WISDOM AT THE CROSSROADS, The Podcast.

This week on the podcast we are introduced to a “Cocktail Hour” that is a welcome treat at any time of the day or night. “Strawberry Margarita” is one of the 4 Players in a 2004 Mixed media series on paper that gives us a colourful take on a winter subject .

Welcome to COCKTAIL HOUR I hope your week has been a good one. Mine felt a bit wobbly as we dealt with a Covid hostage in our house that is thankfully, now recovered. Wearing my mother/ nursemaid hat resulted in limited studio time. On the days that I could get to the studio I have been working on a commission, a process that can often get me second guessing myself. The last couple of painting sessions have seen progress to the point where I need to let a 4 foot square canvas rest a bit. Moving on to a second piece with the same theme yet of a different shape and structure has been fun. The idea of an invitation is common to both pieces and I am working to develop a sense of depth to assist with inviting the viewer into the image.

There is no snow on my painting wall but plenty still melting and freezing outside in what is becoming a reluctant beginning to spring. Colour inside the studio is an antidote to the greyness of winters end before spring is really ready to spring to life. We can hardly wait.

“Strawberry Margarita” of the Cocktail Hour Series. Acrylic and Chalk Pastel on watercolour paper, 22 1/2” x 30”, 2004. By Amanda Onchulenko .

Someone commented one time that I live in a climate where winter is a feature yet the work I exhibited was vibrant and colourful with a distinct absence of snow. I appreciate the observation. I should probably confess I have for many years used the winter to work on the inspiration I had gathered during the rest of the year. Colour in the studio has been an antidote to the variations of winters white that is more than abundant in the northern climate where we live.

The photographic inspiration I gathered way back when was usually taken enroute between the activities of my children, and mostly during the spring and summer when my schedule was a bit more flexible.

The fall was busy with new school years and sporting schedules and winter had ice. It was slippery and cold and strangely unfamiliar. I was then, and can still be, a bit like a version of young Bambi navigating a frozen pond for the first time. The upending of my teapot was a very common thing so I did a lot less discovery and photography after the snow arrived.

I think it would have been pretty clear to Canadians I was not a local. I was very carefully around ice, tip toeing around it to try to avoid a spill in contrast to the Canadians in my family who run and shuffle speedily towards it to enjoy the slide.

I had no such winter association having grown up in what poet Banjo Patterson called a sunburnt country. There is snow in the southern highlands in Australia but I have experienced the chill of the snowy mountains exactly once and only very briefly before finding myself living on the Canadian prairies.

Australia is dominated by coastline with vast expanses of sand and surf. I am an excellent swimmer, I could handle a surfboard but I am not so great at the winter balance gene my Canadian husband and kids naturally share.

A heavy early winter snow storm kept our neighbours shovelling for hours and the city hopping for weeks cleaning up the debris from what our city described as Tee Armegeddon.

There is snow in the Southern Highlands in Australia but I experienced the chill of the Snowy Mountains only once very briefly before finding myself living on the Canadian Prairies. Life is an evolution and just like Forest Gump and his box of chocolates, we just can’t know what we are going to get as we evolve through the decisions and choices we make along the way. Signing up for the road less travelled is never a bad thing. I highly recommend it and am grateful for all the lessons the great white north has taught me.

As an immigrant we bring with us what we know in our souls so colour and warmer weather were naturally more familiar to me and became the natural choices in my paintings. As I got to experience the nuances of the prairie and her seasons I became more aware of the action of light on white, the reflections and refractions that brought colour into the seasonal landscape in bold and subtle ways. I learned to look and to really see.

Getting back to painting and my friends comment about a lack of winter subjects in my work, I was undaunted by the observation and inspired to take up the challenge to express the winter landscape around me from my personal perspective

With my focus on winter inspiration I sought out subjects after fresh snow falls. Wet snow is sticky and holds onto the boughs and limbs of trees and shrubs making for some lovely shapes. It can even be so heavy it takes trees and electrical wires down with it. This we know from an experience a couple of years ago and what we still refer to as the tree Armageddon in our neighborhood.

“Pina Colada”, another player in the Cocktail Hour series. I love the fact that a painting looks like one thing close up and our eyes merge colours and shapes when we take a step, or 7 back. Playing with variations of the same subject makes for a fun little studio game.

At the time I was planning this winter series I had carloads of kids, mine and their friends, neighbours or team mates piling in and out of my car for school and sporting events on any given day.

One morning I discovered a lovely snow laden evergreen on the way to school and made a quick turn around after drop off to photograph it before the morning light had faded. My friends ‘side yard provided the subject matter this time so thankfully I was not trespassing.

The series that evolved from this casual challenge came to be called “cocktail hour” in part because of the vibrant colour palette I used on these winter subjects. All artists I have found have particular tendencies when it comes to colour choices and preferences and I am no different.

This group was painted in 2005 when I still relied on photographic inspiration and traditional film. There was a delay between filming for processing and developing that my children in their instant gratification world might not fully appreciate today. Once I had my inspirational imagery in hand I cleared off a studio wall and installed four full sheets of arches heavy weight water colour paper, 221/2” x 30” each. The pieces were later float mounted as the entire surface became part of the composition.

By pinning each piece heavily using the arc of the many thumbtacks to secure the paper to the wall I did not perforate the edges with pin holes. This process also helped to prevent the heavy paper sheets loaded with wet media from warping as they dried.

I used four sheets because that’s what I had in hand and that’s also the extent of what could fit along the length of my wall. I used the same photograph as inspiration for all four paintings in what became a visual game I played at the studio.

This pic was taken more than ten years after the first inspiration photo was taken. There has definitely been some growth in my neighbours front yard since last i was there picking up kids. I missed a fresh snowfall but I think you get the idea that some creative licence is taken when it comes to colour in the winter landscape when my paintbrushes are involved.

My linear thinking husband and I joke about our respective approaches to problem solving. He thinks logically in a straight line while I tend to spiral around until we both mostly end with the same conclusions. (although he is not an artist). His stories of solo play are funny. He was ten years younger than his older brother and five years younger than his sister so neither sibling was available or interested in the energetic games he played. So he became an expert at creatively entertaining himself with complex games enacting sporting events where he provided the commentary, the plays and all the players, of entire football games. I can just imagine him running up and down the side yard catching his own high passes, sometimes with sound effects like the hiss of a cheering crowd, for hours on end. I laughed at his explanation of childhood games and may have even raised a cautious eyebrow that suggested “really”?

But in hindsight it seems problem solving games are something we share.

Both of us have developed imaginary worlds. While he may have aspired to be an actual quarterback, I was designing the plays that took place across my painterly playing field.

I challenged myself by beginning the group of four paintings in different ways: starting with a foundation image drawn in washy liquid acrylic, by blocking in a foundation structure in complimentary colours with a wide brush, by using a different colour palette to begin and on one of them I hooked in to the “Drawing on the Right hand side of the brain” theory by painting upside down. The painting not me was inverted.

As a side note turning a composition upside down is a strategy I often use when a painting has me stuck and unsure of where to take it.

When you are your own boss you can give yourself permission to have some fun with your process, because nobody is watching. My boss by the way can be a hard task master and often pushes me to try new things, to expand and to grow even though I have been resistant at times to stepping out of my comfortable routines. Thankfully my boss embraced the idea of play in the work of art I was making in 2005.

One of the four paintings that make up the group I called “Cocktail Hour” lives behind glass on the landing of our stairs at home. This painting is not far from “Pink at Ponemah” whom I introduced on the podcast in Season 1 Episode 9. Opposite the front door, “Strawberry Margarita “welcomes visitors to our home no matter what the season. The subject reads a bit ambiguously from a distance given my colour choices but on closer inspection the snow story takes shape and it is clear it is a winter scene.

In painting this series I remember striving for depth by focusing on the snow heavy pine back lit with morning sun. I kept with this intention regardless of the colour choices or process I used for each of the individual paintings.

I loved the shapes freshly accumulated wet snow made in real time on the boughs of this evergreen tree.

It is amazing the diversity we find in snow laden landscapes in shape texture and even colour when we take a little more time to really look with a view to seeing. I like to say life is lived in the details. When we are aware we are present, where we are, whatever the season, and our lives are enriched because of it.

This week at the studio I used this tactic to help resolve the composition. A literal change in perspective.

The other three paintings of this group quickly found their forever homes. The one I have may have been the runt of the litter? I don’t know. What I do know is that it was the one that was left over and therefore available to fill a void when my hubby sent some dinner guests home with a framed still life that had occupied that welcome location at our front door.

We laugh now about his early sales model but I have to say seeing art work in appropriately scaled living spaces helps a client to visualize how a piece might work in their own environment. App makers have realized this fact recently as there are several available that make for helpful marketing tools.

A personal connection has always been my favourite model. I enjoy people, and I am extremely grateful for the supportive clients, many of them now friends, with whom I have made connections with because of my art.

The cocktail hour series and “Strawberry Margarita“, in particular made for an appropriate backdrop to some of our once upon a dinner parties when our kids were quite young. Eventually I actually did ban my husband from selling paintings off our walls, particularly while our guests were drinking the good wine. I didn’t want our friends to decline an invitation to join us for an event worrying the night would end up more expensive than the bottle of wine or appetizer that contributed. These were fun times for sure and it’s still fun to reimagine the stories the artwork could tell of the entertaining interactions that have taken place on that stairwell landing.

Living with art. “Cocktail Hour’s “Strawberry Margarita” inspires a Christmas gathering of the clan.

Thanks for listening in to the podcast and taking the time to search out the images here on the blog.

If my work or words inspire you please consider sharing the podcast with a friend or writing a review on apple podcasts. You can listen to the full episode anywhere you get your podcasts.

This week’s meditation begins at 11:55 in the recording.

I will add the new link below when the episode is live but in case you stop by ahead of that you can feel free to google “wisdom at the crossroads podcast” with Amanda Onchulenko, Season 1 Episode 12: “COCKTAIL HOUR”

Leave your questions or comments on the website or find me on instagram @mandartcanada. I would love to hear from you

Until next time, stay well,

Amanda

LISTEN HERE

A direct link to the Podcast on Podbean below:

https://wisdomofthecrossroads.podbean.com/e/cocktail-hour/?token=e1d363df2369a267872f3a56f5c831e65

A direct link to the Podcast on Spotify below:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2xiGyTcvL5k2ZqneU3PbQa?si=z6qv4eL9Q9GrIS9f50eHJQ

A direct link to the Trailer on Apple podcast below

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