutes as they spy-hopped, jumped out of the water & crashed down, sending water flying everywhere. You could see them for a mile, I swear! And then I caught the full moon rising over Mount Baker at the end of a long summer evening--the sky full of purple and pinks with a big golden moon catching the edge of the snow-covered volcano. I got a couple of reasonable photos, although the light was fading quickly, so I might see what I can do with them. The camera doesn't see as well as the eye, I've noticed, but it's a good "aide memoire" if I can get the image imprinted onto my brain.

I'm going to have a busy couple of weeks leading up to my next show at MInnekhada Park in Port Coquitlam, August 21 and 22. I'm expecting some email invitations and maps shortly so I'll try to put them up as soon as possible. That said, there's company coming and I have some Okanagan travel to do. We're going to double up by having fun with my brother's family who are coming out from Ontario, in Vancouver and in Penticton, and we're going to start looking for retirement property to include some studio/gallery space for me. The 2-3 year plan is starting to appear! Stay tuned, and put your name on my mailing list if you want to be emailed with details, or if you want to be notified when I put a new blog posting out so you don't have to remember to look.

And speaking of the Okanagan, I put a new painting up under "What's new"--have a look at my inukshuk! A summer version of a winter image. I don't think I'd be taking a photo of one in the snow--well, maybe at Whistler this winter if I get skiing before heading south. That's it for now, stay tuned!

Here's me in June at the Maple Ridge Art in the Park show. Saturday was glorious, sun (after so long in Vancouver we'd almost forgotten it!), beautiful temperature, and I stretched my paintings outside the tent for everyone to enjoy. Sunday, however, was a different story. After being lulled into complacency by Saturday's weather I setup everything as per the day before. About 11:30 it then proceeded to rain and everything had to go back under the tent--and quickly!! There it sat for the rest of the afternoon, which did brighten up about 3 pm but not enough to risk moving everything again!

Still, I sold 2 originals and could have sold 3--the middle painting on the right side was sold Saturday and on Sunday someone else came to buy it. Sorry she waited. That's happened to me a few times--people have liked something, then phoned the next day, and the painting they liked is gone. If I knew ahead of time I'd paint doubles!

I thought you'd like to see my newest painting, still in progress. I'm thinking of calling it "Be Still My Heart" as it's from a photo of my sister who was killed in a car accident in Nice, France at the age of 25. She was a gorgeous and talented girl & we all miss her dearly. And, she was very beautiful, in appearance and spirit.

If you have any other suggestions for a title I'd love to hear them!

The other news I have is that "Reaching For a Star", the silk mermaid, has been professionally scanned at My Art Channel and is available to be printed, any size, onto quality art paper or canvas. Contact me for quotes! It can be viewed here, or you can see some more of my paintings at my mini-website there, at www.elainewatts.myartchannel.com . There's the potential for yet another blog there but I think I'll stick with this one for a while! All the technology involved with websites and keeping things updated can be mind-boggling at times, but I'd better get used to it!

Hi again everyone!

It's been a busy couple of weeks, what with the Maple Ridge Art in the Park sale prep and cleanup, and the arrival of summer. Not to mention an emergency root canal fit in this week! Other than that it was all good, I think. I'm starting to think of myself as a webmaster (or is that webmistress?) which has added another item to my "to do" list, as well as opening up a huge area of learning and skill development, and research.

I thought I'd put this little painting up here as a reminder to myself of how far I've come. This painting is of Atlin Lake, in north western BC, near the Yukon border. I was up there just about the time of the summer solstice, before I started painting, and this was one of the earliest paintings I did, before I started to think of becoming an artist, and selling my work. I should say that this little painting is indeed sold however it is great to have the photo of it to remind me of both the time and the place that originally inspired the work. Those concepts are really the core of my work--capturing a special moment (this one hiking with my husband, in the wilderness, in one of the most beautiful spots I've been to). The light on the glacier and Atlin Lake, the rock pile (an Inukshuk perhaps?) in the foreground, the long hours of daylight in the far north, as you approach the Artic Circle--it is still all there in my mind.

Mostly I don't stop & reflect on the past very much, but look to the future and plan for what is next to come. That gets me going about a million miles an hour, for I'm one of those people who want to put as much into their day as possible--no time to think back! Maybe that's one of the reasons that I paint--it gives me better balance, a reflection on what's passed, a tangible image to look at while I do that, rather than running straight forward and never even looking sideways.

Hope you enjoy my musings, let me know what you think and if anyone out there has more ideas about how I can drive more traffic to my website PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE send me a note! I'd love to get more of my art out there in the world for people to enjoy!

Hi everyone! I'm playing with images on my blog in preparation for transferring over from my first blog-site, http://paintingawayintheworld.blogspot.com. Before I swap I want to make sure I have at least the same functionality here as I did with the original spot. And, I'm guessing there might be (yet) a lot more to learn here on my website, as far a technology goes. Sometimes I refer to myself as a techno-peasant since I don't usually have the 1-2 year old toys, let alone the latest and greatest gadgets. (And that isn't even mentioning my capability of using what I have to its fullest extent!)

Of course, at this moment, I should probably be putting the final preparations together for my show on Saturday but I somehow am feeling quite relaxed about how it's going to go. (That calm is at odds with waking up twice last night with panicked dreams, about being in a big stadium and getting lost in the crowd, then crushed against a diminishing pathway & unable to breathe, I might add!) Funny how the mind works, isn't it? However, I have my gear together, my newest paintings matted & put into their glossy clear envelopes, and really all I need to do is get price tags made up for everything.

So maybe I'll paint today instead! Thursday afternoons have been my painting time for the last 5 weeks however the sessions with Faith have finished for now, until late in the summer. It's time to get into my own studio (slash-dining room!) and get at my own original work.

So, I'd best do what artists do, and get onto my painting board. Hope to see you at my show on the weekend, and I'll update (both) my blogs next week with the latest.

Until I start blogging here, you can read my blog currently at http://paintingawayintheworld.blogspot.com . Tell me what you think!