March morning on dewy path to the beach I hear a great flutter of grouse wing underneath the fragrant firs. Both startled, I smile and take in the wild blueberry bushes, scented bayberry and shrivelled rose hips still hanging on along the trail. Flattened seagrass and driftwood appear closer to shore. The beautiful sea all ultramarine, emerald grey and amber under cloudy skies. Feel the sand shift under my shiny red boots. March is cold in the Maritimes! Every pottery shard find is a gift from the sea. I like the blue ones best. It's the little things. Breathing deeply, I seek the reliable horizon and let the salt air rejuvenate. Spring is coming. Happy Ostara to all! AXO With the darker days of winter approaching I find the light in my studio. Creating art gives me the opportunity to change my surroundings and even how I feel. My emotions guide my choice of colour, medium and subject. One day I'm wild about flowers, putting together vintage ephemera and paint. The next I choose to seek solace in a peaceful seascape limiting my medium to oil paint. Another day an abstract mixed media work calls out for my favourite family of birds, the corvidae, or beautiful sea birds that make their living from the ocean. When they are done I send them off to my galleries anticipating they will find homes and hoping they will bring some light and joy to the viewer/collector. I have much gratitude for the galleries and curators that continue to exhibit and sell my artwork. They work hard to bring art and culture to their corner of the world. And what is a country without its arts and culture? Not much. As we head into the holiday season I wish you and our world peace, joy and unconditional love now and always. AXO It's summertime and wow does it feel great to feel good again. After an extreme 2022 I am back in flow. An artist doesn't feel whole unless she/he/they are creating. At least I believe this to be true. Art "playtime" is a necessity in my practice and I really enjoy working on beautiful Saint Armand sketchpads (<click for the link). I love the feel of their paper, it is exceptional. I am thankful to have a dear friend near Montreal to keep me supplied! If you have been following my Facebook or instagram page @andrea_artarage, then you know that I am a paper ephemera hoarder, a collector of paper nostalgia from as early as the 19th century to present day. Collecting ephemera and journaling began in my teens and continues to this day. Journaling is a proactive tool I use to deal with anxiety/mental health. This spring I started creating art journals by mark making with a variety of mediums and tools on large sheets of Mayfair paper. My two year old granddaughter gave me the inspiration. She loves to paint and make colourful marks on large sheets of paper. We make stories up about these masterpieces. I kept many and cut some up to make journals. Hoping she will use them when she learns how to write. I may have to show her how to cursive write as I'm pretty sure it's obsolete in schools today. She can use my beautiful handmade fountain pen. I may be summer day dreaming again! And if you are planning a staycation, head on up to Guysborough and visit the Marina where Artworks East artists and fine crafters are displaying and selling their artworks and fine crafts. Drive a little further and you may find me oil painting seascapes or picking blueberries in foggy Upper Whitehead. We are the oceanside cottage on Hwy 316 (Marine Drive) with the rope fence just after Spears Road. I'll put the kettle on! I'd sooner put the year behind me, yet I truly learned a lot about suffering, healing and the kindness of family, friends and strangers. And the value of art. Things were going well until mid March when I had the first sign of something not being right. By the end of that month I was in such severe pain that an emerg visit landed me in hospital. An almost 3 month stay made me thankful for the care, comfort and compassion I received from all the health care professionals and staff. Nurses are definitely special. I have no idea how they stay so calm and kind when chaos and suffering are all around them. My partner was my rock, our daughters my nurturers. Friends and relatives were my lifelines, providing much needed encouragement by sending healing vibes, running errands and delivering meals. By end of June I was back home healing, resting and finding some pain free moments in my art zone. Music, poetry and art became essential for healing. By September the constant pain had lessened and surgery was scheduled for mid October. Again, the surgeon, anesthesiologist and nurses made me feel safe in their hands. So now I am home and will incorporate art as one of my healing mechanisms. I brought out a beautiful Saint Armand canal paper pad, a gift from a dear friend, and filled every page with collage creativity. Art does make a difference. Thank you for following along. May you be well. AXO This is the time of year of light-obsession as we try to stave off the darkest days of winter. Shouldn't we embrace the darkness? We should take time to rest in the shadows. Find inner peace and self-reflection to help us learn and grow. Look up into the star filled long cold nights and embrace the moonlight. If you listen carefully the silent nights are beautiful. I put my paints and brushes down to absorb these darker days and revisit all the artwork I created over the last year. They are a sort of visual diary of time spent by the sea, in my garden and my studio. My mixed media works are all about imagination and creating a new story. My oil paintings share my obsession with the ever changing sea. And now I am happy to send them out into the world! Many have found homes and I am thankful. May you all find calm and beauty as you delve into the darkness and may you be uplifted by the return of the light. Love and Light, AXO Summer time and it's great to see art galleries and groups putting on exhibits with good attendence and plenty of art sales! Artists either used the time of pandemic isolation to delve deeper into art making or may have found it impossible to create. Fortunately, I fell into the first group, at least for a good while. I hate not being able to access one's creative ability, that frustrating hole called the "creative block". With an abundance of curiosity and no expectations, I experimented with materials sent to me by friends and aquaintences...thank you Krista and Jay! I've always had a thing for texture and sculpture, so assemblages and mixed media are always part of my metier. At the cottage, the ocean and sky capture my eye (and heart) and a large series of seascapes were borne. I use oils on wood panels (made by Twisted Doorbell in Bridgetown) and paint how the views make me feel. Hoping that the viewer sees and senses it. Some of these seascapes can be seen and purchased at The Flying Apron in Summerville until the end of August and at the Marina in Guysborough as part of the Artworks East Group until the Labour Day weekend. Check out my gallery page to see where else you can find my artwork. I am thankful to all my galleries (xoxoxoxo) and other venues to share my art. You are also welcome to visit my summer studio in Fall River "The Hildegard" by appointment. Contact: [email protected] Love & Light, AXO "April hath put a spirit of youth in everything." William Shakespeare I love the smell of spring. The scent of the earth warming up. Green things pushing up through the ground. Birdsong so sweet it uplifts the heaviest of hearts. It's a time of renewal and the birth of creative projects. In January, an artist friend brought #the100dayproject to my attention and I thought it might be a great way to get rid of the doldrums during a very long and isolated covid winter. I had to come up with a creative project, work on something for 100 days and share my process on Instagram (@andrea_artarage) or other social media platform. So I looked at all the porcelain and ceramic sea shards that I collected and piled up in baskets in my studio and decided that it was finally time to use them. I was going to create a simple design on small 5"x5" cradled wood panels and so #100daysofseashardsandhealinghearts was born. I ordered cradled wood panels from Twisted Doorbell in Bridgetown (I highly recommend them), got the appropriate glue and grout and dove right in. Since I did not cut the shards to fit the pattern, it took time to find pieces that fit well together in a heart shape. That was definitely the longest process. These antique shards were carefully glued and left to dry for 24+ hours. The next step was to grout and allow another day or two to dry and then clean with a vinegar solution to take off the grout residue. I quickly realized I couldn't do one a day but probably one a week. These shards hold a lot of mystery. They wash up on our little beach in Whitehead, Nova Scotia. Some say the porcelain and ceramics were used as ballast on ships coming from England and France in the 18th & 19th centuries, maybe they wash up from ancient sunken ships or are simply broken throw aways from long past residents of small fishing communities. Each unique piece holds secrets and stories and I feel good about giving them another purpose. I plan to hold a fundraiser for a good cause (TBA) at the end of 100 days and I hope that my Healing Hearts will find walls to hang upon. Happy Easter, Ostara Blessings, Happy Passover, Ramadan Mubarak.... AXO It's a new year but it just feels like a continuum of the last one. The funk is real. As a self-employed artist, I try to keep myself motivated. Should I start a new art project? Take a creative workshop? Apply to another call for submissions? Lightbulb moment! I think I should try to perfect the art of doing nothing. Listening to the breath, relaxing like a zen cat, taking a long hot bath, walking in the woods or just watching the birds at my feeders....but maybe that's not really doing nothing. Perhaps it's just about being present. I'm not very good at either. There are too many distractions including this blog and laptop. Time to turn it off. I'll keep trying because being present in the nothing may be a great start to a much happier year. Love and light - AXO Hourglass is my last painting of 2020...coming from a pure place of reflection and creative emotion. Let's be gentle to Mother Earth's sacred spaces and all her creatures. Heading into winter feeling covid weary as the numbers start to rise again and dire measures are taken to protect all of us. A lock down is imminent. What could possibly be a "bright spot" in all of this? Personally, it's been taking the time to observe nature closely and turning it into new artworks and learning something new from online tutorials. I learned how to knit dishclothes and after making dozens I decided to get a little more adventurous and make toques (winter hats) with big pompoms! There are so many free tutorials online. Learn about the stars, how to bake delicious bread, pick up a new language or just zen out and meditate......and don't forget to call your family and friends. It's going to be a long winter. Stay safe. Love and light, AXO We've passed the mid way point of summer. Mama Donna Henes an Urban shaman and ritual expert says it well: "The midway point of summer is like a well-seasoned woman. The galloping growth and sweet blush of spring have slowed and faded in her sweltering heat. She's slower now, and surer. Strong and steady. She's salty and sultry and a little bit dusty. A little wrinkled. A little weary. A whole lot wiser. She bears the fruits of her own labors and she wears them well. By midsummer, dame nature has grown tired of her wardrobe with it's dizzy palette of vibrant greens, vivid pinks, randy reds and profusions of pretty pastels. She now prefers the warmer, deeper, richer tones more flattering to her present station. The lady is now of a certain age, after all." I can relate to that as an ahem... older woman and artist. At the cottage I experiment with inks, acrylics, watercolour paper and salty seawater, encouraging the colours to flow into each other and make beautiful connections. Small leftover pieces of art on terraskin fit together perfectly, Mondrian style, on pieces of masonite. Nothing is wasted in my studio. I'm spinning out coocoo lovebirds because they make me smile. Black Raven/Crow keep appearing in large artworks on canvas. They stand in their mystery filled nests and look outward from their perches. Vintage recipes inspire new mixed media florals. Creating art has been the head space where I need to go to forget the anxiety caused by the misery that Covid-19 is spreading around the world. The news can be so overwhelming. It constantly reminds me that family, friends, community and our beautiful planet need to be nurtured and loved even more, albeit with masks and safe distancing. So be connected, do what you love and stay safe. We still have a long way to go. AXO PS. If you'd like to see my recent artworks, they will be hanging out at The Flying Apron Cookery and Inn in beautiful Summerville, Nova Scotia from September 5th until the end of October. Have a staycation, go for the fabulous food (the desserts are heavenly) and maybe take home an original artwork that makes you smile! |
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