One of my paintings is currently in the Collective 19 members’ exhibition at Gallery 1313. Curated by the gallery’s art director Phil Anderson, the show celebrates the gallery’s 19-year history, which started as an art collective of 19 artists. The exhibit will be on display until July 3.
Gallery 1313
1313 Queen Street West, Toronto, ON
Hours: Wednesday-Sunday, 1-6pm
Phone: 416-536-6778
2003: Picking up where I left off in portraiture. My first oil painting.
Looking back on my years as an artist, I sometimes find myself asking “How in the world did I end up here?” or “What decisions have led me to this point in life?”. Though I’m unable to recount every decision or detail up to today (besides I promised myself that this would not be a long post), I would like to share with you some of the more influential moments which have started me on this path. I believe that we are all born with artistic ability. People laugh when I say this, but I honestly believe this is the truth. Children are proof of that ability. The first thing children do is interpret the world they see, through song, dance, drawings, role-playing you name it. They create stories and are eager to share their discoveries with the people they love. It’s how they learn and express the things they see. So what happens when we get older? Who knows, life happens, but little by little we put away such things. Not all things are “childish” or should be put away. If a child has a strong desire to build or create, then it’s a matter of nurturing their interests. Maybe the child is a musician, a painter, a poet waiting to come of age. And when they do, a paradigm shift may occur, influencing future generations.
What’s the point of living if you can’t do the things you love?
The person who said this to me years ago did so only in passing, but it stuck with me. When I think of this statement I’m reminded of why I chose to be an artist. However the path isn’t easy. Becoming an artist seemed like a natural fit. But the biggest hurdle on this path was me. From a very young age my artistic interests were encouraged mostly by teachers and some family members. I excelled in visual arts in high school, but I never set out to be an artist. Being able to draw and paint was just a part of me. The thought of not creating didn’t cross my mind. However upon graduating high school in 1996, my family couldn’t afford to send me to art school or university for that matter so I took out student loans and went to college to study business administration, graduating in 1999. Like so many people, life happened. I couldn’t create – With the pressure of paying off the student loans, bills etc. I was working to survive. During those years it felt like a part of me was lost. That was until the year 2000 when I picked up the paint brush and started painting.
Hello, is it me you’re looking for?
Painting again was like being reunited with an old friend – surreal at first, but eventually you pick-up where you left off. One day, with encouragement from my grandmother, I submitted my works to the Human Rights through Arts Exhibition to be juried and was accepted. My reason for participating at the time was that it seemed to be a worthy cause – to bring human rights awareness through art. On the opening night of the exhibition, people observed my paintings, asked questions and were positive. Viewers added their own stories and interpretations to the work. It was wonderful! I felt a sense of euphoria. And it was in that moment that I knew this is what I wanted to do. Realizing this, I felt reborn; I had finally found (or more like re-discovered) my fit. In the years that followed I painted vigorously, with a sense of urgency, experimenting with several art media, styles and subjects.
I eventually signed-up for night courses at Ontario College of Arts and Design (now OCADU) and when I reached my course limit I enrolled in the Fine Arts program as a mature student. Enrolling as a mature student actually worked to my benefit, because I had a better appreciation of the experience, also since I was working; I was able to pay for the entire program myself.
2003 – 2004: I experimented with several styles and mediums from collage (left), to digital painting (center). But I had an interest in capturing a person’s emotions in portraiture (right). All were studies completed while at OCAD.
The wonder years
Between work and school I submitted my paintings to several galleries and juried shows. I was one of the few students in my class exhibiting. I figured it’s better to start approaching galleries while in school that way the transition to the art world would be easier after graduating. I think a lot of students fail to realize the importance of setting up contacts while in school, making the transition to the art world more difficult upon graduating. An instructor even advised us that if you don’t start exhibiting while in school you’ll never do so after graduating especially if there’s the added pressure of finding work in order to pay off students loans. There is certainly truth in what he said. By graduation in 2007 I already had a steady network of galleries and public spaces to show my artwork.
2004-2007: I was starting to experiment with abstracted landscapes (left). One of the last portraits I did before moving into landscapes and abstractions (center). A two-panel piece or dyptych that was accepted in the COLOURblind? mask-themed exhibition (right).
Early in my artistic career my works were accepted into exhibitions, but a lot of times not. Going through this experience was invaluable because I had better appreciation of the opportunities that came my way. The rejections were very hard, but I’ve learned that with something as subjective as art not everyone will like your work. Rejections are not personal. With galleries, collectives, art guilds etc. it all comes down to value systems and fit. What matters is that you believe in yourself. When I started to take myself seriously as an artist and truly believe in my abilities, others started to do so as well. I researched galleries beforehand to make sure my work was a good fit. I sought guidance from experienced artists, curators and other members of the art community. Lastly I slowed down and started to paint with purpose – which is to bring people together through art. Afterwards things began to fall into place. This was when I really started to come into my own as an art professional. Experimenting with different media, challenging myself.
2007-2010: The years when I began to come into my own as an art professional. Work from the The REALM of Belief (left), Terra Forma (center) and Impressions of Kinetic Creation (right) series. I always had an interest in alternative science, science-fiction as well as nature, therefore my works always revolved around these themes, which remains to this day.
Today, I recognize that being an artist is not fleeting, it’s a vocation. As you mature so does your work. Above all it’s a path where you end up learning more about yourself. I’m still learning.
2010 – present: My work today.
For the month of March, fellow artists Zoraida Anaya, Lisa Fox and I launched our exhibition titled My World, Our World at the Smith Zone Gallery of Lakeshore Arts. The exhibition was part of the Women’s Art Project artist collective, a multidisciplinary and diverse group of women artists. To close the exhibition we were invited to the gallery’s special edition of Open Studio as their guests. An open studio is an event that offers art creators and enthusiasts a fun and supporting environment to discuss and create art. Lakeshore Arts hosts such an event every Friday (unless otherwise noted), from 12-4pm. If you haven’t been to an open studio and are looking for a little inspiration, I highly recommend checking out Lakeshore Arts!
In the session I decided to do an exercise of mixing colours directly on the canvas and thought to share with you my process. In my last post I mentioned that I like to create my palette by mixing the primary base colours of red, yellow and blue. If you want to build your technique in mixing colours then I recommend doing this exercise. If not, then try it anyway just for fun! This exercise will help you:
I used inks because they’re fluid and easy to blend making them ideal for this exercise. However you can use any paint medium such as acrylics, watercolours, oils etc… In fact, I repeat this exercise using different mediums to build strength in working with them. Now with that said, let’s paint!
Note: If using heavy-bodied (thick) acrylic paints, you will need 5 small containers (one for each colour) to thin out your paint with a little water.
Since we are actually mixing the colours directly on the paper or canvas, we will not need to pre-mix the colours on a paint palette.
For this exercise I’m using Daler and Rowney Acrylic Artist’s Ink: Process Magenta, Process Yellow, Prussian Blue (Hue), Black and White.
Step 1
Starting with the colour, drip the blue ink/paint directly on the paper or canvas. Then drip white ink/paint over the blue.
A view on the side so you can see how thin the ink is.
Step 2
While the ink/paint is still wet, with the tip of the brush start to slowly “swirl” the white ink/paint into the blue in various directions. Afterwards add drips of red and start to “swirl” that into the blue. You can also drip a little more white. As you start to swirl red into blue, you may begin to notice various shades of purples. With the additional white you will get various tints of blues and pinks.
This exercise requires a light touch with the brush. Therefore, don’t over mix the colours. Work with the tip of the brush and loosely swirl one colour into the other. During this process you want to pay attention to how the primary colours mix to create other colours on the paper/canvas.
Red and blue mixed together will create purple, which is a secondary colour. Notice when white is added light blues, purples and pinks are created? These lighter shades are called tints.
Step 3
While the ink/paint is still wet start to drip in yellow and begin to swirl the colour into the red and blue. Depending on where you place the yellow, you should begin to see green or orange form. Yellow and blue will create green, while yellow and red will create orange.
At this point the ink/paint may begin to dry. You can keep adding drips of red then yellow, then blue in stages, slowly swirling them together to create as many colours as you can. Adding in drips of white will give you a lighter/tint of a colour. You can also add drips of black, to get a darker/shade of a colour. Black will also create contrast. You can also swirl black with white to create shades of grey. Pay attention to how the various colours are created. Also notice the how light and dark colours lay next to each other. Continue building up the layers until you’re satisfied with the result.
Notice how the primary colours; red, yellow and blue are mixed together to create the other colours.
Final result
At the end of this exercise, I usually ask myself:
There are no definitive answers to these questions. They are only guidelines to help me think about colour harmony, balance and composition.
I recommend doing this exercise numerous times until you are comfortable with blending and mixing colours. This exercise will not only build your technique as a painter but you’ll get a different result each time.
Enjoy!
Learning how to mix the primary colours will help you understand colour harmony, balance and composition. It will also help you use warm and cool colours effectively to achieve contrast.
Meet fellow artist Lisa Fox and myself at Lakeshore Arts, this Friday, April 1st between 1-4pm.
As our Women’s Art Project (WAP) exhibition, My World, Our World winds down, we will be Lakeshore Arts special guests at their Open Studio event. Hosted by the gallery every Friday, between 1-4, Open Studio offers art creators and enthusiasts alike to discuss and create art in a fun and supporting environment.
So drop-in and let’s chat!
Lakeshore Arts
2422 Lakeshore Blvd, West, Toronto, ON
416-201-7093
If you search online, or look into any interior design catalogues, go into any paint store etc. you will find 100s if not 1000s of different colours of various shades that are on trend for a particular season. For me, an art supply store with its beautiful array of paint colours is a bit like going into a candy store. Much like candy can rot my teeth an art supply store can rot my wallet, if I’m not careful :-). It’s hard to choose colours inside an art supply store, I mean, do you choose phthalo or ultramarine blue? Cadmium or Hansa yellow? How does an artist decide? Some artists may choose to buy a spectrum of pre-mixed colours to keep in their arsenal and work with as their palette. However, others such as me prefer to mix their own colours and create a palette based on the colours of red, yellow and blue.
In their purest form the hues of Red, yellow, blue or the Primary Colours as they are known can not be created, through the mixing of other colours. All colours in existence are created from mixing any combination of the primary colours. However, this definition only covers the basics of colour mixing and doesn’t take into consideration the tints (lights) tones (greys) or shades (darks) created when you add white or black. If you want to learn more about Colour Theory, I think the Oil Painting Techniques, followed by the Empty Easel are good places to start online. There are also a number of books, which I’ve cited at the end of this post.
Basically my palette only includes a red-based, yellow-based, blue-based colour, white and black. Noticed I mentioned red, yellow and blue based? That’s right; I don’t necessarily use the purest form or hue of the primary colours. I use a tinted or shaded version of red, yellow and blue as my “primary” or base colour then mix my palette from there. I mix any combination of my bases to create the colour I may need and will mix in different amounts of black or white to create the various tints and shades to get a particular colour. I use base colours such as ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson and cadmium yellow since they offer the greatest range for mixing. Temperature is important if you want to achieve colour harmony, so I try to ensure to mix a balance of warm and cool colours in my palette. However in art rules are made to be broken and there are certainly exceptions to colour mixing! But for me, sticking with a limited palette from the start of a project means I can mix any colour I could imagine, put any colour together and the painting will be balanced. This has been my experience and I’ve been using this approach for over 15 years.
A friend of mine has asked me this question several times. My tongue-in-cheek response to her has always been “because I’m old-school”! But in all seriousness there are a number of reasons why I prefer to mix my own colours:
I love colour and it’s an important aspect of my work which is why I spend so much time on building and choosing my colour palette. Since my artwork leans towards abstraction, each colour chosen represents for me certain elements found in Nature, which is a key source of inspiration. For example the shades of blue may represent the sky or water. Whereas pinks, violets, yellows which I use often in my work may represent sunsets, or a jellyfish. Also when I think of balance I think of Nature – everything is purposeful, nothing wasted and I like to take this approach to my work.
In a later post, will explain how I mix colours to create my palette.
L to R: Sherwood Park (June 2015), acrylic on canvas, Untitled (April 2014), crochet, acrylic, oil stick on canvas. I mixed the primary colours of red, yellow and blue to create these two very different paintings.
Citations in this post:
Using the Color Wheel: Color Theory Tips for Artists and Painters, date accessed March 27, 2016 – The Empty Easel:
Colour Theory For Painters, date accessed March 27, 2016 – Oil Painting Techniques
For further reading on Colour Theory:
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von. Theory of Colours. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T., 1970. Print.
Edwards, Betty. Color: A Course in Mastering the Art of Mixing Colors. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2004. Print.
Itten, Johannes, and Ernst Van Haagen. The Art of Color The Subjective Experience and Objective Rationale of Color. New York: Reinhold, 1966. Print.
Itten, Johannes, and Ernst Van Hagen. The Elements of Color a Treatise on the Color System of Johannes Itten Based on His Book The Art of Color. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977. Print.
This Queen Anne’s Lace (Wild Carrot) reminds me of a snowflake.
In my previous post I mentioned that Nature, family and music are often the source of my inspiration. These sources of inspiration are triggered by a specific moment, a memory or a feeling. For example, the sweet smell of pine trees on a dewy morning, or a family of Mallards rhythmically floating on the lake. Or the shadows that trees cast on the ground. Or mismatched buttons on a person’s coat. I think you get the picture… One such spark of inspiration is a memory of my mother whom was taking extra biology courses to upgrade her skills in health care. I was young at the time, maybe 11 but it was something that made an impression on me. She had a series of medical and science textbooks and I remember spending hours repeatedly looking through them, studying each illustration in careful detail. One day my mother pointed to a plant cell diagram in one of her textbooks and asked if I could draw one like it in her notebook. Thinking as children do at that time, it never occurred to me to simply trace the illustration into the notebook (now thinking back it would’ve saved a lot of time!). However, I studied the illustration and carefully drew every detail neatly into her notebook. I was quite proud of that first diagram when completed. I can only guess my mother thought I did a good job. She didn’t say so directly, but I drew several more illustrations for her thereafter, mostly of various plant and animal cells, but also of organs, skeletal and muscular structures. Why am I sharing this story? Well it was that moment, that memory that I discovered my interests in not only the organism itself but the commonalities shared across all living things.
Over the years, I’ve learned all living things share common patterns expressed visually or rhythmically. The patterns are found repeatedly in not only organisms but in other forms such as sound waves, sine waves, and electromagnetic fields etc. Some people may refer to these repeating patterns as Fractals. A Fractal is a never-ending pattern that repeats itself at different scales – a fascinating subject on its own and warrants a separate discussion. However if you’re interested in learning more about Fractals here is a good place to start, but there are plenty of other resources on the web.
What I’m interested in are the natural patterns found in living things and the commonalities that connects us all. My inspirations lie in identifying and expressing elements of these patterns through my artwork. For example in my Sanctum or Organics series, certain lines that repeat mimic the movements of water, wind or a wave in a person’s hair. Whereas the shapes may represent patterns seen in flowers or pine combs. These elements expressed in my paintings are the patterns seen across all life and bind all. Seemingly separate on the surface, all things live and move together as one – Like a field of sunflowers swaying in the wind. The things that connect us are my inspiration and serve as the underpinnings for my work.
Growth patterns in the branches of the might Red Oak trees are similar to the patterns in the tentacles of the Moon jellyfish.
Looking up above and down below there are natural pattern formations.
Whenever I show my work often times I’m often asked “where do you draw your inspiration from?”. My prepared response is usually nature, music or family. The interaction rarely lasts for more than a few minutes and typically the person asking the question comes away feeling satisfied – Or that’s my assumption. However over the years, I’ve found myself asking “did I really connect with the viewer?”. (more…)
Women’s Art Project is pleased to present:
My World, Our World
A multidisciplinary art exhibition by
Lisa Fox, Michelle Montague, Zoraida Anaya
Please join us:
Reception: Thursday, March 3, 2016, 6 PM – 8:30 PM
Lakeshore Arts, 2422 Lakeshore Blvd, West, Toronto, ON
Lisa Fox, Michelle Montague, and Zoraida Anaya are members of Women’s Art Project, a multidisciplinary and diverse group of women artists. The artistic intentions of these women intersect in the creation of the imagined worlds they portray through their work. Through their practice, they use different media to draw the viewer into these invented worlds.
Lisa creates images depicting a fictitious world that is both intimate and dreamy. With her photography, she invites the viewer to transition between what is real and what is fantasy. Michelle’s paintings and style transport the observer from the real world into the realm she creates through her use of organic shapes and lines depicting an entirely different universe. Zoraida’s collages allow the viewer to escape the harshness of reality. She tries to achieve this with work that focuses on color, shape and movement.
Works from the “Explorations“(The Paper Mill Gallery) and “A Matter of Expression” (Gallery 1313) exhibitions are now posted to the Sanctum painting series.
My works will be in the “Explorations” group show at The Paper Mill Gallery. Curated by Rupert Young, the exhibition features the works of 10 contemporary artists in a variety of media. The exhibit runs March 19-30.
The Paper Mill Gallery is located on the Todmorden Mills Heritage Site in Toronto. The museum features several art exhibitions and theatrical productions throughout the year.
Exhibition: Thursday, March 19, to Monday, March 30, 2015
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 19, 2015, 6-9pm
The Paper Mill Gallery
67 Pottery Road,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Todmorden Mills
For more information about the exhibit contact: (416) 821-7073
In “A Matter of Expression” cell-like organisms alternate between growth and decay and, light and shade. They guide the viewer through an exploration of nature, life energy, and rejuvenation. Using crochet, acrylic and oil sticks, Michelle explores interlocking gestural lines and the arrangement of shapes and colours. These elements serve as metaphors of our oneness with Nature.
Gallery 1313
1313 Queen Street West, Toronto, ON
Hours: Wednesday-Sunday, 1-6pm
Reception: Wednesday, March 18, 7 pm
Click here for more information about Gallery 1313
If you’re looking for a special holiday gift for a loved one, check out the 2014 Fine Arts Show & Sale at the Blessed Sacrament Church. I will be participating in the exhibition along with other members of the North Toronto Group of Artists. Please join us!
Where:
Blessed Sacrament Church
24 Cheritan Ave. (@ Yonge St.)
Toronto, ON
Reception:
Thursday Nov 13, 6:00pm – 9:00pm
Hours:
Friday Nov 14, 12:00pm – 8:00pm
Saturday Nov 15, 10:00am – 3:30pm