Let's raise a glass!

This 2007 painting, titled Very Special, was an experiment in working with dark tones. Very Special indeed since it stars the bottle of Courvoisier (contents long since emptied!) we'd brought home from France in 1995 -- possibly our last ever, since this delectable cognac is now hitting $90 a pop in BC liquor stores.

But it seemed a good choice to help me savour some seasonal memories. So many notable events have happened for me in the August-September period; it's really beyond statistical chance. Every job change I've ever made, geographic relocations, family milestones,...and how about this August's 40th anniversary for John and me?!

Reflecting on this season, as I do every year, I realized it's a big anniversary for my art work -- ten years since the August vacation when I decided to hunker down and do art consistently, productively, regardless...regardless of not having gone to art school, regardless of working full-time, regardless of this, regardless of that. Oh, I'd been drawing steadily for more than 25 years, taking courses when I could, starting to paint from the time we moved to Vancouver -- painting and repainting, but never talking about it much, never showing people what I did.

In August 2000, that changed. I would produce. I would talk about it. I would exhibit --digitally, at least. I gathered all my resources, books, sketchbooks, notes, and decided to set annual goals -- and meet them. I chose as my log book my newest sketchbook from my May birthday and inscribed a frontispiece with the counsel that has meant so much to me from the time I first read it in Balzac's novel Cousine Bette.

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In the novel it's a cautionary note, reflecting unfortunately on Stanislas, the young artist who has so many gifts and possibilities -- but whiles away his attentions and comes to nothing.

In that first year of my new program, I focused on drawing intensively, based on an exercise I'd read about: "Draw on a roll of paper. Draw every day for a year. Do not unroll your work until the end of the year." With the support of my priceless home team, the roll was never left behind as we travelled back and forth on our weekends, and in 365 days, I missed drawing only on three. At the end of the year -- on our Aug-Sept 2001 vacation at the cabin -- John took my picture at the roll's unfurling.

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From then on, I set an annual goal for painting, sometimes based on volume, sometimes on a particular area of study. In my fourth year, I gathered my paintings and had a personal consultation at Emily Carr -- a big milestone in itself, which yielded some new insights. Fast-forward to the 2009-2010 goal to complete the Astrological Plants series, a goal I'll achieve on schedule, finishing the final one in September. Looking in my log book this morning, I discovered something kind of neat: When I finish Astro-plants, I'll have completed 64 logged paintings since my resolution of ten years ago. I think I'd better hunker down, whip out an additional painting this September, and make that a total of 65 -- for my 65th year.

Now there's cause for celebration! Cheers. Good Health. Happy Days.

Airheads: Sublime to ridiculous?

Working on two paintings at a time (as I did with Scorpio and Aries)
seems to be the best way to bring the Astrological Plants series to harvest.

This time, I decided to work together on Libra and Aquarius, the remaining Air signs, playing in different ways with the same design elements I previously used for Air in Gemini -- the upward-pointing triangle with crossbar, the whirling symbol from Neolithic patterns, and the butterfly reminiscent of the swallowtails that visited our Upper Squamish garden.

Libra is ruled by Venus and thus shares its colours with Taurus -- green, blue, yellow, pastels, and the metal, copper. The wild columbine is surely a plant Venus would smile on (so I'vedecided -- Venus' plants are many, prominent among them are roses and lilies). I've read that the "columbine" name comes from the flower's shape "said to resemble a dove (columba)" -- I don't quite get this, but it's nonetheless a graceful association for this joyful plant of coastal fields and highlands.

You can view Libra-in-progress and then switch to something completely different....! Aquarius.

Aquarius is ruled by Uranus, a planet which (like Pluto and Neptune) was unknown in classical times. Their discovery presented a dilemma for later astrologers who had to think fast to make some creative connections between new planets and known astrological signs and the things the signs connect with in human affairs. The colours that have come to be assigned to Uranus are described as "electric tones, light azure, silvery white, striped; a profusion of glaring colors creating a harmonious result." Check out the evolution here.

My sourcebook continues: "Little is yet known concerning the plants of Uranus...(They) may be similar to those of Venus and the Moon...It is probable that plants possessing strange occult properties such as mistletoe and orchids belong to (Uranus and Neptune)."

Well, Lobaria pulmonaria is certainly "strange" and I've loved it from first sight -- it's a flat hand-sized lichen that grows in leathery fistfuls, often in the clefts of trees, bundled with licorice ferns. Blown to the ground, a clump could last for weeks in the moist air of Upper Squamish but whenever I brought some back to Vancouver to sketch and study, the ripply sheets would dry out and flatten within a day. And it's "occult" enough that, after my first sighting and a lot of searching, I had to contact UBC's Hort Line to find out what the heck it was.

Interestingly, the common name "lungwort" is attached to some other wild plants, probably because they were used in healing lung disorders. (And here's an odd reminiscence: The sheets of Lobaria resemble the dessicated paper-thin section of a cancerous lung that I happened upon in the filing cabinet of my first Canadian boss, who was a pulmonary specialist.)

It was fun to work on these two paintings in tandem -- switching back and forth between the soft greens of Libra and the electric tones of Aquarius.