friday girls

Today Alissa and I had some business to attend to at the old studio, then we went for a beer and lunch. Then we called up Sonja and met her for coffee. Then Melinda walked by! Then we went to Value Village and I found some good stuff. Happy day!

photos of me taken by Alissa

Alissa on the phone making plans to meet Sonja.

At The Common

Alissa's feet

Alissa

Sonja

Melinda

I heart Andrew Wyeth

I think I can say that he is my favourite artist. You can just feel the warmth of the life and the cool of the air in his subjects. The aesthetic he creates feels ancient, and yet so fresh and pure. His dry-brush watercolour and egg tempera technique blows my mind. My Andrew gave me an amazing book for Christmas this year of Wyeth's 'Helga Paintings' (that's her below). From 1971-1985 Wyeth painted 247 studies of his neighbour Helga Testorf, without the knowledge of his wife or Helga's husband. It is an incredible body of work, and I hope to scan a few of my favourite images to post here some day.

Grandma's old photos

While visiting my aunt Karen this summer, she brought out a box of old photos from my grandma (my dad's mom). I borrowed a few of my favourites to scan. I don't know if this was her kitten, but I thought it was an unbelievably sweet image. There will be more to come, including my beautiful grandma Caroline (who passed away when I was 11) and dashing grandpa Orval (who died before I was born).

picture perfect Sunday

Andrew and I had a lovely leisurely day today, biking around, basking in the perfect weather. We visited Kerri at the Monkey's Paw and ate tacos and pupusas at Tacos El Asador. I'm learning how to use my new DSLR(!!!) that I picked up yesterday. I'll probably be posting a lot more pictures from now on. Here are a couple shots from our day, and stuff around the house/yard.

a little reward

Smokey Quartz ~ oil on masonite ~ 4 5/8" x 6 5/8"

Rhodochrisite ~ oil on masonite ~ 4 1/2" x 6 5/8"

sold + sold = new shoes!
P.S. The show is up until Sept 12.

bunny girl

My tea-dyed angora bunny made by Sonja. Isn't she just the sweetest thing?

summer loot part 1

The top views are an homage to these.

Gairloch Gardens

group show

My newest four crystal paintings are in a group exhibition curated by Erin Stump at Board of Directors which opens this Thursday, August 13. Here's the invite. Come see! I'll wait a while to post images of the paintings here to give you incentive to go see the show;)

up north

At the lookout at the end of 'The Lookout' hiking trail at Algonquin.

Andrew and I rented a car and drove north of the city for four days. We managed to pack quite a lot of activity into our limited time: visiting friends in Kitchener, going up to a friend's cottage at Lake Joseph, driving up to Killarney Provincial Park for a hike, going for a hike at Algonquin, mineral specimen shopping in Bancroft, and an afternoon at the beach at Balsam Lake Provincial Park. Despite cool weather and overcast skies, some rain, and lots of almost-rain, we were pretty lucky with the weather. It was pouring all day on our way to Killarney, and literally the moment we crossed the boundary into the park the rain stopped. It was crazy. We actually never got rained on during any of our hikes and even got enough sunshine on our last day to swim at Balsam Lake.

Algonquin Park:

Killarney:

Balsam Lake:

Carl Martin-Hansen for Royal Copenhagen

Danish National Costume figurines created by Carl Martin-Hansen and produced in the period 1906-1925 for Royal Copenhagen. Top to bottom: Greenland, Fano, and Fyn. Found on Ebay. If only I had an extra $800...