Fat Cats and Starving Dogs

Update

In 2018, there will be a national jury show of botanical paintings at the Canadian Museum of Nature.

My goal is to get a piece in accepted by the jury and displayed at this event.  The challenge is to find something that is artistically different, but still acceptable to the strict conventions of botanical art.

While I accept the need for the focus of the work to be on the plant, and that the plant needs to be accurately rendered in terms of scale, physical structure, and colour so that the audience can tell one plant from another; I reject the notion that backgrounds need to be white and the plant isolated from any other details.

I believe that plant lives within a dynamic environment that gives meaning their form and function.  So, while some plants thrive, others are endangered. Particularly, when plants come into contact with urban development.

This clash between nature and man allows me to explore my other interests of urban landscapes and architecture.

I am inspired by the works of Martin Johnson Heade, Margaret Mee, and Marianne North.  These are artists who make the world within which plants live relevant to their artwork.

Unfortunately, I am not confident that the botanical societies will provide me the space to create work that will be shown in their exhibitions.

Without their support, I feel it will be very challenging to get acceptance by more traditional artist galleries.  Traditional landscapes and still life paintings is not my goal.  I want to create something that is contemporary and exploring the issues of today.

The submission deadline is January 2018, so in the meantime, I need develop my approach and painting skills to the point where I can accurately render native plants in oils.

Thank you for dropping by!  It has been almost a year since my last post. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough time for both art and blog posts.  With the start of a new year, I hope to post more consistently, but less frequently.

Over the past 9 months I have been very busy with art projects:

1. Successfully created a digital sketch for the first ever online exhibit of botanical art that was staged by the Botanical Artists of Canada.  This work built on my summer efforts to use my iPad for drawings. This work also represented the start of new series of projects that explore themes of plants and architecture.

2. Successfully completed a project proposal that was submitted almost at the last minute.  While the proposal was not accepted, it showed me new possibilities for the future.

3. Worked hard to create and complete a piece for VAM39. Unfortunately, I was unable to make the deadline, but look forward to next year’s juried competition.

4.  Successfully cleaned and reorganized my studio.  While this may not sound like much, it represented 2 months of effort and many trips to the dump.  With this studio house-cleaning project done, I will be better able to create larger works of art in the future.

5. Finally, on short notice, I created a piece for a person who was retiring.  While the work could have used more time, the fact that I was able to successfully compete the project within a month is a major achievement.

That brings things up to date.

For the future, you can expect posts about once per month

Again, thanks for dropping by.

Nice piece about how public space is being re-shaped by digital and corporate influences.