March 2017

One post a year does not a blog make.. oh dear.  One of the biggest recent highlights  was donating a 48x48" grizzly portrait to the Audain Art Museum's first anniversary fundraiser. It was in the live auction, along with pieces by much more prestigious  artists like Gordon Smith, Guido Molinari, Paul Wong, and Martha Sturdy so I was pretty nervous. But happily, there were several bidders and it sold for 30% more than the usual price!

Point of View

I am spending more time painting grizzlies as I feel strongly that they need our advocacy and protection. Many people don't realize that there is still a trophy hunt in B.C.  (I think it's disgraceful for people to shoot these gorgeous creatures to hang them on a wall.) Much better to promote photo tourism and allow many people to repeatedly enjoy the same bear . And it brings in more tourism revenue to the province. Their territories and routes are getting diminished and criss-crossed by logging and human activity.  I am the official artist of the Grizzly Bear Foundation and will be donating other paintings to that cause.

KNIGHT INLET LODGE  ARTIST IN RESIDENCE

In June 2016 I was invited to be the artist in residence at Knight Inlet Lodge, a wonderful grizzly viewing floating lodge in Knight Inlet. It is accessible by float plane 25 minutes from Campbell River. I highly recommend it as a way to very safely but closely observe and learn about grizzlies. 

Below are pics of Bella, a mother of 3 cubs, teaching them to turn over rocks and find the grubs and other protein below. They are new cubs and all the bears are lean in June.  At the bottom she is nursing them on a beach after they were alarmed by something and fled up a tree. Very calm mom!

More catchup!

Value Viewer is a very useful app that I frequently use to check whether my composition is working from a lights and darks point of view. It costs about $8 and you can use it to see your work as NOTAN or a grayscale that you can darken or lighten.  If the NOTAN shows a strong design, the painting should work too.  Here's an example. If it doesn't show a strong design, and has the lights and darks scattered around, for me that means it needs some rethinking. It's taken me many years to really get that!



Desert Painter

Plein air painting in the California desert is a lot of fun! In the spring our WOBA (Whistler Out-of-Bounds) foursome (Lianne Gulka, Susie Cipolla, Andrea Moore and I) painted in 30º weather .. the acrylics dry out so quickly we now understand why so many southern artists prefer oils! Gotta watch out for tarantulas and rattlers, but otherwise it was a great experience with a whole new palette. Might take a few more visits to master those warm subtle colours!

So much to catch up on!

My apologies to anyone who has read these posts and may have been disappointed when they stopped. I forgot about the blog as Facebook became so much easier. But lots of people don't use FB so here's a quick effort to catch up with some highlights.

For the last 3 Spring Breaks in March, I painted for the week in the Fairmont Chateau Whistler lobby as artist in residence. It was a terrific experience .. great feedback and a chance to get to know their interesting clientele from around the world. It's a win/win/win for the hotel, the gallery and the artist.

Artist in Residence representing Mountain Galleries.

Here's one of my West Coast paintings in Canada House, London, in the office of the Canadian High Commissioner Gordon Campbell!  It was exciting to see it there last year. The new Canada House is spectacular, filled with stunning art from every part of our country.


In the fall of 2015 we returned to Klemtu in the Great Bear Rainforest. An interesting story is that the previous year, the First Nations found a Japanese fishing dory there that had washed across the Pacific after the tsunami. They fixed it up to use for bear viewing, but were always wondering about the original owner. A Japanese friend of ours researched the registration number still visible on the boat, located the owner, and invited him and his wife to come to BC and see their boat again.  He brought his boat's flag and we shared in a very moving reunion and celebration.



Then we returned to beautiful Mussel Inlet to sit on a log in the rain and hope some grizzlies came by.
It's lucky my husband Jim is such a dedicated and patient photographer!

The next day we say on a wet slippery river bank hoping to see the elusive Spirit Bear. We sat for many hours!

As we were packing up at 3pm, resigned to missing the spirit bear once again, our hearts skipped a beat as a young white bear came across the river on a log. She fished for 40 minutes or so before disappearing down the river, and 10 minutes later she came down the trail above us, toward us, but stopped 20 yards away when she saw the colourful obstacles in her path. After staring for a moment, she turned and chose another route. We felt so blessed to have this rare encounter!

I'll do another catchup post in the next couple of days. 

Bear Studies

I've been interested in bears for several years and have painted many black bears, but this fall we took 2 trips to observe and photograph grizzlies in their natural habitat. The first was to Silver Salmon Creek Lodge on Cook Inlet, Alaska, where the grizzlies fish for salmon on the beach at low tide and then dig for huge razor clams as the tide comes in.

Then we revisited the Great Bear Rainforest  ..  such a magical place. We stayed in Klemtu at the Spirit Bear Lodge, and with the help of a wonderful guide  we saw a dozen grizzlies in Mussel Inlet.  One confident mom and 3 cubs came quite close to us but our guide assured us that if we stayed crouched on the ground she would ignore us. He had been watching her all summer and admired the way her 3 cubs were thriving. He had even witnessed her playing with her cubs! Her photo is below, along with my large portrait of her.

A special visit with Gordon Smith

I met the brilliant and energetic Gordon Smith recently .. at the Equinox Gallery unveiling of his large reflection painting for the entrance of the newly renovated Canada House on Trafalgar Square.  He invited me for a visit in his studio.  I took along some work as requested, and he was tremendously encouraging. What an inspiration he is, painting for many hours every day in his mid nineties. May we all be that excited to get out of bed and get to work at that age!

Bear Drawing .. from adults in Whistler to 4 year olds in NYC!

Everyone likes to draw bears, including our grandson's class in Manhattan. They were such fun to teach, and added lots of great details such as cubs, long necks for reaching high fruit, grasses and ponds. Hope they invite me back!

Some of my paintings at the Mountain Galleries reception in March

 This was a few weeks ago but I just got some nice new photos to post.  Good thing too as a couple of paintings were immediately bought and taken away! Below is Jurgen who took Bear back to Germany where they have no bears left.
I had a week of inspired production painting in the hotel lobby.. who would have guessed?!