I had a few shows lined up to see; glad I was able to get to them. Did I make some art in between? Oh, just a little bit.

Viewing

My first stop this week was a new gallery in the Parker Street Studios, an offshoot of the printing services run by Alan Somerville at Fidelis Art Prints. He refurbished part of the production area into a client gallery, and showed off the space with art from the whole family. I was particularly drawn to the closeups of texture and wear from Valerie Somerville. This one is “Rustic Door Latch”, a 20×20 limited edition print on canvas.

For the next two months, Alan will be featuring group shows in the new space, Parker Street Gallery, and I’m looking forward to seeing the work he includes. If the timing works out, I’ll even try to be one of them!

On Saturday, I was pleased to get to the opening at THIS Gallery for new work from Shannon Pawliw, called The Anti-Bland Brigade. Oh my! The palette, the layers, the brave paint application — it just shakes you up, in a good way.

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And saved for a Sunday drive, we headed to Whistler for the Tom Thomson show, North Star, at the Audain Museum.

The show notes were particularly enlightening, explaining what little is known of him, including that he was “virtually untrained as a painter”.

I’ve been to see his sketches in Ottawa many times, but this show included pieces from the McMichael collection as well, which was new to me. This piece, from that collection, is titled “Rock, Maccalum’s Channel”, from 1914. Look at those pinks!

The exhibit included photographs by, and of, Thomson, and I appreciated the composition in both the paintings and those candid shots. So much of this work stays in my brain when I think of art.

Meetings & Making

For my weekly checkin with the Arizona Collage Collective, I finished three more of my spelling book collage spreads.

My other regular meetings this week, with SLMM, focused on what may or may not be a finished series. I have a good handful of pieces I quite like, as I mentioned last week. But when I ran it by Seattle studio mate Joan Bazaz, too many pieces dropped below the bar. Back to the drawing board, making changes, most barely visible to the eye.

So as a distraction, I tried another blended landscape from our trip to Vancouver Island.

See those pink scratches in the sky? Hold that thought…

Experimenting

I’m continuing to make marks on manila paper and try larger collages.

Last week’s pink marks were scanned and became a layered set of faint marks and texture.

If you squint, you can see that I used it as interest in the sky, in the landscape above, to add a dash of pink.

And I’ve got another idea in the works, that came out of a random comment in a meeting, but I needed supplies: vodka! Stay tuned.

Between the planned visits and casual conversations, I do love where ideas connect and send us in new directions. Did you get any inspiration from the ether this week?

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