100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #70

"Far End of Fisheye Lake"

6"x6", Acrylic

sold

I am experimenting with painting the mist on the water.  I like the effect.  I was reading a painter's newsletter that I subscribe to the Painters Keys by Robert Genn.  It talked about how artists that use a lot of photo reference end up with paintings that look stiff and like a photograpsh.  I have been using a lot of photo reference due to the fact that it is, on average, -20 Celsius and time constraints.  I love using a good photo as a reference.  I take a lot of them myself and get permission to use others.  I think it is a good tool as long as the painter does not get too caught up in copying exactly. 

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #69

"Moonlit Pelly Valley"

6"x6", Acrylic

*Sold*

"All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name." 

Andre Breton

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #68

"September - Pond on the Mitchell Road"

6"x8", Acrylic

sold

For those of you who have been following - a few days ago I did this same pond ( with the ice and water) but looking the other way.  This is looking up towards the Campbell Highway.  It was a really beautiful morning when I was at the pond and I love it when the mist forms on those cool September mornings and yes it is a sunrise. 

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.
Helen Keller

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #67

"Fall on the Magundy"

6"x8", Oil Stick

I received my new set of Oil sticks made by Paul deMarrais of Tennessee.

  The colours are fantastic but I think I am going to have to practice a bit as they are quite soft. I really enjoyed workiing with them tonight.  Paul even made a new colour for me  called "Jackie's Yukon Gold"

I hope I can become as skilled as him in the use of these oil sticks.

I am once again in Faro, I started this painting after unpacking the car and putting everything away and having a little bite to eat.  The roads were pretty good.  A bit icy in spots but the Klondike and Campbell highways were all plowed - it is full-blown winter again.  When the temps go above zero and everything starts melting in December - us Yukoners get a little nervous because we know it spells trouble when everything inevitably ices over again.

"A day's work is a day's work, neither more nor less, and the man who does it needs a day's sustenance, a night's repose and due leisure, whether he be painter or ploughman.

George Bernard Shaw

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #66

"Early Fall at Ketza  River Valley"

6"x8", Oil Pastel

sold

I am amazed that I actually was able to do my daily painting today.  I was ready to leave Whitehorse today but when my son and I left the hotel it was raining at 8:30 am and it was plus 4.   By 11am it was -8 and we were in a full-blown blizzard.  I went to Yukon Artists at Work and visited for a few hours and after listening to a number of highway closures  and seeing the blowing snow - I decided to stay another day.  I do not have my paints with me so I had to buy a small canvas and a small box of oil pastels and the following piece resulted.  For some reason I could not crop the picture because I borrowed my friend's camera to take the picture but hey!  I am happy I was able to complete and post painting number 66. Hopefully the roads are plowed and 

it is decent enough to travel tomorrow.

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #65

"Pond on Winter Evening"

6"X6", Acrylic

sold

 Photographer, Robert Postma has a winter scene with these colours in it.  Some of you may recognize it.  I did not copy the picture but the colours - my tribute to Robert's  gifted ability to capture the most beautiful and vibrant colours.  I wouldn't think to actually use this for a winter sunset but as soon as I saw this combination I instantly loved it. 

"Be soft in your practice. Think of the method as a fine silvery stream, not a raging waterfall. Follow the stream, have faith in its course. It will go its own way, meandering here, trickling there. It will find the grooves, the cracks, the crevices. Just follow it. Never let it out of your sight. It will take you...."

Sheng-yen

  

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #64

"A Yukon Pond"

6"x8", Acrylic

*sold*
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion." 

On Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau

I am not sure why the orange tones in the background show up so strongly when you look at the photo of this painting because it is not this bright in real life.  This pond is across the highway from our place on the Robert Campbell Highway. It is very beautiful when you have the snow but the pond isn't frozen over yet.

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #63

"Snowy Alders"

6"x6", Acrylic

Another piece with lots of  texture and molding paste.  I know this is not as colourful as a lot of my paintings but I had an idea in mind.  I underpainted the whole canvas with brown and then added the white mixed with molding paste  and scratched out the trees. It looks three dimensional in real life.  I love the impressionists' works and this echoes their style somewhat. 

“All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.” ― Eckhart Tolle

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #62

"Fiery Red & Gold Autumn"

6"x6", Acrylic

sold

Yukoners will know that this is the Dempster fall colours.  I have never been yet and I have lived in the Yukon for 13 years.  I flew to Inuvik in 2009 for the Great Northern Arts Festival but would love to drive the Tombstone area and the Dempster some day- it's like another world.

"So come with me, where dreams are born, and time is never planned. Just think of happy things, and your heart will fly on wings, forever, in Never Never Land."
Peter Pan

James M. Barrie 

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #61

 "Dawn's Promise"

6"x8", Acrylic

Sold

 "Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark."

Rabindranath Tagore

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #60

"Pond Near Faro"

6"x6", Acrylic

sold

I have done a painting of this pond in watercolour.  I really like the location and it is just off the Mitchell Road near Tintina Subdivision, outside of Faro. There is a little skiff of ice on the pond.  I love painting ice and water together - I hope I captured it.

“When was the last time you spent a quiet moment just doing nothing - just sitting and looking at the sea, or watching the wind blowing the tree limbs, or waves rippling on a pond, a flickering candle or children playing in the park?”

Ralph Marston

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #59

"Midnight Moon"

6"x8", Acrylic

sold

This is another piece with molding paste mostly in the foreground.  I used the sgraffito technique again.  I use a a palette knife to scratch into the surface and create all the lines for the willows.  

"O wild and wondrous midnight,
There is a might in thee
To make the charmed body
Almost like spirit be,
And give it some faint glimpses
Of immortality."
~James Russell Lowell, Midnight

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #58

"Golden Autumn at Magundy"

6"x8", Acrylic
SOLD

Our lane at Magundy is almost a kilometre long.  It is nice to go for a walk in the morning or evening - it is ever changing.  In the spring it is lined with Lupins and then come the wild roses and then the fireweed and in the fall you have the glorious yellows from the aspens.  "My little piece of heaven"

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #57

"Northern LIghts"

6"x8", acrylic

Sold

It has been a very long day.  The Ladies Tea was a success. The grads raised lots of money and it took me quite awhile to do this piece and I am very tired.  Good Night!


"The future depends on what we do in the present."
Mahatma Gandhi

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #56

" Kluane Autumn"

6"x8", Acrylic
sold

Another imagination piece - I have been to Haines Junction a few times in the fall and the colours are breathtaking and they have such beautiful mountains.

I have a very busy day ahead as I am preparing for the Church Ladies Tea in Faro. My daughter is a grad and they have a table and the Church needs baking and I am going to have a table with some of my paintings there.

To Do: Make Chili, Broccoli and Cheese Soup, Bake: Lemon Iced Cookies, Shortbread, Lemon Raspberry Cake and make lots of labels signs and .......

Anyway I'm hungry now so I did my painting early today because I knew  I won't have time tonight.

"For it is in Giving that we Receive"

St. Francis of Assisi

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #55

"The Lane at Magundy"

5x5, Acrylic

sold

I felt like painting without looking at any reference material so I painted from memory.

I asked my daughter what she thought of the painting and she asked me if it was the lane at Magundy. This made me feel happy and became the name of this painting.  

  

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #54

Northwestel Road - Looking to Little Salmon

6"x8", Acrylic

Photo Credit:  Bettina Simon
SOLD

An artist  must possess Nature. He must identify himself with her rhythm, by efforts that will prepare the mastery which will later enable him to express himself in his own language.
Henri Matisse

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #53

"Northwestel Road by Little Salmon Lake"

6"x8" Acrylic

Photo Credit: Bettina Simon
SOLD

There is a Telephone Tower at the top of this Road it is a four wheel drive road.  Very steep in  some spots but the views are spectacular.  You can see all the way down Little Salmon Lake and you can see Rose Mountain in the distance.  You are in the alpine so in the fall the colours are spectacular. My husband and I have gone on day trips to the top - we usually ride our quad up the trail and then hike when we are at the top. I will be doing some more paintings of this area in the days ahead.

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #52

"Driving to Little Salmon"

6"x8", Acrylic

Photo Credit: Bettina Simon
sold

Faroites will recognize this section of highway as you approach Little Salmon Lake.  

Driving around Little Salmon there are lots of twists and turns and I have seen some spectacular sunsets along this stretch.  

"Softly the evening came. The sun from the western horizon

Like a magician extended his golden wand o'er the landscape; Twinkling vapors arose; and sky and water and forest Seemed all on fire at the touch, and melted and mingled together." 

Evangeline- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #51

Moon and  a Yukon Burn, 

6"x8", Acrylic on Canvas

sold

I would like to give photo credit to fellow blogger 

and Yukon Photographer Nicholas Dory.

I recently e-mailed him and asked if he would mind if I used his photos for reference and inspiration and he graciously agreed - Thank you Nicholas. 

His photo is very much like this minus the moon.

It is very cold today - 37 in F or C - both the same at these low temperatures. I picked this subject with the cool blues and moon because it makes me think of cold.

"The night walked down the sky with the moon in her hand."

Frederic Lawrence Knowles