Creating a joyful art narrative, moment by moment.
You know, I still can’t quite believe that this book idea got its real pages and was actually breathed and believed into being.
Continue reading “The launch chapter of Paint & Prose: A Way Finder’s Meander”
I don’t know enough about the cosmic formulation of serendipity to prove it or disprove it as a ‘thing’, but it happens enough in my world to get my attention. Here is a solid example. I decided to make an art book that combined my paintings and prose and have been deep in the process for more than a year.
My collection of art and words in this volume speaks to a mindful connection between ourselves and our landscape, I hope to invite you in to resonate with nature and evoke your own sacred stories. This is an important way of being for me and one I wanted to share in a book format. So I made the work, found a book printer and landed on an April publication date that fit into their production schedule.
Just a few weeks ago in doing some leg work around the ins and outs of making and publishing and marketing books in Canada, I tuned into the League of Canadian Poets. On their website, I found this blurb:
National Poetry Month began in the US in 1996, spearheaded by the Academy of American Poets on the steps of a post office in New York City. There, the story goes, Academy staff members handed out copies of T.S. Eliot’s poem, “The Waste Land,” which begins, “April is the cruellest month…” to individuals waiting in line to mail their tax returns. Established in Canada in 1998, NPM now brings together schools, publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, and poets from across the country to celebrate poetry and its vital place in Canada’s culture.
Celebrate nature with poetry this April!
The League of Canadian Poets invites you to celebrate the 21st annual National Poetry Month in April with nature – whether it’s mountain ranges, deserts, forests, oceans, or plains; whether it’s a cityscape or a landscape. Read, write, and share poetry that translates the emotional, practical, and reciprocal relationships we build – as individuals and communities – to the natural world onto the page”
“Well, now – how cosmic is that”, I thought.
I invite you to watch for daily shares and treats, here and elsewhere on social media throughout April as we celebrate National Poetry Month and gear up for the Paint & Prose’s birthdate!
I am ten days into a series that I am creating on paper as a daily study. I don’t know how many I will complete, but at minimum I’ve decided to make forty pieces. Each piece is an original acrylic work on archival 9×12 140lb paper and is partnered with 2-3 lines of my original prose. I am still trying to sort out the underpinnings of how this will all go, but for now, I invite you to follow along on my Facebook page and here on my blog for daily reveals.
I ( perhaps regrettably) will be open to considering prompts and if you sign up for my ridiculously irregular newsletters, I may get better at sending them and you’ll get a chance to win one of the Prose Paintings prettily framed and everything, at the end of the series.
Stay tuned for more updates!
FUSE90 Preview: Erica Dornbusch
click the link above to view clip…
A few weeks ago, Nick Scott, who specializes in writing, shooting, photographing and editing commercial and promotional content for broadcast and the internet reached out and asked if I’d like to be profiled in a series he makes, featuring area creatives for FUSE90. I was nervous but excited to agree! He came and set up in my studio for a conversation and then invited me to drop into my works in progress and ignore his presence :). He was wonderful to work with and was very adept at slipping into my environment, so that I felt pretty completely at ease. Then he went away and created a lovely flowing piece for which this is the preview. I feel very honoured to be featured and look forward to sharing the full piece once it’s available!
See some of Nick’s FUSE90 instalments here:
Each day for the duration of Vivid Alliances, now on at the Westland Gallery, I’ll pair and post a painting detail with a piece of original prose
Click the link at the bottom of each post to see the full painting within the whole collection!
Kawartha Hay Rolls ~ Acrylic ~ 20×30″
There’s this barn off Mill Line road set shyly back from the road, in behind a tall spruce hedge and a crooked split rail fence. A small rolling field washes up from the fence to the barn’s fieldstone foundation, a small dusty lake of August froth. I skirt the fence, and tiptoe in, tousling the Queen Anne’s lace along the hemline, shaking out buzzing bugs and rattling seed pods. I’m pulled in to where I know I have no clearance to wander, by an ethereal light that burnishes the edges of each body in this rolled hay installation. Late Summer Ontario Afternoon Sun blithely working the tops of these rolled bales with gold leaf, no one but me to see this mastery of light divinely hewn…
Is it just for joy
That it shines this way?
sol lucet omnibus
Click here to see the full piece and collection
Resurrection moss is a type of plant that hibernates in times of stress, most often due to a lack of moisture. In Southern Utah it occurs in profusion on the red rock of the area, making the cliffs appear ‘dirty’ in its dormant state. Then, when it comes into contact with moisture it blooms vividly and lushly within a matter of moments. The emerald green against the red rock is a verdant sight to behold.
My dearest and I spent our winter break hiking the area and witnessed several of these blooms as a result of an uncommon amount of precipitation. We had an astonishing time climbing and hiking among the rocks and cliffs and watching them change before our eyes. Expansively illustrated AHA moments spent witnessing the earth breathing.
Immersed in the fulsome silent presence of those red rock cliffs, we realized that wherever we are, we need to make ever more space for breathing and mindful being. To create favourable conditions for bloom and growth to keep happening.
We likely all could do better than to just meet the most basic conditions of our lives. We need to get outside more, stretch out frequently to connect, reach inside to grok our selves more fully, do more to inspire our own resurrection moss bloom…
Click to see the full image and collection
Vivid Alliances promises to be a
“brilliant and joyful exhibition exploring colour and abstraction”.
It will be on exhibit at The Westland Gallery beginning March 7.
I hope you’ll come and be part of the wild colourful dance!
Curious about my process in this series?
Want to know about Vicki’s unique pouring process?
Westland Gallery
156 Wortley Road
London, ON
N6C 3P5
t: 1-519-601-4420
e: info@westlandgallery.ca
So long summer with all your
fields of rising corn and dusty rolls of hay
Good night rocking end-of-dock meteor shower shows
So long lazy morning coffee flavoured adventure planning table meetings
till next time long meandering hikes and swims and runs
Continue reading “Summer So Long”
“Well, I have not been Not Painting while I’ve been Not Painting”
His eyes widened for a moment while he considered this.
“Ok”, he said momentarily, “I think I get you grammatically. Can you say more?”
We were outside, standing just off the trail in a deep forest off Northeys Bay Rd, near Lakefield, ON. ( We went outside in July and essentially came back inside in August at violet hour, when the end of summer streetlights came on and called us home. )
Continue reading “Not Not Painting but Not Painting”
This morning towards the end of my morning run, I came upon this random pop up art exhibit on a utility pole.
What a delight to stumble upon!
I loved the oddly juxtaposed mix of anatomical whimsy and various fasteners and hardware.
I don’t know who the artist is, so can’t give credit or find out more about them sadly.
There is never nothing going on…