100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #31

Title:  Faro Peak from the Big Rock

Medium: Acrylic

Size:  6x8

SOLD

Quote for the day:

That which you persist in doing becomes easier to do.

Not that the nature of the thing itself has changed, but that your ability to do it has increased! 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have now completed one month of painting - so I roughly have two more to go.

I put an update in our local newsletter called the Frozen Mukluk - anyone wanting to know all about the little community I live in can read the Mukluk on-line by going to our town website:  www.faroyukon.ca  click the Link to the newsletter.

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #30

Title: Northern  Legend

Media: Oil Pastel and Acrylic

Size: 6x8

sold

Quote for the Day:

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs;

ask yourself what makes you come alive.

And then go and do that.

Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

Harold Whitman

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #29

Title: Oh Aurora!
Medium: Acrylic
Size: 6x8

Quote for the Day:
"Drink your tea slowly & reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves -slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. 
Live the actual moment." - Thich Nhat Hanh

Life's Simple Little Pleasures

So much talk today of living in the moment and being fully present

 (concepts I heartily agree with). 

Enjoying simple tasks and appreciating the good things in my life are a

BIG part of this for me.

 In the morning, I enjoy grinding up my Midnight Sun dark roast coffee beans and seeing the rich black hue. Pouring the ground coffee into my Bodum Coffee Press and adding the boiling water.  The best part is the initial sound that results when the water hits the beans, it has a musical quality to it. Ahhh!! and then the aroma (they say that smell is the most evocative and powerful sense (probably true)

I have reached heaven on earth and I haven't even had my first sip yet!

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #28

Title:  The Three Sisters

Medium:  Acrylic

Size: 6x8

sold

Some of you may recognize this pond from the Mitchell Road.  A lot of people have photographed it. Halloween is just around the corner and I am coming up to completing my first month of daily painting.  People around town have asked me how I am doing with it and I have to say that I absolutely love it!  

I think the more you do something the easier it gets.

I have to do some extra painting in the next few days for my gallery in Whitehorse.

I intend to keep these hundred paintings as one whole collection for my show in March in  Whitehorse At Yukon Artists at Work. 

Title of the show:  A 100 in a 100!

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #27

Title:  Aspens and Sunshine

Medium: Acrylic

Size: 8x10
SOLD

Quote for the Day:

"It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward." - Proverb

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #26

Morning Sonnet

Medium:  Oil Pastel

Size:5x7

sold

Quote for the Day:

"Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!  Dr. Seuss

I often strive for some form of realism in my painting but I love to do these pictures where I just paint what I feel.  Expressionism I guess. The use of oil pastel is like those crayons of the five year old girl.  Pressing and rubbing and blending - it really is so satisfying.

French impressionist, Paul Gauguin said not to assign a fixed  and unchangeable colour  to every object. Use your imagination.  I have always loved Dr.Seuss's unique and quirky imagination - he would say that he looked at life through the wrong end of the telescope and that fantasy is a necessary ingredient of living.

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #25

Title: Heigl's Place
Medium: Acrylic
Size: 8x10

Quote for the Day:

 "The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between

 work and play"Arnold Toynbee.

I love my painting - it's something I have always done.  When I was a little girl of 5 years old; I received a colouring book and crayons from my parents and my art career was launched.  First thing I did was to colour the skin on the people.  Well there was no skin tone in the box of crayons I received so I began using a combination of brown, orange, red and then a hard pressing of a white crayon on top and wa la!  There you have it - skin.  This was a very labour intensive  process because there was lots of pressing and blending involved to get that skin tone. But I can remember that moment as clear as if it was yesterday. This was when I knew I wanted to be an artist.  

It is all I have ever wanted to be.

There is a lot of work involved in being an artist but for me it is play.

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #24

Title: Wings of Hope

Medium: Acrylic

Size: 6x8

sold

Quote for the Day:

"Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal.  My strength lies solely in my tenacity."  Louis Pasteur

I read my friend Kara Went's Blog today and she said she had a bad day yesterday.  

Kara I dedicate this painting to you.  I believe in you and I know you can do it.

Keep your chin up! Sometimes it's just one step at a time.

Hope you are feeling better soon.

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #23

Title: Raven Sunrise

Medium: Acrylic

Size: 6x8

Sold

Quote for the Day:

"I believe we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same.  In each, it's the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes, in some area, an athlete of God. Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired."  

Martha Graham

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #22

Title: 40 Below on the Yukon River

Medium:  Acrylic

Size 6x6
SOLD

I have finally succumbed ! There you have it snow and ice and cold temperatures

The weather forecast shows temperatures as low as -15 in the next few nights.

I love the look of the landscape it has a magical look.  

Quote for the Day:  

"Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye.  It also includes the inner pictures of the Soul.  Edvard Munch

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #21

Title:  Into the Mystic

Medium:  Mixed Media
sold

Size: 6x6

Quote for the day:
If there is no passion in your life, then have you really lived? Find your passion, whatever it may be. Become it, and let it become you and you will find great things happen FOR you, TO you and BECAUSE of you"
T. Alan Armstrong

This started out as a lake and became mountains and a lake.  Another from imagination piece.  I notice my "from imagination pieces" are very impressionistic and my photo referenced pieces lean more towards realism.

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #20

Title: Sunrise:  Tintina Trench

Medium:  Acrylic

Size: 5x7
SOLD

Quote for the day:
"Dawn and sunset are the times when nature herself is unstable and in flux.  The nocturnal world and the daytime world are meeting, and for a brief moment coexisting. It's not a neat hard cut, but a blurred, irregular dissolve.  These moments are the seams in existence through which we can get a glimpse of the deeper, fundamentally random, chance workings of a system in which we are only a small, insignificant player."
Bill Viola

I used Nina Toeller's photo for reference for this painting.

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #19

Title: Setting Sun on the Ice

Medium:  Acrylic

Size: 6x8

Sold

My posting for today is rather late - My son Ben had an accident on the Robert Campbell Hwy. on the way to our property.  Thankfully it was not serious!  He walked 8 km almost to Magundy.  Not one person picked him up.  Then a kind soul did when he almost got to our acreage. The roads are really slippery in patches out on the highway.  

I had started this painting earlier today - I was trying to achieve the effect of ice.  I may re-take the photo tomorrow morning and replace this one because the lighting was pretty poor. 

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #18

Title:Impression: My Sunrise

Medium: Mixed Media

Size: 6x8
Monet said:  "I've caught this magical landscape and it's the enchantment of it that I'm so keen to render.  Of course lots of people will protest that it's quite unreal, but that's just too bad."

Monet is one of my favourite impressionists and the other would be Cezanne.
I love Monet's piece: Impression: Sunrise.  The term impressionism was taken from this piece.  This picture was underlaid with acrylic and then I used oil sticks to finish off the colours.  It is rather pointillistic with all those dots.

We have a light dusting of snow and this should drive away the winter blues.

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #17

Title:  Lichen and Bearberry

Medium:  Acrylic

Size 6x8

sold

Today I head back to Faro.  I have a whole bunch of shopping to do and then a 4 hour drive. Over the years I have actually come to enjoy the long drive.  It gives me time to think and I listen to lots of music which always lifts me up.  I have my new winter tires and the weather is good. 

I hope to paint many more works with this type of subject matter.  I love the boreal forest and I have taken many photos from Magundy of the forest floor. Lots of mushrooms, deadfall, moss and flora.

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #16

Title: Aspen Pond - Robert Campbell Highway

Medium: Acrylic

Size: 6x8

"Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast"  

Lewis Carroll

This shift completes my week  at Yukon Artists At Work it has been truly great to be involved.  I enjoy communicating, exchanging ideas and supporting my fellow artists and meeting all the people that walk in the door. 

I used to think "Oh - I can't do this because....."  or "Oh -I couldn't be an active member of YAAW because I live so far away and I have too many other priorities. 

Anything is possible if we make it so. 

I think the creative person needs a balance between solitude (to create your work) and community and collaboration with other artists 

(to feed the artistic process and make you a part of something bigger than just yourself). 

Even Cezanne found the impressionists in the end.

I am looking forward to going home to see my lovely family and to my solitude.

But I look forward to coming back to be a part of my new artist family!

This painting is done from memory and imagination.  My husband, Jeff and I went for a walk across the Highway from our acreage along the cut-line and we came upon a spot like this.

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #15

Title:  Blue Sky and Wind

Medium:  Mixed Media

Size: 10x14

Sold

We had a great crowd of people at YAAW last night.  John Boivin's show was a success.
This morning I am on my way down to the Baked Cafe in Whitehorse and then back to the Gallery.

The painting above was done from imagination.

It has a breezy feeling and as my friend Connie Meade says " your signature leaning tree"  is in the painting.

For some reason it reminds me of Bennett Lake.

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #14

Title:  Faro Peak - Golden Sunset

Medium: Acrylic

Size:  6x8
SOLD

Yukon Artists At Work has a busy day today.  The opening of John Boivin's show is today. Beautiful bold colours and incredible detail - if I were to try to define his style it would be impressionistic realism and there is a rhythmic flow to his paintings- the opening reception is at 5pm.
In the last few days  I have met some of the artists, tonight I will meet more at John's show.  I want to do to work at the gallery regularly I feel it is really important.  

There is lots of molding paste mixed with the paint to create texture on this newest painting. I used a sgraffito technique to scratch into the paint in the foreground to create a very textured look as well.  

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #13

Title:  Where Eagles Soar

Medium: Acrylic

Size: 6x8

sold

Well, What can I say! I guess I love orange I just can't help it.  It is such a warm fiery colour it gives me a lift.  I have been in Whitehorse for a couple of days now and all is going well. Although the roads are pretty slick with the temp. hovering around  freezing. My first day at YAAW was truly great !  I am so happy to do my part and helping out makes me more apart of it.  I really like the energy at YAAW - I feel there is a real sense of community and sharing.  Harreson Tanner and I took down Nicole's show and today John Boivin's show goes up.  He is an acrylic landscape painter. The opening for his show is tomorrow night and I look forward to being there.
The gallery has a solo show every two weeks and all the artists help the other artist whose turn it is for the show.
Walking around the gallery yesterday and just visually drinking up all the beautiful art was so inspiring.

Another Quote for the Day:
"But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength.
They will soar high on wings like eagles.They will run and not grow weary.
They will walk and not faint.
Isaiah 40: 31
"

100 PAINTINGS IN 100 DAYS #12

Title: The Pond at Magundy

Medium: Acrylic

Size 8x10
SOLD

I head down to YAAW today - Whitehorse looks like a winter wonderland!
Very pretty.

This pond is along our Lane and it is one of the most peaceful places on Earth.  It has many personalities and I could probably paint a hundred paintings of it alone  if I put my mind to it.Thoreau had his Walden pond and I have mine!

It seems appropriate to quote Thoreau now as he is one of my favourite visionaries:

"I have learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances
confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours"