Rain drums on the studio roof. We wait for spring and I’m fooling with the colours of summer. A slip, perhaps, to a borderline zone: the goofy idea that colours are people. It started with a quote from Marc Chagall: “All colours are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites.”
Several years ago, my dad asked me to join him for a workshop at Hollyhock, an island retreat on the West Coast of Canada. After a crisis of confidence, I agreed and we found ourselves a few months later on the beach with a group of keen and diverse painters. We took turns with demos, talks, exercises and crits, working as a gelled but paradoxical unit. Our students seemed to enjoy the yin and yang of our strokes.
It has recently been discovered that the works of William Shakespeare were actually written by another person with the same name. And lately, around this studio, there’ve been a few anonymous letters like this one: “If I look for my name on the Internet, up comes an artist with my exact name and spelling who is not me. Even worse, the subject matter this person deals in is nothing with which I want to be associated. I’m considering using another name and maybe even one with the other gender. I’m thinking of continuing to use my real name as well but only for paintings that would go to people in my area. What do you think?”
From time to time I do workshops and demonstrations for art clubs in my community. At the beginning I generally ask some questions: “How many paint in oils, how many in watercolor, how many in acrylic?” Here I look clearly into the faces of those who have given up an evening to try to pick up a new technique or two. Generally, eight out of ten will be women. Often these women will be in the process of switching gears from previous identities as wives or mothers. Some will have taken up painting the way others take up golf or bridge.
I guess there’s about a billion paintings of sky, mountains, trees and water. Beneath these basic and universal elements lie symbols that may empower our work.
For example, the sky may represent infinity, eternity, immortality, transcendence or inspiration. As the traditional residence of gods, the sky may suggest omnipotence. The sky may also be symbolic of order in the universe.
Mountains are thought to contain divine inspiration, and are the focus of pilgrimages of transcendence and spiritual elevation. Mountains surpass ordinary humanity and extend toward the heavens.
Last weekend, a ten-year-old friend took me to summer camp drop-off. We snaked a sea-hugging road through mountain passes while she described the intricacies of geocaching, bouldering, trail riding and ukulele. At bedtime without her Kindle, she told me she’ll be whispering in a cabin of seven others, with two teenaged counsellors on the other side of a soundproof curtain. After Starbucks, the highway narrowed to a dirt road and then a mulch path, where a Hawaiian-shirted adolescent wearing a wooden name badge motioned us with his clipboard into a parking space.
Yesterday, while disturbing one of the corners of Dad’s studio, I discovered a box of my grandfather’s paintings. Hugh Douglas Genn grew his Victoria, BC sign shop into Genn Advertising, making bus cards and ads for Vancouver Island businesses. His was an era of penmanship, “one shot” sign paint and a properly loaded quill brush. Everything he lettered was finessed with professionalism. On the side, Ad man Doug was a painter.
Robin Timms of North Vancouver writes, “I am hoping you might provide some words of wisdom as to how to make my approach to obtain some critical input from galleries. I am thinking of sending out this letter… and would welcome any advice.”
Robin’s “gallery letter” opens with a detailed artist statement followed by a request: “As an emerging artist, a practical next step in my painting journey is to seek realistic, honest and knowledgeable advice from those experienced in putting gallery shows together — to understand whether my work is gallery-worthy, or whether it even ‘holds’ together as a series.”
One evening when I was turning out the lights and shutting down my studio, I glanced in the darkness in the direction of my easel and had an alarming thought. I realized that all over the world, all kinds of regular people might be doing something similar. Before going to bed they might be casting their eyes around their homes to see that everything was okay. Some of those eyes might catch for a moment on one of my paintings. There are a few out and about.
During the last week I’ve been back in the studio preparing for a solo show. I’m in here at about 6 in the morning and generally stick-handle through to about 10 in the evening. Sometimes there’s a short mid-afternoon snooze — almost always there’s a ramble with my dog.
But mostly it’s just easeling along, sorting out problems, taking half-finished works in and out of frames, painting steadily with a fair degree of simultaneity, trying to decide what to do next. As they say, “It’s a wonderful life.” I’m sure the “high” is similar to dope. I can convince myself