A Brush with Life - Issue #103 Mixing Things Up and Still Mixing
There are times when the only way to make something work is to mix up stray bits until something comes together in a cohesive formation. This is what the past two weeks have been like for the new ISLAND TIME ART room and the home studio… except things haven’t quite come together yet. In fact, I thre
A Brush with Life - Issue #102 Art Studio Organizing
The edges are painted on the last of the commissioned paintings and now it is time to work on getting more of the edges done on the red line series and deciding where to focus my painting next. This is a perfect time to do some studio organizing. Besides, a freelance writer and photographer has come
A Brush with Life - Issue #101 OPEN - ISLAND TIME ART
We would be fibbing if we said there was anything happening over the past two weeks except doing a long list of tasks both in getting the physical space and the online and social media connections in place for opening ISLAND TIME ART. And we did it! With the Made on Mayne Spring Studio Tour starting
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
