Tomorrow, I turn 40 years old. To celebrate that milestone, I have been taking a look back at some of my early work and posting them as the cover image on my Facebook page. Most of the paintings in the collage above are from 1998, and were inspired by a trip to St. Lucia where my husband & I had our second wedding in as many years.
I painted most of them sitting cross-legged on the couch in our one-bedroom apartment. Others I painted in my friend’s apartment in Toronto when I went to hang out sometimes during the week. The smaller size of the paintings (compared to the 36″x48″ paintings in the Caribbean Imagery series) made it easy to work anywhere, even when I had to lug it all on the Go train.
I first showed these in a solo exhibition at the Atrium Gallery in the Henderson Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. It was a successful series in every way.
The Diamond Falls Botanical Gardens in St. Lucia was a big inspiration here, I love exploring that place with a camera. There are trees hundreds of years old, tall & covered in vines, creating a canopy. A huge assortment of exotic plants, flowers & leaves … my favourite things. I wanted to share the exhileration I feel in this type of environment.
If I didn’t have young kids, I would love to do a residency there, every day I would set my easel up in front of another plant or view to paint.
Actually, that reminds me of my big news – I am going to be in St. Lucia this summer, and I plan on doing some small paintings on location!
I will post them here first and then share the link on Facebook. So, if you’d like to see them first, don’t forget to subscribe to blog updates via e-mail!
