Hanging with the Flight of Fancy

My latest very exciting news is that I sold a painting at the Flight of Fancy last week. I  blogged about the creation of this canvas last March. It was inspired by the kindness of friendship. I wonder what thoughts or feelings it sparked for the buyer.

The Gift, acrylic, 2009. (above); Peonies, acrylic, 2009. (below)

Like many artists, I  feel awkward about the selling part. I just want to create the art and let someone else sell it.  Many art-appreciators don’t realize that 99% of artists have to figure out how they are going to get their work seen by the public, on their own.  This can mean paying thousands of dollars to rent a booth at a big show like the Toronto Art Expo,  One of a Kind, or  approaching galleries with a portfolio.  And selling is a very different skill than creating.

Cyclamen, Watercolour and crayon resist. by Flora Doehler.

I have been selling my paintings on my own for a number of years now, in self-organized group shows, art club shows, and in studio tours. While it is a thrill to get feedback from viewers and to actually meet future owners, it is quite wonderful to let someone else take the painting and match it with an interested buyer because that way, I can spend the time doing what I do best– creating the work.

My canvas of Hollyhock will be coming home this week.

My daydream fantasy was that one day someone would walk into my studio, look at my work and say “Let me sell this!  You paint the paintings and I’ll take care of the rest.” In some ways this has  happened to me in Bear River.

Painting under 'Cordelia', our willow tree.

The first time we visited this village,  we went to the Flight of Fancy, a beautiful fine arts and fine craft store operated for almost 30 years by artist Robert Buckland -Nicks. I was impressed with the originality and the quality of the work he had in the store. I hoped he would be interested in selling my paintings in his second-floor art gallery, but I was too shy to show him the small paintings I’d stashed in my suitcase. After we moved to Bear River he approached me. He’d heard that I painted and asked  to see my work. I kept putting Rob off because I believed that my best work was yet to come at some unknown future time. Finally he just showed up at the studio one day and left with a few canvases to hang at the store.

Since then Rob has sold 8 large paintings of mine in 18 months.

Rob poses with me upstairs at the Flight of Fancy.

Like the rest of our life in Bear River this piece has  fallen neatly into place. Rob drops into the studio now and again to look at what’s new and to talk about painting. I only have to paint the picture and figure out a title. Rob chooses pieces that he thinks will suit his store and his clientele.

My paintings are in good company at the Flight of Fancy hanging with works by  Alan Syliboy, Anna Syperak , Craig Rubadoux, and Bear River’s Charles Cooper.

The Flight is closed now until next spring.

Crocosmia painting for next spring's collection.

Virtual Friends Materialize

Two years ago when I started writing this blog, I wanted to give my friends and family a small window into my and Larry’s new life in Bear River, Nova Scotia. I wanted to maintain some connection with them and I thought that pictures and stories would show them where we were going to and what our next steps were.

Larry, Steven and Barbara walking the red sandy beach near Pugwash, Nova Scotia.

What I hadn’t factored in was that the blog would attract a following of people I’d never met before. From the comments and emails and search term statistics,  I see that people land here for a variety of reasons. Over 3,000 people have landed here after searching for ‘tick’ on the internet. That certainly wasn’t my goal – hell, I didn’t even know what a tick looked like before we moved here!

Many of the readers have a Bear River connection. They’ve either lived here in the past, the present, or would like to in the future. Others, like us, have left a city and are also adapting to life in a rural setting. This year, some of the followers are people involved in home improvement pursuits and they are curious about our house updates.

This summer I got to meet a few of the readers for the first time and it was a wonderfully strange experience. It’s wonderful to meet people who are interested in what I have to say and it’s strange to meet people who know so much about our lives this past year.

Audrey flew here all the way from England to visit her son, a good friend of ours living in Bear River. It was wonderful recently to meet with her and her granddaughter and daughter-in-law and to show them the parts of our house that the photos cut off.

Audrey was inspiring and interesting and I wish she would write a blog for me to read!

She stayed for lunch and it was like visiting with a long lost friend because we had so many common terms of reference because of her reading and commenting in this blog.

My Toronto portrait artist friend, Barbara Muir, invited us to stay with her and husband Steven at their very cute Schoolhouse Studio near Pugwash this summer. Barbara and I walked on the red sandy beach and she took photos of me and later painted my portrait.

Low tide Gulf Shore Beach, acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 inches, Barbara Muir © 2009

The painting is more stunning up close. I know because it’s in my studio now!

Barbara’s  blog is a testament to positive thinking and daily writing and painting. She hasn’t missed a day of posting for over a year now!!

Barbara, Greg and I at the Chatterbox Cafe in Pugwash.

Through Barbara’s blog, I discovered the blog of the owners of the Chatterbox Cafe in Pugwash. They’ve been reading my posts, and I’ve been reading theirs and we were able to have a long conversation about our parallel experiences in Nova Scotia. From their blog I knew that Greg’s wife Noreen is a painter. I was very glad to see her work all over their cafe and I took these pictures. They don’t do her work justice, but you can see that she is a colourist with a strong sense of compostion. Wonderful, organic paintings.

Oil paintings copyright Noreen Smiley.

A new friend I’ve made through blogging this winter is an artist Carol Wiebe. Her blog is loaded with reviews of other artist’s sites and wonderful descriptions of their work too. Carol’s own work is inspired by her work with quilts and her pieces are filled with texture and luscious colour. (OK…you see a pattern here that I love the colours in the works by Barbara, Noreen and Carol!)

Carol featured me on her blog this summer. I was totally flattered to be among the interesting artists she’s written about. (I felt like a complete fraud, but that’s another story.)

Silverspring Studio

Carol did not stop by to visit me this summer, but somehow I think that our paths will cross someday.

The internet and blogging create opportunities for people with similar interests to connect. I feel very fortunate to be able to use this technology to connect with people near and far and to continue the conversation with old friends like Barbara and with new friends like Audrey, Greg, and Carol.

Pottery – Unloading the Kiln

It is a wonderful gift to be able to share in another’s creativity. Our potter friend Don Rice (Wild Rice Pottery) invited us over a couple of days ago to help him unload his kiln.

I was pretty excited about this because I’ve seen the progress of the pieces in his studio and believe me– there is a long, long time between the creation of a piece and its removal from the final kiln firing. There are many more steps than I realized.

Assuming one has the ability to raise a pot on the wheel in the first place, the piece has to dry properly for its first firing. This requires wrapping it with just the right dampness of cloth and plastic. If it survives the first firing, it gets decorated with coloured glazes. But the glazes look like dried corn starch on gray stone and nowhere near the beautiful earth tones that Don will get.

Other exciting things can happen in the kiln like a little air bubble in the clay can explode the whole pot! Glazes can crack up and chip off, and incorrect temperatures can ruin and completely alter the intended colour. Pieces can stick to each other and to the shelves of the kiln. This doesn’t even include the technical aspects of attaching handles to cups or raising a vase on the wheel and controlling the clay so that it doesn’t collapse.

Unloading the kiln.

In fact, there are so many things that can go wrong in the creation of a piece of pottery that it is a true celebration when the finished piece comes out of the kiln intact and with a beautiful consistent glaze.

When the kiln door opens the final big surprise is to see how the colors and the glazes have reacted to the subtle changes in the heat and to the miniscule variations in their glazing thicknesses. Here is a video of the unpacking of the kiln. Note that Don’s t-shirts on his clothesline are the very same colours as his glazes!

You can visit Don Rice at the Farmers and Artists Market in Annapolis Royal on Saturday mornings or at Don’s pottery studio in Bear River anytime to see and buy these beauties. Well, not all of them. Larry had to bring two of them home for coffee break time under our Willow tree. We’re going to derive some inspiration from them.

Wild Rice Pottery is part of the Bear River Working Artists Studio Tour.

Altered Images in an Alternative Universe

Lupines grow all over the Annapolis Valley, especially along the roadsides.

With my shoulders and legs sore from rototilling the garden, I headed for the studio at the end of last week to paint some of the fabulous purple lupines that grow wild around our house. I also wanted to capture the beauty of some masses of Siberian Iris that my friend Pamela gave me from among the hundreds that grow in her flower gardens.

My friend Pamela also gave me a clump of Siberian iris for my garden. She is one generous friend!

Iris represent to me my late mother and grandmother. They both grew iris and I brought some of their original rhizomes to plant here in Nova Scotia when we moved. I always think of their love of flowers when I see iris and each year for many years I’ve tried to paint their luscious shapes and colours in the short window of opportunity, for they don’t bloom for long.

These were my mother's bearded iris and before that, my grandmother's. I brought some to Bear River from our postage-stamp sized front garden in Toronto. I paint them every year.

I wanted my painting to reproduce the feeling of being outside (but without the very active black flies) so I pulled out all my vases and water jars at the studio so that I could create a garden on my table!

First I worked with watercolour in order to loosen myself up. I also love the way colour and water flow into each other and I wanted to ‘play’ with that.

I first painted some shapes with clear water and then loaded my brush with colour and randomly painted some flower shapes so that I would get 'accidental' colour bleeds into the wet spaces.

This is one of my favorite iris paintings that I’ve ever done with watercolour.

The Ancestor. watercolour by Flora Doehler, 1998. Collection of Gail Waiser.

I approached the acrylic like a wet-in-wet watercolour and tried to keep it very loose.

I sketched the flowers with watercolour crayons and then spritzed the canvas with water. Next I painted using watery acrylics. When the painting is finished, I'll fix the images by painting a mat or varnish medium over the entire canvas.

I’ve been inspired over the last year by reading artists’ blogs and online communities. There is so much creative work and exchange happening out there and it’s exciting to be able to see artwork online and to develop connections and correspondence with fellow artists all over the world, especially because I live in a tiny community that is a great distance from major galleries.

I subscribe to artist and writer Carol Wiebe’s blog called Silverspring Studio. I like Carol’s blog because it is a perfect mix of good writing and interesting articles. She writes about her own (beautiful) work as well as other artists. I have been introduced to many creative artists and websites through her descriptions.  Carol recently set up her own online community called Cracked Paper Quilts and posted an online tutorial about her use of photo software, Adobe Elements, to digitally alter and enhance her artwork. I was very inspired by the mandela-like images she developed and I tried it myself with the paintings that I’m working on as well as this photo of lupines growing here with our new house as a backdrop.

Most of our wild lupines are purple, but we also have some pink and white ones.

 I altered the colours in the photograph and experimented with some of the filters in Photoshop. To see more detail, click on the image.

If only it was this easy to change the wall colours in your house!

I photographed a section of the acrylic canvas that I’m working on. I adore the colours.

Iris and Lupines painting, detail. Flora Doehler, 2009

First I altered the image with filters found in Adobe Photoshop. I liked that pen and ink look shown here.

First I made the alterations using photoshop.

Then I quadrupled the image and flipped and/or turned the image upside down  to create the kind of image I might get when looking through a kaleidoscope.

Next I quadrupuled the altered image, flipped and turned them and reassembled them.

I am thinking of ways to use the resulting works.  I get it that altering images can be endless and addictive! It’s fun to see how colour changes can totally alter the feel of a piece. 

This detail of the iris with watercolour was next on my list.

These iris were like having graceful dancers in the studio.

I changed the colours and applied a filter in Adobe Photoshop.

I love the batik look of this altered painting.

You can view the whole set here

I wish I wasn’t so consumed right now with gardening, moving, packing, sawdust vaccuming etc because I just want to paint these gorgeous flowers while they are still in bloom.

In another month or less we’ll be moved in and then there will be another wave of blooms to do. Still, I am promising myself to clear the decks for at least 2 weeks next year during iris time.

I think this looks like a piece of fabric now.

The beauty of Adobe Photoshop is that it’s as portable as your laptop and is something to ‘play’ with after a long day of mowing lawns and pulling weeds and turning up more sod by hand. Especially when your partner is sitting beside you on the couch watching the Stanley Cup final playoff game. That’s h-o-c-k-e-y for those of you living in an alternative universe.