Currently Showing: Westland Gallery – The Big Little Christmas Show
My Morning Rush, acrylic on birch panel, 10×10″
I’ve been busily creating some small works for The Big Little Christmas Show. This show keeps in mind the challenge of buying original art as a gift. The show includes a variety of easy-to-own smaller pieces, perfect for gift giving.
Copies of my book, Paint & Prose: A Way Finder’s Meander will be available at the gallery during the show, along with the remaining framed originals created for the anthology. This is the perfect weather to curl up with art and words meant to evoke your sacred stories and a mindful connection to self and setting.
Happy Spring! Have you had a chance to get your feet in some mud yet? What are you growing?
I am researching new hiking boots for a trip my love and I have planned for June. There are some bucket list treks on our agenda and I’ll need solid new kicks that I haven’t already walked holes into. Can’t wait.
And closer than that is Launch Day for Paint & Prose: A Way Finder’s Meander! While the book at press, we are working out launch details and preparing for the show. Frames for the original pieces from the book are ordered, I’m finishing up some other paintings for the show, and signing and packing up the prints and art card sets that are going out to our Kickstarter campaign supporters in gratitude for their role in making this book real.
We printed three favourites as Prints and another three as an Art Card set and added a couple of cards as a bonus. They turned out really nicely. Have a look!
I look forward to getting these into the hands of this book’s super supporters! Thank you so much as ever for your ongoing enthusiasm. I can’t wait to see those of you who will be able to be there during launch week!
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
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”
National Poetry month poster designed by Megan Fildes!
“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!
A Chromatic Life continues at Westland Gallery until October 13. During the span of the show, I’m sharing images and prose around some of my works.
You can view the full collection of A Chromatic Life online here.
Violet Hour
I could believe any magical thing told me in the moments that dusk is melting away the lingering yellow gauze seams of day with her violet breath.
Violet Hour, Acrylic on canvas, 48×48
At field’s shoreline, a last wash of summer sun glanced warmly on the flotsam of this departing day. Wise to sky’s sleight of hand, we caught a glimpse of what she held twinkling in her violet palm as she tucked all in and reverently folded the shadows away. Swayed quiet by her mysterious light, our own hands whispered into each other as we turned to home.
A Chromatic Life
Anna Clarey & Erica Dornbusch
September 18th – October 13th Artist Talk: Wednesday, Oct. 3rd at 7 pm
The reception for A Chromatic Life at Westland Gallery this past Friday evening was busy and wonderful. I really enjoyed hearing people comment on their response to the juxtaposition between Anna Clarey’s work and my own. Many reflected on the very different ways our brushes visually described our common themes, yet noting a shared deep reverence for the subject.
A Chromatic Life runs until October 13th. If you are not local to London, you can view the collection online:
During the exhibition, I’ll be sharing images and related pieces of prose around some of my works. Your thoughts and comments are welcome here on my blog, or elsewhere on social media if we are already connected. If not, please feel free to reach out!
This is Threshold (sold).
Threshold, Acrylic, 60×36″ This piece has been sold
“Every walk into the sunrise through any humble gap in the woods can feel like a pilgrimage. Before entry, we pause in the shadow at the threshold and gather the pieces of light to us as into an empty bowl. We lift and wonder at each one, knowing that filling up with them will not weigh anything down. Maybe these are flying lessons.”
About the show: A Chromatic Life
Anna Clarey & Erica Dornbusch
September 18th – October 13th Artist Talk: Wednesday, Oct. 3rd at 7 pm
Tonight is the reception for A Chromatic Life, featuring my and Anna Clarey’s work at Westland Gallery in London ON. Anna and I, along with Westland Gallery are very excited to share this collection celebrating the Ontario landscape that we spend so much time in! I hope to see you in person if you are close enough to attend tonight or at other times during the show, which runs September 18th – October 13th. If you are a far flung friend, you can view the collection online:
During the show’s run, I’ll be sharing several of my pieces from the collection along with some thoughts around each. You are most welcome to follow along and comment here on my blog, or elsewhere on social media if we are connected.
This is Creek Bend Study. (This piece has been sold)
Creek Bend Study, Acrylic, 24×12”
I find the deepest bliss when I step out of my own biography and melt into a landscape quietly and for long enough that everything is forgotten. If I imagine myself without edges or needs beyond breathing and being, at some point I will be neatly enveloped by my surroundings. And then the din of being outside takes itself up again and I am delightfully ignored.
A Chromatic Life is a paired show featuring my and Anna Clarey’s recent work at Westland Gallery in London ON. Anna and I are both deeply inspired by the outdoors and though our styles are very different, you will certainly get a sense of the deep impact the Ontario landscape has on our art and psyches.
It’s always interesting to see the works hung in a different setting and context than the one in which they were painted. There’s a new allowing for them to have Been Made, after the Conceiving Of, and then, the Making Of them.
During the show, I’ll be sharing several of my pieces from the collection along with some thoughts around each. You are most welcome to follow along and comment here on my blog, or elsewhere on social media if we are connected.
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.
Happy Late Summer, I hope you are still getting outside a lot as we shift towards fall. I know I don’t want to miss a thing. September always feels more like the beginning of the new year to me than January does. Things, including me, feel invigorated and inspired by travel, rested and ready for what’s next.
In keeping with that vibrancy, I’m happy to announce that I am now being represented exclusively in the Montreal area by Galerie Bloom.
Needless to say, I am very excited to be hanging with their roster of wonderful artists in this gorgeous space in Old Montreal. They are located at 224, rue St-Paul Ouest Montréal, Québec H2Y 1Z9
You can view my artist page on the Galerie Bloom website here.
I was very grateful to friends who were willing and able to help out with transporting the first shipment of works to the gallery in the juicily colourful Madmatters company van.
