Welcome back

Thanks for joining me for a virtual visit today.

I want to invite you back into my studio which is very cozy right now, atmospherically light filled and as a bonus tempered with heat in the winter and cooled air in the summers, in life as in art, there is always a balance right and the question, Do I want the comfort of heat or do I want a larger but colder space to work in? I might miss the 800 square feet I once enjoyed but I love not having my water bucket freeze on the window sill overnight in the depths of winter, or the need to wear multiple layers of clothing to work in.

So, Just like at home where spaces within spaces have popped up and been given new designations, during these past 2 years, I have all kinds of specified areas here at the studio, they just happen to fit into about 140 square feet.

You will have to imagine liberal use of air quotes as I describe my space. For those who have been there I hope you recognise it from the description.

At the studio I have a lunch and meeting room, which is in reality two hand me down leather bucket chairs and a side table In between that is loaded with collections of rocks and twigs and shiny things. I sometimes touch or hold some of these while I am taking a contemplative break to look at and think about the current composition on the painting wall.

I have a reference library which doubles as a privacy screen when the door is open and a kitchen or tea station on the bottom shelf when it is closed. My painting wall is of course the main attraction at about 10 feet long but I also have a cutting and creative table that I refer to as the office with canvas storage beneath it. Butted tightly up against the window wall is my writing desk which is also my painting table strewn with supplies, brushes, pallets, paints in tubes and tubs and a water bucket. My hardy reblooming orchids have moved to the new space here with me too. They love the light and the view to the river and supervise the place when I am not here on weekends and evenings.. Weekdays are my regular routine here

On this morning my Riverview desk is uncommonly cleared and is spaciously accepting of notepaper and my thoughts. Later in the day it will morph to its usual disorder to accommodate my paints as I get back to a commission I am just beginning. I have been working large lately or as large as my painting wall can accommodate. 4 x 8 foot diptychs have bloomed pretty regularly here throughout the pandemic.

This new one is a 4 foot square canvas that is at that early stage where the underpainting is energetic fun that aims to cover the surface in colour in a loose and expressive way. It is at this stage that I usually write an intention with gesso on the surface as I am prepping it as a little extra reminder for me as the process evolves.

“Child’s Play”, Acrylic and Chalk Pastel on Paper, 2001

This morning with a clean desk feels like a pause before the action begins. My view to the river is covered in winters white, trees are bare structures along the river trail and from here through those trees standing witness to all the comings and goings, I have a front row seat to take in all the action on the river. There are skaters gliding by on freshly groomed river ice, solo and with purpose, or in pairs and groups at a more relaxed pace. There are runners, dogs, walkers and fat bike cyclists too. It’s a community on the move embracing the outdoors in very, very, cold weather.

The view has gotten me thinking about communities and the outdoor spaces that speak to us, that invite us to play and to have fun in and around. So as a reminder to play in the great outdoors, I want to introduce you to a painting from the very early days of studio practice that I am calling “Child’s Play” , see the illustration above.

It was painted on a half sheet of water colour paper, split horizontally, in 2001. The first lesson this 11’ x 30” mixed media piece is reminding me is again the need to keep accurate records. I seem to be learning that one in hindsight. If you are an artist just starting out, keeping accurate records might be my best advice.

“Child’s Play”, lives behind glass in our living room above a long silent upright piano adjacent to the Starbucks corner we chatted about last time.

You know, it’s hard to go back to look critically at early work without being critical. This piece is so different to what I am working on now, “Childs Play” is small and on paper and way more representational than anything I have done in a very long while. I am trying not to be judgemental with current eyes on my archive but I have to say it would never qualify as one of my best works. Instead it is a representative of a specific time and place in both life and in art.. Beyond that it is also a reminder of the growth in my practice as a painter over the last 20 or so years and that is a perfectly good reason to keep older art in view.

As a side note here I very recently learned another lesson from this painting as I played a preview of the recording to gather my husband’s impressions. He emphatically added a disclaimer disagreeing with my critical observations. In stating his admiration for this painting he reminded me just how subjective the visual world is. Everyone’s opinions matter and he loves this little piece.

This painting was inspired by a Christmas visit to my husband’s hometown in small town Manitoba, and may have even been a gift. As a side note I don’t recommend gifting art because art is such a subjective and personal choice.

“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful”,

Said William Morris, and he was right.

And though this one was for a gift for my hubby, it represents something uniquely personal and so it gets a pass in our home. It came about after a discussion of favourite spaces and places growing up. As an ex pat Australian in 2001 I was always curious about landscape. I wanted to know what had inspired this former kid on the prairies, how seasons played a role and of course how snow came literally into play.

These were favourite hats and favourite past times… snapshots taken on Tower Hill in the middle of the Canadian Prairies.

Our experiences differed obviously. I was never too fond of the cold and knew only oceans and sandy beaches. Ironically I ended up in the middle of a northern continent. It was also ironic that I was kicked out of my local swimming club as a winy preteen for complaining about cold water. To my defence it was an unheated outdoor, Olympic sized swimming pool at the start of an Australian spring… and training started at 6am in the mornings. It was without a doubt nippy. Older swimmers taught us to smear our shivering skinny bodies with Vaseline, like the English Channel swimmers, to insulate us from the cold water. The action of swimming warmed us up but never quite enough for me. To this day though, the water remains my happy place and I am proud to be a lifelong weekday swimmer at the Y where I swim indoors in a heated pool with no Vaseline required.

In 2001 when I painted “Child’s Play”, as a new to the Canadian climate young mother, one of the first lessons I learned in this country was that everything is better when you dress for the conditions. That lesson was quickly followed by the freedom of sliding, intentional and otherwise.

Tobogganing at Tower Hill I learned, was a feature at the top of my hubby’s childhood list. The hill was part of an incidental greenspace in the small western Canadian town he grew up in. It still had a large pocket of scrubby forest at the base of the toboggan hill that all the town’s kids called their own. That was before the late 2000’s when a new subdivision claimed some of that forested green space for the backyards of a new cul-de-sac. Generations of town residents who had grown up playing hide and seek and building forts under its summertime canopy were clearly disappointed.

Discussion of this place animated my husband’s features as he described memories of games, real and imaginary, neighbourhood kids painting wooden clothespins that raced in spring runoff water down the hill, the winner aerodynamically carved with a blade all the country kids carried (I am told) was the first to reach the deep forest puddles at the bottom of the hill. Each season featured its own exploits that took place in this treed realm at the collective heart of the under ten crowd who found ample ammunition there for the shooting sagas featuring stick guns and duelling swords.

He shared stories of his experiences in that forest with me as we walked from Grandmas house to the hill to go sledding. Dad was the head of the toboggan train and behind him he dragged two small girls on their bellies, on sleds, for this afternoon family adventure.

In illustrated letters I made the old fashioned way, literally cutting and pasting snapshots and text, we shared our North American experiences with cousins and grandparents overseas who like me had no experience with winter games.

“Our Christmas is cold and white at Grandmas house” we wrote,

There are no bikes being ridden on the streets as there are in Australia at Christmas. There are no beaches to swim at but Santa still comes to our house with too many gifts and we eat too much of everything”

“Daddy pulled us in a toboggan train. He likes to take us where he played when he was young” the story reads.

“It was quiet and peaceful on the way through the forest to the hill. Eventually we had to pull our own sleds. Small branches and twigs were coated white with tiny ice crystals” the pictured letter continued before action shots of kids alive with the thrill of motion sliding downhill on snow whooshed past.

It makes me smile thinking of those simple pleasures. The picture letter ends with an invitation for cousins to join us for a white Christmas, to remind them they did not have to be sweaty and hot in an Australian summer, they could come to Canada where cooling off was a s simple as unzipping a jacket or taking off hats and mitts.. The story ends with hot chocolate as most events did in those long ago winters. I have since quit the hot chocolate

My life experience meant winter white was not part of my equation. We are who we are and we each bring our own preferences to what we do whatever that is and wherever that might be. The painting “Child’s Play”, from my perspective focused on the lush undergrowth of that favoured forest because the growing season was more familiar to me.

My experience of the Australian bush also came into play. In a eucalyptus forest there is no fall season where the tree divests itself of its leaves and the branches lay bare like the North American deciduous norms. Instead much to the chagrin of homeowners, whose backyard features a native gum, leaves run an independent lifecycle where some leaves are dropping year round. A close look at leaf litter will show a range of colours in play all the time so spring green is not the only fair weather colour in the landscape of foliage that I painted. Strong earthy reds and rusty browns show up in this composition in the under layers.

Those early works on paper followed a similar path. First under painted in acrylic which I often watered down to be similar to gouache or watercolour. I was precious with materials then and didn’t want to waste whole sheets on these early experiments that got me back in touch with my creative self.

The underpainting gave me a foundation for the composition. I had previously had an attachment to earthy ochres and neutral oxides that I painstakingly blended together. At this time I was trying to train myself to resist greying everything down so I bought myself some chalk pastels so I would be forced to hold one colour at a time in my hand as I worked on top of the painted acrylic base. I am also keen on clear colour so I am in the habit of washing brushes a lot, some might say excessively but hey it keeps the colour clear and that is my preference.

In early works like this one I may have done some sketching or at least roughed in the basic structure of the composition in pencil and I was most definitely using photo references as I began. In this painting I gave precedence to the literal landscape. My goal here was to document an actual place and to provide an invitation into a space that had been so precious from the child’s perspective.

It was interesting; Scale my husband explained was noticeably different returning to that sacred forest as an adult with our own children. The density of the foliage and the size of the trees that had once dwarfed him felt a little scrubbier and less the imposing fortress that had contained the exhilaration of breaking trail through long prairie grasses while chasing or being chased by a buddy in the undergrowth.

Art I find, can take us to places, both real and imaginary, it can inspire process in the creator and it can process aspects of inspiration from the past and bring that inspiration into the present. I hope you have pieces in your home that inspire memories of attachment to special places in your history

This episode of the podcast ends with a brief meditation. This one was a reminder for me of the importance of the pause. and the comfort of looking to our memories for experiences within the landscapes that have brought us joy. You can find the episode by clicking the link below or searching out, Season 1, Episode 2 , Wisdom at the crossroads, The Podcast ,wherever you listen to your podcasts.

I hope you will accept the gift of a few minutes in your own presence by listening in. May you find your own rhythm: where nothing is forced, nothing is extended and nothing is withheld.

Next Tuesday we will gather here again to be “Enlightened at Beaver bay”. Please consider joining me as we reflect on how some of my favourite paintings have evolved and what wisdom i have found at the crossroads where action and presence meet. Invite a friend , drop me a line, with your questions or comments, subscribe or leave a review. It all helps to get a new venture off the ground.

Thanks for being here. I am Looking forward to meeting you here again soon

all best, Amanda

Apple URL for the Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/widsom-at-the-crossroads/id1609992256

Apple Trailer - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wisdom-at-the-crossroads-trailer/id1609992256?i=1000551067035

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5AbmRHQor17IeJJivYaYJf