Posted on May 3, 2012 by sharon

Spring Studio Tour May 5 & 6

The fore­cast is sunny and warm for this week­end –ideal con­di­tions for my open house stu­dio tour this year.  I will be trans­form­ing my back­yard into an out­door gallery with my out­door art and indoor art pieces includ­ing my Black and … Read the rest of this entry →

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Posted on March 25, 2012 by sharon

Featured Artist on Artbomb

I am excited to be the fea­tured artist this Mon­day on Art­bomb Daily an online art auc­tion where the art changes daily.  One of my Black & White Pan­els will be avail­able for sale. Art­bomb was just fea­tured today on CBC Spark — a radio show on tech­nol­ogy and culture–you can check out their pod­cast at http://www.cbc.ca/spark/2012/03/spark-177-march-25–2012/

Art­bomb is curated by Andrea Car­son, founder and pub­lisher of one of Canada’s most widely read cul­ture blogs, viewoncanadianart.com.  I highly rec­om­mend sub­scrib­ing in order to keep up to date on the Cana­dian art scene.

You can also view the com­plete Black & White Panel series on my website.

 

 

 

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Posted on March 19, 2012 by sharon

Spring In the Air–Studio Tour Time

The weather is already feel­ing like May which is highly unusu­ally for this time of year.  I dis­tinctly feel that I should be get­ting ready for the North Toronto Group of Artists (NTGA) Spring Stu­dio Tour which usu­ally hap­pens in early May –sort of like wak­ing up on a Sat­ur­day and real­iz­ing that you don’t really have to get up quite yet!   I have been involved with this great group of local artists for the past four years and am plan­ning to con­vert my back­yard into a tem­po­rary gallery space with a pos­si­ble instal­la­tion piece in the works along with my out­door paint­ings. For more details you can check out the NTGA web­site for the brochure and map details.

I am already tak­ing advan­tage of the warm weather and paint­ing out­doors again.  I am back at work on my home series and work­ing on three dif­fer­ent paint­ings. I am also begin­ning some exper­i­men­ta­tion with poly­ester plate lith­o­g­ra­phy on the can­vas in com­bi­na­tion with the paint. Lots of work to do before May comes!

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Posted on February 2, 2012 by sharon

Black & White Panel Series

Over the last few weeks I have been work­ing on what I call my “black & white panel series”  where I have taken the same size of paper and restricted my colour palette to only black and white acrylic paint.  I con­sis­tently did them every morn­ing and found that my incli­na­tion was to develop the ideas of one panel and respond to it in my next panel.  As I viewed the entire series of 20 pan­els that emerged out of this process,  I saw group­ings of pan­els that responded to each other –a dia­logue was created.

While these works began an exer­cise in set­ting lim­its (given my love of colour) I became involved in the rela­tion­ship between the the two colours and how they drove my sense of com­po­si­tion rather that decid­ing on the direc­tion of the com­po­si­tion first–the move­ment of the paint and the merg­ing of the tonal­i­ties dic­tated what direc­tion to go in. They have an “in the moment” feel and yet are detailed and nuanced at the same time.

View the com­plete Black & White Panel Series to see for your­self.

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Posted on January 31, 2012 by sharon

The Search for Authenticity this Year

The mean­ing of a box

three hours on the mean­ing of a box

metaphor­i­cal

lit­eral

vir­tual

non­sense

present your mus­ings on video by Friday

Stretch your mind, stretch your bound­aries but not over the age of 30.…..too late.…need latte now.….

pay bills.….focus on boxes later.……

2012 has just arrived and with it came the usual arti­cles and media dis­cus­sions on the “best” of 2011 etc. One inter­est­ing radio piece (on CBC Radio Q) had an in depth dis­cus­sion of cul­ture in gen­eral and how noth­ing is new any­more. We are in a cul­tural rut, so to speak, where noth­ing orig­i­nal is being cre­ated anymore—just a rehash­ing of old ideas, fash­ions, music, art –you name it, it has already been thought of and/or done.

One of the most orig­i­nal, inven­tive eras that the human race has ever expe­ri­enced is right under our nose/staring us in the face and that is the tech­no­log­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion that we are caught up in and we are right in the thick of it. We don’t even yet know or can pre­dict what the full impli­ca­tions of these advances will mean but it has already changed the realms of the social, polit­i­cal and eco­nomic on a global scale. It has affected our per­sonal and pub­lic lives and changed the way we relate to each other and our­selves. If that is not orig­i­nal I don’t know what is…it is so seis­mic in scope and pre­dom­i­nates every­thing, that it is no sur­prise that other aspects of pop­u­lar cul­ture fade into the background.

Art has always reflected the social, polit­i­cal and eco­nomic times of its mak­ing and we are see­ing the inte­gra­tion and reflec­tion of this tech­nol­ogy rev­o­lu­tion in dig­i­tal media, tra­di­tional media, pho­tog­ra­phy etc. Just look at the course cal­en­dar from OCAD (Ontario Col­lege of Art & Design) to see the changes. Incre­men­tal shifts in style, cul­ture, music are sig­nif­i­cant and tell a story but one has to step back from it to rec­og­nize the seis­mic shifts under­ly­ing it. Ironi­cially, the very “rehash­ing” of old ideas is a nec­es­sary process and requires that very orig­i­nal­ity and inven­tive­ness that cre­ated it in the first place. Iden­ti­fy­ing that ker­nel of authen­tic­ity and view­ing it in a dif­fer­ent light that makes it rel­e­vant to a new audi­ence is vital.

Chal­leng­ing myself in my stu­dio prac­tice with new tech­niques, media and ideas is a pri­or­ity for myself this new year. Some­times being in a rut sim­ply means a fal­low period where sig­nif­i­cant changes need to be absorbed and con­sid­ered before the next new art move­ment, fash­ion icon appears—and it will cer­tainly appear. But first, get me that latte.…

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Posted on November 25, 2011 by sharon

Latest Black & White Panels

I have been focus­ing on my black and white pan­els this week–out of the four­teen pan­els I started with I feel I have seven good ones that are now com­pleted.  I have been work­ing on a few group­ings with dif­fer­ent approaches–one set of three have been poured and manip­u­lated while another group­ing has been done in palette knife.  The next group­ing grew out of the  idea of scrap­ing back to gain tex­ture and inter­est in the tonal­ity ranges and will hope­fully been done this week…

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Posted on November 14, 2011 by sharon

Happy Birthday Claude Monet

“Despite my extremely mod­est prices, deal­ers and art lovers are turn­ing their backs on me.  It is very depress­ing to see the lack of inter­est shown in an art object which has no mar­ket value.”  –Claude Monet (Born Novem­ber 14, 1840)

Since today is Claude Monet’s birth­day I thought this was the per­fect quote to start the day. I read it last week in a weekly newslet­ter sent out by  Robert Genn which is always infor­ma­tive. It reminds all of us involved in artis­tic endeav­ours that art must come from the soul and even Monet had his tough moments.  This paint­ing is one of my daughter’s favourites (it is so hard to choose just one!)

I leave you with another rel­e­vant quote from Mozart that com­ple­ments this line of thought: “Nei­ther a lofty degree of intel­li­gence nor imag­i­na­tion nor both together go to the mak­ing of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.”

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Posted on November 11, 2011 by sharon

Home Series: Canola Gold

Two abstract/impressionistic paint­ing­sof the prairies emerged within a week of each other this Fall.  Along with “Sun­set Into Night” which was posted in my last blog entry, I also com­pleted “Canola Gold” (40″ x 60″ Acrylic on Can­vas) the same week.

The mem­ory of the colour of the spring/summer canola against the clear blue prairie sky was in my mind as the paint­ing took shape.  To see the entire Home Series “Nei­ther Here Nor There” you can view my Home Series Gallery and my Instal­la­tion Gallery.

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Posted on November 10, 2011 by sharon

Home Series — in Process

I took advan­tage of the last few warm Fall days to com­plete two large paint­ings that con­nect to my Home Series — I worked on my cement pad and poured my paints as the squir­rels looked at me and the leaves fell down. I com­pleted a for­est instal­la­tion on one aspect of the series last year which was very sat­is­fy­ing. Now I am focus­ing on the impres­sion­is­tic idea of prairie land­scape and mem­o­ries with­out falling back on the usual
rep­re­sen­ta­tional images. The series is evolv­ing into a direc­tion I am now call­ing Home: “Nei­ther Here Nor There”. The expres­sion orginates from an old Yid­dish say­ing that ties together the old and the new. The series is based on my rec­ol­lec­tions of grow­ing up on the prairies and yet not being of the prairies. You can view my artist state­ment on my Home Series Gallery to read more about it.

This new paint­ing is 40″ x 60″ and titled “From Sun­set Into Night”.

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Posted on October 15, 2011 by sharon

Yonge/Lawrence BIA Artwalk 2011

I have always felt priv­i­leged being part of the local art com­mu­nity in my neigh­bour­hood. There are a sur­pris­ingly large num­ber of self-employed entre­pre­neurs and artists busy work­ing here in the Yonge & Lawrence area and it feels good to con­nect with fel­low artists who live close by.  The North Toronto Group of Artists (NTGA) usu­ally orga­nizes an annual fine art show and sale and this year it is at Blessed Sacra­ment Church Novem­ber 4 & 5 just south of Yonge & Lawrence (24 Cher­i­tan Ave).  This group of 22 artists is an ener­getic, moti­vated group of great tal­ent. Check out the NTGA web­site for more details on the show.

The Yonge Lawrence BIA is pro­mot­ing Art­walk 2011 where local busi­nesses are part­nered with a local artist and their work is dis­played for approx­i­mately two weeks lead­ing up to the NTGA Fine Art Show.  Peo­ple can vote for their favorite win­dow through the Young Lawrence BIA web­site.  Paper­marche is dis­play­ing my birch series until the end of October.

Birch series at Papermarche

 

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