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.

Painting with Oils

Some of these paints are middle aged!

About 35 years ago when I was an art student in East Berlin at the Kunsthochschule Weissensee,   I painted with oil paints. At that time, in the 1970s, it was impossible to buy acrylics in the GDR (German Democratic Republic). I suspect that  there was a shortage of raw materials that made plastics. Thus there were absolutely no plastic bags (people used cotton bags) and there was very little product packaging using plastic. It’s funny that now, 35 years later, we are trying to reduce our oil-dependancy by scaling down plastics usage.

In that land of socialism, university tuition was free and art students received a monthly stipend to live on. The rent on my little apartment was capped at 8% of my monthly stipend.

Deciding where to place the next flower.

My area of study was painting so a couple of times a year  I accompanied my teacher, Professor Wolfram Schubert , to the school store room to receive about 30 tubes of oil paint, compliments of the state.

Oil paints last a long time, so after three years I had accumulated quite a few.  I brought a lot of tubes home to Canada with me and even though I’ve given quite a few away over the years, I still have a container full of them that I brought here to Bear River with me.

I was reminded of this a while ago when I pulled them out to use as ink in printmaking.  I wondered what it was like to paint with oils compared with the acrylics that I’ve been using for the last 20 years.  

My Flowerdale tea pot. Oil painting by Flora Doehler c2006

I love the smell of linseed oil (which actually is flax seed oil!)  That’s right! The flax plant gives us linen fabric and the seeds are pressed into an oil. When it’s boiled, it becomes linseed oil. Because of the high oil content, the paint is thick and creamy like peanut butter.  In comparison, acrylic, which is plastic,  is very slippery.  Watercolor, like the name implies, is like brushing colored water over a sheet of paper. 

I have a very cheerful pot of daffodils and I wanted to create a feel in this painting of the chaos and joy and persistence of the life force that are reborn every spring.

Inspiration in a pot.

In the smaller painting I started with a pale green yellow ground.  A few months ago I bought some oil sticks and I just had to try them out!  They look like gigantic crayons but they are actually oil paint suspended in a medium that makes them a little harder than paint.  If you dip your brush into a solvent and move it over the oil stick mark on the canvas, the colors will instantly dissolve.  I enjoyed experimenting with them.

It is so different than working with acrylics- which dry extremely fast…sometimes too fast.  I had to wait several days until the oil in the paint was dry enough to paint more colors that won’t dissolve the colors that are already painted.  I have discovered an advantage to this slow dry.  Using solvents, I easily removed a section of the painting that wasn’t working for me.

Removing some paint.

I’m very happy with my finishedl daffodil painting. I like the drawn lines and the colours that are softer than I usually use. I think it has a good centre of interest.

Daffodils. Oil paint and oil stick. Flora Doehler, c. 2009

The larger painting has been more challenging. I have probably spent more time repainting a daffodil in the middle of painting than on the 2 canvases put together. I overpainted it way too many times. Finally I have just scraped and sanded and painted out that section. I’m going to wait a while to complete it because right now it feels like I’m having a power struggle with the poor flower! One day I’ll be in the studio and I’ll sneak up on it and finish it!!

Daffodils in progress.

Although switching mediums can be frustrating, I really like to mix it up because  it keeps me learning new ways to approach the subject matter. It keeps me more aware of the properties of the colours and brushes I’m using. Each new way of interpreting the beauty I see around me helps me to  better understand what I’m actually looking at. But most of all, it’s just so much fun moving from oil to acrylic to watercolour to printmaking and squeezing out a bit of the past into my present painting.

Creativity and You and Me

On the beach yesterday, feeling creative.

Recently I’ve been reading and thinking about ‘creativity’ and where it comes from. Years ago I purchased Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way, that shows you how to access your inner creativity. I never actually got around to reading it. I was so busy working in an office and at a desk and in a library that when I had any ‘free’ time where I wasn’t dead tired I preferred to paint rather than read about it. I had little opportunity for creative expression in my job and looking at that reality would have been just too depressing. On the other hand, had I been courageous enough to examine my creative needs, might I have made other career choices?Hindsight, as we all know, is 20/20.

There is no shortage of patterns in ocean stones.

The assumption that we are all creative beings is fairly profound for some people who will say “Me? No, I’m not a very creative person.” or, “No, I don’t have any artistic or musical ability at all.”

But Cameron asserts that creativity is the natural order of life. 

Nature's patterns are infinite.

The life force, as I call it (some call it spirit, the creator, Goddess, God) is present in all living things. This week I’ve been watching my tomato seedlings push their way out of the earth and transform from round, flat, hard seeds to a tall, fragile seedlings with two leaves. That same life force energy that turns a seed into a plant is in each one of us and it not only propels us forward physically, but it also develops us emotionally and intellectually. That combination is our growth, our creativity. We can:

•       ignore it
•       suppress it
•       use it
•       postpone it
•       drug it
•       numb it
•       deny it
•       postpone it
•       but we can never ever loose it

It is in our DNA and in our every breath. It is part of our being human.

Julie Cameron calls it spiritual electricity. She states that:

•       creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy : pure creative energy
•       there is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life – including ourselves
•       when we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the life force creativity within us and our lives
•       we are, ourselves, creations. And we in turn are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves
•       the refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature
•       our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity

Today I painted in the studio. I started a new piece that just didn’t work. The colours were wrong and the composition was weak.

I set it aside and decided to make some changes to 3 other unfinished paintings that have been testing me. Not sure about the results of those either.

   
Before and After  22″ x 22″

In the past, I would have felt very frustrated by this and worried that my creativity had left. But now I have that most precious commodity of any human – time.

Outside warm rain pelted the studio windows and the sound of the river tide was wonderful.

•       I listened to some acoustic guitar and percussion music from Ryan LeBlanc who played for us, right here in Bear River this past weekend, to inspire my emotions
•       I burned some cedar incense to please my sense of smell
•       I read some more of the first volume of Upton Sinclair’s Lanny Budd series and time-travelled to 1915 to nurture my thinking
•       I drank some tea

And then I planted a dozen eggplant seeds to add to the seedlings that are growing on the studio windowsills.

Leeks for winter soups.

Tomorrow I’ll try again with my brushes and with my paint in this great incubator of creativity that is our studio. And that tide outside will keep on moving and creating.

Tree lichen.

The New Vase

This winter I’ve been printmaking using easy-peasy materials.  I enjoy the high contrast and the textures that printmaking presents, and I wanted to bring that same feel to my next painting.

Inspiration comes from different places all the time.  In the case of this painting the color, the tulips, the pears, the spring season, and the friendship behind the vase all combined to inspire me.

Spontaneity.

At the grocery store the other day I bought these gorgeous tulips and some very plump, luscious, tasty beautiful pears. I have to confess that I bought the pears because of their colour.  I knew that I had to use that color in a big way in a painting!

Good enough to paint AND eat!

I decided to use the pear green as the background color.  I use Golden Fluid Acrylics for most of my acrylic painting. I like the intensity of the pigment and the fluidity. For years I painted exclusively in watercolour and the transition to painting with acrylics felt better using fluid paints.

To paint the background I squirted three colors onto my canvas – green-gold, Hansa yellow, and titan buff, I added mat medium and mixed the paint directly on the canvas for two reasons:

• it is a lot faster to mix the color on the canvas
• the resulting ground has some texture and variation

Painting the background.

I keep practicing painting with a reduced palette, because in my experience, it results in more harmony to the painting. The colours I choose  are often determined by how I feel about the colour and the given subject matter on the day that my painting starts. Some days pea green “speaks” to me, and on other days I am drawn to a coral colour. So, just to be on the safe side, this time I coated out canvases with both colours!

Coated canvasses wait to be painted.

After studying my subject matter and moving my props around for awhile; after putting on some music and making the perfect cup of tea, I sketched out my big shapes with chalk, erased some of them, moved the shapes around, added more, erased and generally played around with the composition until I felt satisfied with it. Then I captured those shapes with paint. It’s just a guide because as I get into the painting, I will still change the position of objects.

The painting objects are sketched on with chalk and then with paint.

While I’m drawing it out, I’m thinking about what colours I’ll use. For me, the subject matter is for reference only and I rarely do a literal reproduction of the exact object or colours. Although I bought the parrot tulips for their colour and shape, on painting day the red didn’t appeal to me anymore so I changed their colour.

I open up my paints, adding a dioxinine purple to the original colours that I used in the background.

My limited palette.

Even though many of my paintings appear to be still life paintings or flowers–a generic subject matter, they are all actually quite personal.

Let me explain.

Tulips represent rebirth and new beginnings to me and so does the yellow-green colour.

But the vase in this painting is what tells the real story. It is a reference to a wonderful man I worked with for many years in Toronto in adult literacy.

The final flower set up for the painting.

I could tell you a lot of things about my colleague – his sharp wit, his ability to understand complex computer concepts and explain them in non-patronizing ways to the rest of us.  I could tell you how every day at lunch he would pull out his pocket knife and carefully peel several pieces of fruit leaving behind one long coil of skin or rind. Or I could tell you about the beautiful smooth, round flat stones he had collected from Lake Ontario that littered his office.

Matt medium is smeared all over the canvas. It will dry transparent. The first bit of paint is squeezed out of the bottles onto the canvas.

But instead I will tell you that one day I found myself leaning in his office doorway and telling him about the fear and anxiety I had felt for months towards a manager at work. I started to cry and I couldn’t stop.  I didn’t know him very well and I was embarrassed at my display of emotion but at the same time I was very relieved to be able to share with him the nightmare I was feeling at work. When I returned from lunch, there was a gigantic bouquet of flowers on my desk.  I think I must have cried again!  It was such a kind gesture of support and affirmation.

It takes patience to wait for the matt medium to dry revealing the true colours.

A few weeks ago, about seven years after that episode, a beautiful vase arrived in the mail.  My friend and his partner were housecleaning and came across this vase which reminded him of my paintings. He packed it up and mailed it out here to me. Another spontaneous gesture!

Painting detail.

It feels good to have a piece of Alan’s energy here in the studio and it’s just the kind of inspiration a new painting needed.

I am happy with the painting so far, but I need to spend some more time on the flowers, and maybe the background too.

The almost-finished painting

Coming here to live in Bear River has been a rebirth and renewal of my creativity because it has given me the opportunity to spend more time painting, writing and smelling the tulips!

The perfect music helps the painting.

Here is the finished painting that will be displayed at the Flight of Fancy store in Bear River. (SOLD October, 2009)

"The Gift" $900 acrylic .