Art Gallery of Ontario

I was in Toronto recently and took the opportunity to visit the Art Gallery of Ontario to see some work that was on my wish list. The exhibition From the Forest to the Sea: Emily Carr in British Columbia was first shown in London last year at the Dulwich Gallery, but as I knew I'd be in Toronto this summer I looked forward to seeing it in the Canadian setting. Carr's paintings were well complemented by artefacts from the First Nations which inspired much of her work and it was a joy to see them together.

I prefer Carr's looser work on paper, but the installation view gives an idea of the scale at which she was working.

I can't remember whether or not this is one of Carr's experimental gasoline paintings, several of which were in the show (paintings on paper where gasoline was used as a medium for the paint!), but it is a good example of her looser painting style.

While at the AGO, I was delighted to also see a special exhibit of a pair of paintings by Tom Thompson. The Jack Pine, according to the gallery didactic, was the painting found on Thompson's easel at the time of his mysterious death in 1917.

The West Wind, another iconic Thompson painting, is also dated 1917.

The Thompson exhibit also included the sketches/small paintings of these works. While I did "exit through the gift shop", I also found my way into a room full of another Canadian painter's work. I have always liked David Milne's dry brush drawing/paintings so it was lovely to see a whole room full of them.

I did not have time to do any further explorations that afternoon at the art gallery, but it was inspirational to see the work of these three great Canadian painters.

Summer sketching

There has recently been a spate of summery weather which has been facilitating lazy days of sketching. I don't always have to go somewhere else. Sitting out the back there was lots of flora to choose from. We have a large pot of azaleas and delicate flowers are appearing on the rosemary plant.

I recently re-located my flat drawing pencil -- like a carpenter's pencil except it has a 4B lead in it. I used it to do a quick sketch of our curry plant.

This sketch of my daughter reading in the front yard makes her look older than she is. I thought she was disturbed by something she read, but when I asked her later why she was frowning, she told me she overheard the neighbourhood children "playing" -- they were collecting bees in bottles to kill them.

I am happier with the pencil drawing of my daughter concentrating on her book in the sunshine.

Killruddery House & Gardens

Summer is most definitely here! Recently I have been meeting one of my sisters on a weekly basis at Killruddery House & Gardens, a 17th century big house estate on the outskirts of Bray (just down the road from where I live). Especially in the good weather we've been having, it's a lovely place to walk about and also to stop for a pleasant coffee. I was there yesterday, and the waterlilies were starting to flower in the long ponds.

Last week in the woods I was surprised to see trillium. I thought they only grew in Canada, and are the provincial flower of my native province, Ontario. Last time I saw trillium was as forest floor cover in Aurora (near Toronto) while visiting in 1998 or 1999. I was a bit taken aback by seeing these trillium, which seemed larger than I remember, but with distinctive colouring, petals and foliage.

After walking through the woods, we found ourselves at the top of the large rockery with a gorgeous view of Killruddery House. 

Anticipation!

It took a bit of figuring out - I re-sewed the hanging loops to make them a bit shorter and gave a bit of direction to my personal slave (I mean husband) - Fractured City was taken down from the studio wall to make some space for some new work that I want to start. Of course, putting this painting up (above my husband's workspace in the bedroom) meant that at least 6 other paintings had to be manoeuvred about the house!

So yesterday morning once again I required some assistance to get the kraft paper onto the wall in my studio.

I have planned another triptych and now it is ready for me to start!

More Shinrinyoku!

We are getting lots of gorgeous days, plenty of time for shinrinyoku (Japanese for "a walk in the woods for relaxation"). A few weeks ago we had passed a road sign for Knocksink Woods and had never been there, so Saturday we decided to explore - it was less than 10 mins by car from our house! The woods were fabulous, with all kinds of gnarly trees and exposed roots continuous up the side of the mountain.

 The Glencullen River passes through these woods, and there are lots of little waterfalls, and what I would describe as a creek. Of course I brought my sketchbook and trusty watercolour pencils. I found a rock to sit on beneath a bridge and opened my sketchbook...

We crossed the bridge to walk back on the other side of the river and were stunned that areas of wild garlic were as far as the eye could see, providing ground cover in the woods.

Of course I had to pick some and made two more batches of pesto (using walnuts this time) dividing in meal-size portions for the recently defrosted freezer. Yum!

Writing

I make New Year resolutions each year, which I know that with some work, are possible to do and therefore I don't feel weighed down by failure when the impossible becomes obvious!

The past few years I have included in my list of resolutions to work more on my writing, which has been set aside (unfairly?) in favour of my preference for painting. The art magazine, CIRCA, to which I contributed art reviews for a number of years seems to have folded, so my writing has generally taken the form of FaceBook and blog posts, which I have tried to do regularly.

My other writing outlet has been poetry. My first published poem was "Portrait" in the New Irish Writing section of The Sunday Tribune (now defunct) in the spring of 1989. Following this a number of my poems were published in literary journals and magazines in Ireland and Canada, then I abruptly stopped writing and submitting poems in the mid-1990s.

Poetry has begun to re-emerge in my notebooks in the past few years and I have gotten the gumption to submit a few poems to literary publications in Ireland. So it was with great pleasure that I received a positive reply from Cyphers, a Dublin journal, that two of my Haiku poems would be appearing in the spring issue. An even greater pleasure was to receive my contributor's copy in the post recently.

Sketching!

I have been enjoying sketching again lately and using the opportunity of receiving flowers to have a subject which I have always loved, tulips. I thought I would post a few of these sketches. The sketch below is done using a 3B or 4B pencil.

I am also having fun with watercolour pencils. A friend recently mentioned "water pen" to me, something I have not yet come across -- must investigate!

Tulips are sometimes exhibitionists!

Another soft pencil sketch.

As I am reusing some old sketchbooks with blank pages, I am also coming across older sketches. This is an avocado pencil sketch from 2001.

This sketch is from the last Umha Aois; Experimental Bronze Casting symposium I attended (Ventry, Co. Kerry, Aug-Sept 2001). It is a drawing of my husband's pit furnace and handmade bellows.

Of course sketches may contain kernels for new paintings. My recent trip to Rome obviously inspired this as a counterpoint to my recent painting "Fractured City".