I have 2 events happening in Burlington this Sat. So it’s going to be a busy day. First I’ll be setting up an art installation at Burlington Central Library on New Street, then I’ll be heading to Be Yoga and Wellness at Fairview & Walkers.
There I will be setting up a table with small paintings (some never been shown before) & greeting cards, and fellow artist Heather Horton will be painting live. Both of us have art on display on the walls of Be Yoga as part of an on-going display (we switch out the paintings now and then).
Also, looking forward to the tea sampling, and meeting Katie from The Monarch Tea Co.
Art Installation
Then at 1pm I’ll pack up and head back to the library. I hope to be there from 1:30-4pm for the rest of the Lost in Books event. Then it’ll be time to pack up.
Lost in Books, art installation event.
I hope you will get a chance to see my installation, called Night Garden … you’ll have to use a flashlight, to see my paintings on the stage. It’s quite an interesting effect, best experienced in person.
First Dibond panel being prepared for painting of Ireland Park Mural
Here is a sneak peek into my studio six weeks ago as I began preparing the first of 4 panels that I will be painting for a mural project I have hinted at but not officially announced yet.
About a week ago a friend let me know that the Mayor of Burlington, Rick Goldring, had shared details about the Burlington Mural Project on Facebook.
The original posting was from the Burlington Public Art website:
Burlington Mural Project
The City of Burlington, through its Public Art Program, has announced six local artists who have been selected for the 2015 Burlington Mural Project.
“This new public art program was designed to tell local stories using local artists,” said Angela Paparizo, manager of arts and culture. “The annual program will commission small to medium-scale murals throughout the city. These commissions are open exclusively to Burlington, Ont., artists. Free professional development opportunities will be offered to assist artists with the application process and project development each year.”
Artist Selection
A community jury of residents and artists representing each ward reviewed the proposals and selected the following artists:
Judy Mayer-Grieve: King Road Underpass, Ward 1
Claire Hall: Freeman Station, Ward 2
Teresa Seaton: Amherst Park, Ward 3
Hannah Sell and Liam Racine: Port Nelson Park, Ward 4
Tamara Kwapich: Orchard Community Park, Ward 5
Donna Grandin: Ireland Park, Ward 6
Ward 1: King Road Underpass Judy Mayer-Grieve Judy Mayer-Grieve is an honours graduate of OCAD University, Toronto, Ont., and a graduate of The Art Centre, Toronto, Ont. She has more than 20 years of experience in advertising as a graphic designer and illustrator for National and International clients and is a past instructor in the Art and New Media Department of Fanshawe College.
Ward 2: Freeman Station Claire Hall Claire Hall creates custom art for various clients including hotel lobbies, condo corporations, corporate offices, and private collectors. Her artwork has been featured on several episodes of Property Brothers and Buying and Selling. Prints of her artwork can now be purchased at Winners, Home Sense and Marshall’s.
Ward 3: Amherst Park Teresa Seaton Teresa Seaton is one of Canada’s most notable emerging fine art stained glass artists. Teresa holds a degree in Graphic Design from Sheridan College, a BA of Fine Arts from York University and has received specialized training in stained glass.
Ward 4: Port Nelson Hannah Sell and Liam Racine As a collaborative artist team, Hannah Sell and Liam Racine explore art in ways neither would traditionally do as an individual artist. Sell is a resident of Burlington, Ont., and graduated from Central High School. She attended Mohawk College for the Art and Design Foundation program and is heading to George Brown College in September for the Fashion Design and Techniques program. Racine is from Chapeau, Que., and is now a resident of Burlington, Ont., since attending Mohawk College’s Art and Design Foundation program. Racine is attending the Fine Arts program at Centennial College.
Ward 5: Orchard Community Park Tamara Kwapich Tamara Kwapich was born and lives in Burlington, Ont. She graduated from the University of Guelph with a BA in Fine Art and a bachelor’s degree in Landscape Architecture. Kwapich has been a practising artist in Burlington for many years. She works primarily in acrylic paint and mediums on large canvases, walls and ceilings.
Ward 6: Ireland Park Donna Grandin Donna Grandin is a professional fine artist from St. Lucia. She graduated with a BA in Art from McMaster University in 1997 and moved to Burlington with her husband the following year. Her art is regularly exhibited in Ontario, St. Lucia and the Barbados. In 2013, Grandin was invited to exhibit in the 152nd annual Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Carrousel du Louvre, Paris, France. In the last few years, Donna has been involved with the annual Art in Action Burlington Studio Tour, and the Arts and Culture Collective of Burlington.
Community Consultation
In February 2015, residents were invited to submit mural locations and story ideas through online surveys and in-person at the Lowville Winter Games. Residents provided a total of 333 location suggestions, with 114 of those being unique locations. Locations that were not selected in year one will be used in later years of the program
I will of course be sharing images etc. with you soon, but for now I have to get back to painting!
Flyer for Art in the Workplace, McMaster Innovation Park
If you live in Hamilton & surrounding area, then come join me at the wine & cheese art opening tomorrow night at McMaster Innovation Park!
This is the 17th juried exhibition put on by MIP, and several of the artists I know have participated before, and they’ve encouraged me to enter. So, I did, and I’m excited to see the following 2 paintings on display tomorrow, along with a great selection of art by a variety of local artists.
Here is another painting I forgot to write about, I completed it just in time for the Art in Action Studio Tour. It’s another large painting – 4’x4′ – so far this one and Gemma’s Rose have just sat in my studio while I went about creating more paintings. I will have to see about getting them out into the public eye soon … but right now I have a number of other irons in the fire.
In The thinking place, you can see I was exploring the use of dashes of colour, like I used in my peacock paintings. There is just something playful about the juxtaposition of whimsical pattern with a realistic scene, that makes me happy.
I love the peacefulness of this scene, such a great place to sit and contemplate, either the real location, or just facing the painting. I think it reminds you to slow down, take the time to enjoy Nature, stare at the clouds, the ripples in the water, the beautiful flowers.
Let me know if you’d like to try this painting out in your house to see how it transforms your space. If you live nearby, I can bring a selection of paintings for you to choose from. With a small business like mine (one short individual wearing lots of hats), you are guaranteed the personal touch!
It’s that time of year again, where I give the studio a fresh coat of paint, hang my latest paintings and invite the public in for the Art in Action Burlington Studio Tour. This year – Nov 1 & 2 – my guest artist is Lois Shaw with her realistic still-life paintings. Unfortunately, jeweller Louise Young has had to cancel again.
However there will be more than enough art to view, and perhaps collect. Lois & I will have original paintings in a variety of sizes & greeting cards, perfect for gift-giving – especially if you’d like to treat yourself to something special to put under your own tree!
Art in Action pre-tour exhibition, Art Gallery of Burlington
On Oct 19th we had a reception for the pre-tour group exhibition at the Art Gallery of Burlington. The Mayor of Burlington, Rick Goldring, said a few words, and so did Denis Longchamps, chief curator of the AGB.
Thanks to CHCH for filming – my brother-in-law texted me to say he’d just seen me on the news, I think my street-cred just went up with the family! The AGB show runs until Nov 13th and is a sampling of all the art that will be on the tour. It is not just paintings and sculpture, there is wonderful jewellery as well.
Donna at Art in Action pre-tour reception, Art Gallery of Burlington
Take a look at the Art in Action 2014 map and plan your route – we are in studio #8. Carpool with your girl friends, or make it a date – or double date – and try to see as many of the studios as you can. You can win $100-$200. towards art by your favourite artist by filling out the ballot on the Art in Action brochures.
These red sunflowers and the metallic green bee (agapostemon) exemplify the beautiful colour variations in Nature. We’re so used to seeing yellow sunflowers and yellow and black bees, it feels like we’re witnessing something special when we come across less common colours.
I photographed these at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington, near the tea house in the Hendrie gardens. Come to think of it, I’ve also painted lily pads in the pond a few steps away, roses that surround the pond, and tulips and magnolias from the Rock garden.
The first time I saw green bees was a few summers ago in my own garden. I had been painting all morning, stopped to make lunch, saw how beautiful the weather was & decided to eat outside. I walked over to where we were trying to start a flower bed and sat on the edge of the retaining wall, right next to the dahlias so that I could study them. All of a sudden I saw something that looked like a bee, but it was metallic green! I wondered what sort of insect it could be, so I took some photos and looked it up on the internet. Apparently Agapostemon bees are sweat bees, and they burrow in the ground.
Anyway, I’m posting this painting which I did last year because I’ve been doing some more complicated/time-consuming paintings and have been falling behind with the 30 in 30 challenge. “Always wanting more” was done for a group exhibition of 8″x8″ paintings, and it has a simple, black floater frame on it.
My first snow painting … I think I did ok. Though I did noodle away at it a little longer than I wanted to for a daily painting & I’m tired this morning. We’ve been having a lot of snow lately, and it’s very cold … I wish I could stay in & hibernate & paint the winter away!
The painting is also larger than I’d planned for a daily, but I felt it needed to be a little bigger. The location is very close to the swing set in “Five more minutes” from day 3, and the palette is very similar, but that was taken later in the day, in the summer.
Thank you to those of you who have left comments, liked and shared my posts through your social networks. This is one of the reasons I’m doing this challenge, to increase the eyeballs on my art! If you haven’t yet, please like my Fb page, and sign up for my mailing list!
The following is a post that I’ve brought over from my original blog where I wrote about exhibitions, career highlights etc. in the 3rd person.
Opening night of Miniature Show, 337 Sketch Gallery in Hamilton, Fri Oct 25th, 2011.
Almost 130 miniature paintings are on display in the gallery, located at 337 Ottawa St. N, Hamilton, ON. The show has been extended till Nov 13th, regular gallery hours are 11-6pm Thurs-Sun, but it will be open a little later on Fri Nov 11th because the Art Bus will be making a stop there as part of the Art Crawl.
The trio of 4″x5″ miniatures I painted for this exhibition were inspired by photos I took of some bees buzzing around a patch of flowers outside a store in Midland Ontario this summer. That night while I sat on the couch at my friend’s cottage, sorting through the pics on my laptop, zooming in and cropping the centers of the flowers where the bees were doing their thing … an amazing and unexpected fireworks display began on the other side of the lake. So “Fireworks” was my way of commemorating that wonderful weekend retreat with my fellow artist. And the other paintings just fell in to place.
For more info on the show, and the gallery, take a look at the FB page: 337 Sketch Gallery.
BLUE ROOTS ART STUDIO – acrylic paintings of Caribbean & Canadian landscape, flowers & foliage. Burlington, ON, Canada. 905-639-3419
