It has been a busy “back-to-school” week, every day the kids brought home more homework for ME – an endless stream of forms to fill out, checks to write, shopping to do and appointments to make. So, I am no longer “ahead” when it comes to the challenge.
Today I attended a meeting at Burlington City Hall, to discuss the Culture Days event that I will be participating in on Sept 26, 12-9pm. They are providing me with a canopy, table & chairs, and I will be painting my heart out in public, in front of City Hall! Of course I have painted with people around many times before, but this is the first time I’m going to attempt to start and finish an actual painting with people coming and going (and filming and photographing). And, it’s outside!
It will be a very full and fun day, “featuring activites and performances from musicans, dancers, filmmakers, poets, fine artists, photographers and more!” The Burlington Fine Artists Association plein air group will also be setting up wherever they find interesting spots, to paint the goings on. If you’re in the area, add this date to your calender, I look forward to seeing you there!
Today’s painting is from a photograph I took of the view from my Godmother’s house a few years ago. Coubaril is an interesting neighbourhood in St. Lucia, as a child I always felt as if we were going somewhere special and magical when we entered the area. The trees form a canopy overhead and the road is narrow, so it is like you are going through a tunnel.
Anyway, many of the houses are on sloped properties, and there are also a lot of these black rocks in the gardens. I’m glad I don’t have to cut their lawns, it must be quite the workout. On the other hand, as a kid, it is great for playing hide and seek!
This variety of heliconia … the “sexy pink” is very exotic looking. I only recently came across it in St. Lucia. We do have a wide range of heliconias … my other favorite is the yellow and red “lobster claw”.
Originally, this was a realistic painting, but I decided it was too busy and I wanted to experiment with carving out the negative space. From there I decided to contrast the realism of the flower with colour blocks. The turquoise is from Paris … Sennelier acrylic … my kind of souvenir.
Here is the third canvas in the Torch Ginger Trio. As I mentioned before, the paintings can be hung/purchased individually or as a group.
They are inspired by my recent trip to the Caribbean, where exotic flowers & foliage abound!
Torch Ginger Trio, a view of all three paintings
I enjoyed painting these in a very loose, flowing style, I’m looking forward to doing it on a larger scale, where I stand & use my whole body – painting from the shoulder, instead of the wrist.
Meanwhile, with the painting I will post tomorrow, I went in the opposite direction.
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This was the first painting I did in this set of 3, but all are inspired by the same photograph that I took of some torch ginger lilies on my recent trip to the Caribbean. They can be purchased and/or hung individually, or as a grouping.
My collection of reference photos has probably grown too large … it takes a long time to choose something to paint!
I’m thinking of heliconia next though … what do you think?
Yes. I am that crazy. They say if you need something done, give it to a busy person to do … and I know that to be true. So, at a time when I am completely overwhelmed by how much I have on my plate, I’ve signed up to do Leslie Saeta’s 30 paintings in 30 days challenge again this year – along with over 800 other artists from all over the world.
Admittedly, it is a form of escapism. Self-medicating with art therapy, meditation, however you think of it, there is something about the act of painting that centers a person. It forces you to be in the moment, and the more you give in to your instincts, trust your intuition, the easier the work flows out of you. And you are changed by the process. Art is my mood-altering drug of choice.
After a fantastic 5 week working vacation to the Caribbean, my return home has not been an easy transition. It felt as if a giant baby picked up my house, shook it like a rattle & then put it back down. It seemed everything was in the wrong place, and it’s taken me almost 2 weeks to get a handle on it.
Some of this is our own doing – a make-over for my son’s bedroom – and some of it is due to a freak flood that happened in our area (2 months worth of rain in 3hrs), which seeped into our basement. We have to replace the flooring, and I’ve had to empty my office/storage room and slowly but surely I’m purging through paperwork etc. that has accumulated over the years. Two of the items I unearthed were a calender from 1993 – the year I started University – and a vinyl sign (Aquavisions by Donna Gomez) from my first solo exhibition in 1996.
It will take time to go through, there is a large portfolio of older drawings that got partially wet & has some mildew. I’d like to photograph the drawings before getting rid of them, and each one is charged with nostalgia. I am considering turning this into a little art project.
As I look forward to other things coming up this month, I realize it would be easy for the weeks & months to zip by before I get back to a more consistent painting routine. So, instead of waiting till the chaos is over, I’m going to accept this as the new normal. And I’m going to balance the chaos with creativity.
This painting of torch ginger lilies is one of a trio of small paintings I just completed. They may be purchased individually or as a group. I will post one a day, I just wanted to get a couple days ahead of the challenge so that there isn’t too much pressure to produce. And this may be the longest blog post for some time, most days I will probably just post the image & details.
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This painting is inspired by a photo shoot I did at The Pink Plantation House Restaurant in St. Lucia. The family that owns the property have both cooking & gardening in their blood it seems. They also know that maintaining the gorgeous gardens brings value to their business just by adding to the atmosphere. You can’t help but have a positive experience surrounded by all that nature. And, as with their other businesses, the artwork of one sister Michelle Elliot can be found all over. This is just one of the places I visit when I go home to St. Lucia, to gather inspiration and reference photos for my paintings.
This is actually another view from the grounds of The Pink Plantation House. There is just something nostalgic about a tire swing. What memories or feelings does it bring up for you?
This view is looking out of the original stone archway to the King Louis XVI mineral baths at the Diamond Falls & Botanical Gardens in St. Lucia. I love these old stone buildings, especially the ruins, covered in tropical foliage. Not for what it stands for … the turbulent history of man on the island … but for the reminder that Nature overcomes by outliving us all.
If I’m looking at the same landscape that my ancestors did hundreds of years ago (I belong to the 5th generation of my family born in the Caribbean) … then it puts all the fuss & worry over everyday modern life into perspective.
We are but flowers blooming for a short time on this planet.
Let me know what you think of the recent landscapes, I think of them as moody or magical, someone said “dreamy”. I am enjoying this expressive way of painting, compared to my more realistic paintings of hibiscus etc. It is nice for me as an artist to be able to go in either direction, depending on my subject and my mood.
It has been a long time since I have posted a new painting, but I do have a bunch to share with you, it’s just going to take a little while to get to them all.
This painting was inspired by a photo shoot I did in my late grandfather’s garden. The tree with the ladder was actually in the overgrown lot next to his. I love the contrast of the man-made object with the wildness of the foliage. An attempt was obviously made to tame it at some point, but Nature always wins, because time is on her side.
I enjoyed painting this, and the more I look at it, the more layers of meaning I discover. The beauty of art is often in what is implied.
I welcome your comments. This painting is currently in my studio & so available directly through me. If it speaks to you, drop me a line … I offer very flexible payment terms, so that you can get the art you want.
Recently, I have been taking a look back at some of the work I did in my early 20’s. I am closing in on my 40th birthday, so I thought it would be fun to do a countdown, I’ve been posting a painting a day on my Facebook page, as the cover image.
The paintings featured in this blog post are from the series I did in my last year of my BA in Art at McMaster University in Hamilton. When I exhibited the series at Gallery on the 4th, Hamilton Public Library, I named it “Caribbean Imagery”. It was my first solo exhibition in Canada.
Nicole was a Trinidadian girl I met in Psychology 101 at McMaster, she was one of my bridesmaids. I actually had her put on my blue wrap & took reference photos of her against the white door of my room in the student house I was living in. Then I just made up the background.
Soufriere, 36″x48″, acrylic on canvas, 1997. Sold
Not long after I did this painting, the shoreline was wiped out by a hurricane, and some of the residents had to be relocated. Many people commented to me that I had recorded a piece of history, and this painting was one of my most popular of the series.
The collector who bought it had a large collection, but said that this one always drew comments from visitors, and when he relocated to the United States, he took it with him. We happened to meet a couple years ago & he showed me a photo of it hanging over his fireplace, next to it was a painting by my high school art teacher, Sir Dunstan St. Omer.
This painting was included in our graduating exhibition at McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton in 1997. It was placed on a feature wall which was painted the same yellow as the buildings in painting.
This was the first painting of the series, one of my favourites, so I’ve held on to it.
I apologize for the quality of the images, I did get professional slides made of the series, but I still haven’t scanned those slides in directly, so I’m not sure but these could be scans of photos of the slides, or worse yet scans of photos I took myself. Regardless, they are darker than the original paintings.
I knew when I was painting “Coalpot” that I’d made a breakthrough in my work. This series is why I graduated from my program with Honours. Up until that time I was just full-filling requirements on my assignments, trying to get good marks. This series was more personal.
Also, up until this series I worked in a variety of media, but I only did one oil painting that year, I realized that acrylics suited me best. I could get brighter colours, which suited my tropical subject better, and I could work 12-16 hours straight on the same painting because I didn’t have to wait for it to dry. Then the next day I would do writing assignments, classes & household stuff … basically everything except paint. So that by the time I got back to my painting I was refreshed. I have always worked best this way. But I’ve never had as perfect a set-up as that last year of school where I shared a large studio on campus with a handful of other students, and had no other responsibilities but to do my best work.
This painting was bought by someone working in the St. Lucia Consulate in Toronto, and the Prime Minister of St. Lucia saw it hanging there & asked for me to contact him about , etc. etc. I am not sure who owns it right now … but I believe it was resold in St. Lucia.
The men are playing dominos on their lunch break. The man with the hat has passed away, but he was the father of the man in the painting further down in this post, called “Friends”.
When I was choosing what I would paint for the year, it occurred to me that I may be marrying my boyfriend, and that would mean I’d have to stay in Canada. This series was me exploring the question of what St. Lucia meant to me. I worked on 2 paintings at a time, one figurative and one landscape, and by the end of the year one of the things I’d learned was that I was happiest paintings landscape, especially foliage. You can see in Vivian I was experimenting with how abstract I could paint foliage & have the painting still read as realistic. This was the basis of my next series, Jungle Rhythms.
Her dress was always my favourite part of this painting, but when I painted the flowering bush I really tasted the freedom possible when painting foliage. Up close it’s dabs of colour, but further back they come together to form an image.
These were people I worked with in the summer, they weren’t a couple – he walked by when I was taking the photo of her & just made himself at home. I thought it made for a great composition though. It also says so much about how laid back West Indians can be, even at work.
Each work of art, even if I’ve just had it for a short time, has a story … or a history, made up of several little interesting stories. One story that sticks with this painting for me, is its “adoption” story. I took it in to Arts Etc. Gallery Shop & Art Rental, in the Burlington Art Center (now the Art Gallery of Burlington), and someone rented it for 3 months, then another 3 months before returning it.
At some point I brought it back to my studio, where it sat while I travelled in Europe. Six months later, I got a call from the gallery – the man who had rented it for his office (a city planner) wanted to know if it was still available to buy. At that point I was either in my last trimester or had a newborn, regardless, the painting was still sitting in the studio.
I read years later that the man had taken a position in Thunder Bay, and I always thought that was a curious thing … a Carnival painting in a very northern part of Canada. Then again, I never met the collector, maybe that painting was a way for him to stay connected to/express his roots. That’s just a part of the story that will remain a mystery to me. I might create the paintings, but when I let them go, they take on lives of their own.
It is so strange for me to look at this painting, and realize that the little boy in it is probably about 20yrs old himself now! I actually photographed the two of them at a beach party, watching as our friends played an informal game of cricket, and the background is a view of Pigeon Island causeway in St. Lucia.
This is a large painting, and there is quite the story that goes along with the tear on the bottom right corner (not seen here). However, I’ll save that story for when you visit my home studio & see it in person!
Meanwhile, please follow my countdown retrospective on Facebook, until my birthday on July 8th.
Although I was just doing this for my own amusement – and hopefully yours- I actually did hear from someone who wants to add one of these paintings to her collection. A few of them hang in my house, and a few in my parents’ house in St. Lucia. They are signed with my maiden name, Donna Gomez, and a couple as Donna G. because I thought I was being clever. There were a couple other paintings in the series, but they aren’t available anyway. If you see something you want, let me know.
It seems that whenever I let my heart take the lead, instead of my head, I do my best work. I have said for years that what I love to paint the most is foliage, and my artist statement always mentions organic shapes & patterns, and mood created with dramatic lighting and vivid colour, but not all of my paintings hit the nail on the head the way this one does.
Painting technique can be learned, but finding one’s own unique artistic voice/style has no predictable timeline, no guarantee. Some artists are lucky to discover it right away, but I personally think that that is the case when they already have strong opinions, and a clear idea of who they are – OR, they have someone nurturing and mentoring their progress.
Some artists, especially those working on commission, may never discover their own voice, because they are essentially allowing themselves to be a channel for their client’s voice. I am not saying that there is a right & a wrong, or even a finality about this decision. Making a living as an artist takes as much creativity as the artwork itself.
It is possible however to do good paintings, that do nothing to move you down your own artistic path. I suppose I am talking here not of art as a commodity, but as a spiritual practice or art therapy. A creative process like painting can be a vehicle for personal growth, if the artist is mindful. Like writing “morning pages” (google Julia Cameron’s The Artists Way if you don’t know what I’m talking about), the painter can sometimes gain clarity & insight by being in the moment.
Painting pushes everyday worries out of my head because it is like slipping into a stream of constant decision making. When I stop, it is a struggle to keep my head above water, which is why I try to have a couple paintings on the go at any one time.
Canvases as mental life-rafts, I might be pushing the metaphor a little. Then again, I have heard authors say that writing a certain book saved their life, either due to the toxicity they were able to release, or to the positive energy it brought into their lives.
The arts are how we connect to the rest of humanity, even our most desperate times. And it isn’t just a benefit for those of us creating. The general public may not be able to relate to my story of being moved to tears as I stood in front of a gigantic Sorolla painting in the D’Orsay Museum in Paris, but we have all laughed and cried because of a movie, we have all felt the grip on our hearts as music dragged us up and down through an emotional roller coaster.
In fact, the chances of a viewer being deeply moved by a painting is partly dependent on personal taste, partly due to the sum of their life experience – the more experiences the more points of reference they have to connect with the work – and above all it has to do with how truly open they are to being in the moment, to contemplate, to feel, to trust in their honest reaction to the work. Appreciation for the arts is a gift we give ourselves, and others. It is a portal to receiving and sharing joy, peace, truth and a sense of belonging.
The plaid design in this painting is not arbitrary, in the sense that any St. Lucian will read it as Madras, a component of the National Dress of St. Lucia. October is Creole Heritage month, and many patriots like to dress up in Madras (from the traditional full outfits to the more modern use of the fabric in accessories like ties, belts, earrings or handbags) for the Jounen Kwéyol celebrations. Especially in the last decade, the fabric has become a symbol of National pride.
In 2000, I did a few paintings which I refer to collectively as my Madras series, however they were created one by one in between my other projects as I tried out different concepts incorporating the pattern. My favourite of these experiments is the heliconia on the top right of the image below. I liked the semi-abstract effect of the broad bands of colour against the tropical vegetation, and always intended to return to this theme one day.
Then recently someone challenged me to do a new version of Madras Banana (first image in the collage below). She liked the way I painted the Madras border around the banana tree with some of the leaves overlapping, but was also a fan of the raindrops in my hibiscus painting, “Precious gems”.
I started with a simple pencil thumbnail sketch, then primed the canvas with golden ochre acrylic paint. Next I took a look at a swatch of Madras fabric that I purchased in St. Lucia many years ago, to choose the colours for the border.
Over the last 2 decades I’ve taken many photos of tropical vegetation, so it took a while to search through my digital files for reference photos, but I settled on the one in the photo collage above. Then I proceeded to lay in the general composition based on a combination of my thumbnail & the photo. Once I blocked in the general areas of colour, the image started taking shape. Unlike the original painting, which was a more distant view, in this painting I placed a banana leaf in the foreground, so that I could add the raindrops.
The painting evolved slowly, I would think I was done, but then something would not feel quite right, so I would come back & work some more on it. That’s how it goes sometimes, painting is a dialogue … you may think you need to make just one little change, but when you step back to look at what you’ve done – that little change may affect the way you see other parts of the painting – and now you may discover you have a few MORE little changes to make!
This painting is currently available for International Shipping – in a mailing tube – from my studio in Burlington, Canada. Or for local pick-up or delivery. E-mail donna@bluerootsartstudio.com if interested.
BLUE ROOTS ART STUDIO – acrylic paintings of Caribbean & Canadian landscape, flowers & foliage. Burlington, ON, Canada. 905-639-3419
