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I took the pictures for this one during the height of the first wave of the pandemic, while hiding out at our happy place… I discovered that I love our island in the “off season “ as much as I do in summer. Spring, with all the Shasta daisies and puffy white clouds was so refreshing for the spirit during really scary times.
North View Daisies
After an obscene amount of time, I finally finished the painting… Calling it “Floating On Trees”… It's 24x30 inches.
So this is how a complicated image emerges. As I work my way around, I adjust for colour harmony and value, level of detail…
When I start a new piece, I begin with my image being drawn on paper, and a slog through making sure I can find what I want to see in the piece. But until I wrap my brain around how to paint it, the magic hasn't started for me… Then, once I get to a certain point, I get excited about what is happening. I'm excited about this one, now…
So I finished the last piece… It’s called, “ Memories of Front Beach”. I actually felt sad to finish it! It’s like when you finish reading a good book, and wish there were a few more chapters! And…. it sold, while I was painting my signature on it! This one is reflective of what the beach was like both during the time of Covid, and before… It is layered to show the beach looking both east and west simultaneously.
I took a day off, then chose a new image to paint. The first stages aren’t anywhere as much fun as the last ones… so, the work has begun again! Maybe I will post more along the way…
Memories of Front Beach
In case you thought I wasn't making any art... this is my current studio space... I take over the dining table! Next in the series about memory and my happy place...well under way!
So this is about the beach that you see when you first arrive on the island. We call it “Front Beach". The people who have cabins here leave their chairs and umbrellas parked in the sand in front of their cabins. I will repost when it's either further along, or done…
“Waiting “; 16x20 watercolour
So, in the “new world order” I was thinking that there are loads of artists doing work and posting about the pandemic. Personally, I find focussing on it 24/7 to be remarkably stressful.
Then I thought that, truly, my art is about memories and happier times; It is totally appropriate and possibly essential for right now! As I paint, I immerse myself in the internal monologue about techniques and artistic challenges ( It tends to escape from the internal, to me having complete conversations with myself as I paint! Thankfully, my family accepts my peccadillos! ) I also become immersed in the memories that inspire my work. And, wow! those are much happier thoughts!!! And so, I hope that you also can escape to happier thoughts through the work. We all need this right now!
I call my latest piece about memories of Savary Island "Waiting". It's a familiar image for anyone who has travelled to magical places on the coast, and experienced the anticipation of beach time, or the sadness when leaving the adventures behind to return to the "real world"... Consider it a happy thought!
Finished number four of my series! This one is , as yet, unnamed. It's about the mornings when the work crews arrive at the wharf...
My new work is about the fractured, layered moments in time that create memory; it is about the images that are on the fringes of our consciousness, and that remain with us because they are how we experience the everyday moments of our lives. I am layering and combining multiple images and looking at them all at the same time! I want to capture the emotional experiences of the moments included in my imagery.
My new series contains the key elements of my previous work, in that my watercolours are still high contrast, with saturated colours, but the images now have a fractured quality, that, to me, represents how memory is broken and contains pieces of realism. At first glance, the images appear quite abstract, but as one approaches, parts of images come together to tell the “story”.
This fall, I was contacted by a company from Montreal, called “Le Galeriste”. They make clothing and housewares using Canadian art… so, the upshot is that now I have a clothing/ housewares line with my paintings as fabric! The online address is art-a-porter.com/kathy.baker
