A Brush with Life - Issue #100 Within An Ordinary Day 100 Times
As recent weeks slip past in a tragic and unsettling rattle of explosives that results in rubble and far too many losses, I ask myself - is there still such a thing as an ordinary day? And if there is, can I really write about it every two weeks for one hundred times? Apparently there is an ordinary
A Brush with Life - Issue #99 Moments of Abstraction
Every ten to twelve years I will paint an abstract painting. It is a process of working that never really sticks for me but sometimes it is the right approach for a specific idea. Both of these small abstract studies in this issue were done as part of my course work for the Contemporary Landscape Pa
A Brush with Life - Issue #98 Sunflowers, Peace Doves and New Paintings
It is Sunday morning February 27, 2022. I write the following words for my social media profiles:If you are a praying person, today is a day to pray for peace. If you are a thoughtful person, today is a day to fill your mind with successful examples of peaceful resolutions. If you are a meditative p
A Brush with Life - Issue #97 The Story and the Brush of Great Paintings
What if we turn towards the shadows and implicitly embrace the open-endedness of great paintings and their many facets for understanding? What would happen then? Contemporary painter, Vincent Desiderio, asks these questions and reminds us in one of his many lectures that “Great painters suggest. The
A Brush with Life - Issue #96 Wintering into Spring
There is a sense that if we do our quiet wintering well then new vibrant energies start to stir before they can even be seen on the surface. This resonates deeply within me. I often find it hard to notice the significance of light if we dismiss the shadows and the quiet places. Earlier this week, I
A Brush with Life - Issue #95 An Easel Suspended In Mist
Fog and mist shroud the island as temperatures rise to above eight degrees celsius. With the days getting slightly longer and the snow melted, it feels more like proper southwest coast winter and studio painting weather. On the edge of a cliff, flanked by tall firs with windows on three sides, it ha
A Brush with Life - Issue #94 A Lonely Painter Living in a Box of Paints
Holidays can bring moments of doing-the-nothing-of-nothing until melancholy cracks open into even the brightest of days. The west coast winter snow between Christmas and New Years offers me a chosen wakeful early morning in bed. Our fireplace glows as the sun catches the far hill across the valley w
A Brush with Life - Issue #93 Happy Holidays and Season’s Greetings!
This is it folks! The soft light of December has delivered a calendar schedule that supports this being our last issue of 2021. This is what we shall do. We are going to skip the December 24th issue and send all our love and best wishes to you right now, immediately, like in this moment! We will sav
A Brush with Life - Issue #92 Mudslides Floods and More Rain Coming
The next evening after publishing of our last issue, we left for Duncan on Vancouver Island. The rain was heavy going up over the Malahat and visibility poor in the dark. But the traffic was cautious and driving suitable to the road conditions. We arrived at our BnB without incident. The following f
A Brush with Life - Issue #91 It’s Okay to Ask Sometimes
Recently, we were informed of coming changes to the short-term arrangement and long-term use of our commercial gallery space. The bottom line is that the gallery tenancy will end October 31, 2022.This situation is nothing new for small businesses in rental spaces. It is the nature of the insecurity
