January

New year new you ?!?! blah blah blah. New year, same me with more art making is how I choose to interpret that old discouraging saying. There is nothing wrong with old me, last year old me went through a fairly significant creative shift so I just want to carry on with that feeling and drive.

I started this year with a free online course, Your Best Year Yet with Michelle at United Art Space and have already booked my first creativity workshop Called Creative Shift with Sally-Ann Ashley. Last year a little earworm from a podcast chastised me into taking a free course, “because why wouldn’t you take a free course” the host said and that has taken hold. Not all free workshops are a win but it exposes me to a different way of thinking about my own creativity and how I can bring what they are teaching into my own practice. My next free course starts in 14 days! I think the biggest take away from all of these workshops is the community that I am building, a community of like minded people on a the creative path. A place to get advice and support when things aren’t going so well and a place of encouragement and growth when we have an art win.

My studio wall

My exploration of collage and mixed media continues, I am finding that the collage brings with it a sense of calm where the gremlins in my brain don’t hold any sway over my thoughts. I can’t tell you how refreshing it is! A big addition to my practice last fall was intentionally getting up at 4AM, yup I said 4 am, so I can have some studio time before I go to work. To be able to create my art from a restful place and not from one of fatigue after work is such a relief. For me it has been an incredibly freeing move that I think makes me a better human. Having those 60-90 minutes of quiet creativity is wonderful! I make my coffee, do my 30 minutes of journaling and quietly enter my studio. My dog no longer shows any interest in my early rising so I have this precious quiet time to myself, no music and no podcasts just creative silence. The silence allows me to hear my thoughts without a lens of noise and distraction. I think it helps me capture those brief and fleeting thoughts and ideas more easily.

Long Distance Call

Another big boost to my overall creativity is I that I watch less TV and movies. Especially in my most creative periods, those early mornings, TV can derail my drive to explore new ideas. I limit what I watch and when and for how long. And to all those who know me and my love of Star Wars and Marvel, I still paint to those movies, lol, just less often. I know them so well that its just background noise. Strangely what I can’t watch while painting anymore in any kind of murder mystery..we are all unique creatures of habit aren’t we?! What do you listen to while you create?

Collage, texture and paint!

With these changes I no longer feel like I ‘have to” paint on the weekends to prove that I am an artist, whether it be to myself or to the insatiable social media algorithm. I used to rush to finish work to post on Sunday, like a badge of honour to prove my worth as an artist, yes I am shaking my head as I type this! I definitely feel the quality of my work coming forward now is better, less frantic and feels more like me.

Turquoise drips and lines

I don’t make resolutions, I barely set intentions but this year I am doing some goal oriented work in the Best Year Yet workshops. I’d like to experiment more with different things like acrylic inks, more palette knife work and of course collage and mixed media. I reorganized my studio yesterday and added more storage because new adventures require more stuff and my 8’x10′ studio is jammed! I found a painting under my chair during the cleanup! I vaguely remember doing it but I definitely remember I thought I was blah. So I cleaned it up and now it’s lovely!

I have also planned to take one more workshop, probably starting in May or June, it is one I have been waiting to take since I missed it last year, don’t worry I will keep you posted. I almost forgot, I am going to see Elizabeth Gilbert here in Ottawa in April!! I was all set to see her in Montreal in 2020 but the pandemic tail care of that plan! Lots of good things are happening in April, I cant wait to tell you all about them!

Happy Sunday peeps, I hope you get to spend time doing exactly what you love, because we all deserve to follow our dreams! Have a great month and to steal from Brene Brown “stay awkward, brave and kind” oh and Paint on!

Season of Change

What a difference it can be in my creative journey from one month to the next! August felt very much like molasses in January, a slow moving energy that felt very sticky and uncomfortable. I deleted the first blog draft because I found it too whiny and very much ” somebody tell me what to do!!!” I didn’t have the words for what I thought of my art practice was becoming then but I have it now: my art, specifically my landscapes, was growing stale, very much a ho-hum kind of art that didn’t impress me but I couldn’t figure out how to change it.

September has always felt the New Years to me, I’m sure because of the school year but it always feels full of hope and new beginnings. This September was no different. I started my online mentoring program on the 4th through Mastrius, based in Alberta; I am the mentee, one of 9 women (totally coincidentally) that gather 2x a month to learn not only from our mentor but also each other! I’m looking forward to growing in this supportive community. We started off my doing greyscale work, of which I am not a huge fan but did complete the 2 pieces that I’d chosen. I applied to be a part of their online art show later this fall and was accepted! I am busy creating a few small pieces that I will share in my next blog.

September saw me enroll in a free, week long Creative Breadcrumbs workshop put in by Nick Wilton at Art 2 life. That ran from the 12th to the 16th and was a week of play and discovery. I was guided to this free course by an podcast I recently discovered, Art Juice, out of the UK and in one episode I heard them ask “why wouldn’t you take something that’s free?” It was a total coincidence that their podcast and this workshop were roughly at the same time! Stranger still when you consider that the episode I was listening to was from 2020!! I took it as a sign, to just do it. I knew his style of painting isn’t mine, he’s abstract and I am not but there’s still lots to learn about me and my art practice. At the end of the week long challenge I felt the creative tap starting to turn back on. One morning the ideas just started to bubble up to the surface and I quickly wrote them down in my art journal. I enrolled in the follow up 21 day creative challenge, Spark. Through a leap of faith and a well timed art sale, I enrolled in the Art 2 Life 21 day creative challenge. I believe the universe was definitely looking after me! This leap of faith is the most money I’ve spent on my furthering my art practice. I didn’t expect the course to change my style but the weekly homework and assignments certainly pushed me trough a shift away from that feeling of becoming stale.

Just before the first workshop started I finished a 3 year old painting that was languishing on my bedroom wall. Some paintings I give up on pretty easily, others like this sunflower I just couldn’t bring myself to gesso over. I knew it had good bones and it just needed time to reveal itself to me. I am so pleased with how it turned out and will be sad to see it go when it sells.

When it was done, I hung it on the wall beside my recent landscape that I consider “stale”. It’s an amazing comparison, front and centre in my studio as a reminder; a reminder how fast my creativity can turn around. Do I know what to do with the landscape to make it pop, no, but maybe I’ll figure it out along the way. I’m saving that aha for my next blog..so stay tuned…

Happy #5 20″x24″ Acrylic on Canvas $500

Stale on the left; Happy on the right!

See you next time!

This month in the Studio~the August Edition

Hello again and welcome to the late August-ok it’s September edition!! Ok, I almost made it!

Special announcement….if you have started following me on Facebook after reading this blog, especially since my Facebook hack in June 2021, please click on the link on my homepage to follow my active Facebook page and not the old one. I recently discovered that the link was incorrect and fixed it last week. Make sure to unfollow my old account at the same time. Thank you for your attention!

I love August! Warm sunny days while the days slowly grow shorter, granted that this was the rainiest August since 1873..something like that. My birthday is in August as is my annual vacation. I started a new birthday tradition last year, a solo hike around Foley Mountain Conservation area near Westport, Ontario. I had the beach to myself while I sketched, snapped some reference pictures and ate my lunch. It was fantastic! My hike was cut short by ongoing back issues and a very rocky trail but I made the best of it. This year I purchased trekking poles to help me when I hike and they came in very handy! It wasn’t very busy when I was out and about, and I managed some quiet time at Meditation Point.

Painting idea? Possibly

While I was on vacation, I assumed that after a few days rest I’d just start painting again, kinda like turning the tap back on, but my 2 weeks went by and I painted very little. So weird. I knew it was unlike me and it felt weird. In July I signed up for an online art mentoring group that was to start in September. I seriously thought about cancelling, I wasn’t creating anything, nothing was inspiring me. I knew it couldn’t last but I was frustrated. At the end of my two weeks, my sister and I took a trip to an art festival, we made a weekend of it and had a great time. Believe it or not I came home that Sunday afternoon and sketched out 3 new pieces! I can’t describe to you the relief I felt!

Was it the time away? Seeing all of that beautiful art? Seeing some artsy friends? Hanging out with my sister? All the laughing? Who knows.. I’m just happy that I’m painting, I’ve even purchased canvas! I finished 2 of those pieces last week, one I’m super happy with and one I’m undecided about. It’s not bad, it just feels stale to me, like I’ve been stuck on the same outcome over several pieces. I am hoping my online mentoring with help me move thru that.

I am still participating in the free weekly monopalette workshops and one thing I’ve noticed is that I seem to be able to do one or the other, but not both. Either I work my own daily art practice or the workshops, especially over these last few weeks. I can’t seem to find a balance between the two practices but it I’m hoping will come.

One thing I did do on my vacation was sculpt a bear out of clay! Two actually! I’ve had clay here since last fall when I took a sculpting class at my local art store. It has been on my mind to sculpt something but I always pushed it aside. My recurring back issues made it hard for me to sit and my small space made it tight. But one Friday, an hour before my online workshop was to start I had the inspiration to start. It was awesome to get my hands, and my studio, dirty and I finished it a few days later! So in hindsight I wasn’t painty creative but still creative over my holiday.

Big Bear

Once carved, I had to hollow him out and put him back together!

Someone suggested I sculpt my big bear a buddy so he won’t be lonely so using the scraps of clay from the hollowed out big bear I made Little Bear

So much fun!

I have to remember to be kind to myself when I am labelling my time as creatively slow or uncreative. It’s ok to not be going full tilt all the time. Sometimes slowing down and reflecting are key to creativity, or at least my creativity. My art mentoring starts in a few days, I am feeling much more connected to my art practice and I still have a block of clay to use up! Stay tuned and 🎨on!!

This Month in the Studio~June/July

June got away from me so instead of rushing and sweating out a hurried blog I decided to do a combined update of the goings on in my studio. It’s nearing the end of July now and my holidays are rapidly approaching.

I finally took myself to the National gallery in Ottawa in June during a week off from work. I needed to commune with Lawren Harris and visit Emily Carr’s collection. When I feel creatively low and need inspiration I go and sit with Lawren Harris’ North Shore and just let it refill my sense of awe. I struck up a conversation with a woman who sat on the bench beside me, who came to visit The Group of Seven exhibit as well. It was a lovely few minutes talking about Lawren Harris, travel and art schools, the conversation eventually came around to my own art and she happily asked me for a card! My inner artist was beaming ! Every trip to the gallery always ands with a stop at their excellent gift shop where I bought a book of the Collected Works of Emily Carr. In one of the weekly Monopalette workshops I participate in we discussed and used Emily Carr as inspiration. It rekindled a desire to take a deeper look into her art and her life as an artist living in BC, on Canada’s west coast. When I came home I found a book of her personal journals online so I treated myself and bought it. The book is Called Hundreds and Thousands and what I find really cool is that I can follow her journal with the Collected Works book since they are both chronological. I find it awesome and comforting to read her doubts and fears, not only about her art but about each piece that she creates, her life as an artist, as a woman and the challenges of her time. I feel a kinship with her because she feels the same about seeing Lawren Harris’ works that I experienced as well~”Something has spoken to the very soul of me, wonderful, mighty, not of this world”~

I am still participating in the weekly Monopalette workshops and we wrapped up the spring colours, shell pink, aqua blue and Naples yellow at the end of June. I will admit that most of my creative time is now working in my art journals, doing the assignments and playing around with those colours. One artistic hurdle that happened in June was two of the workshops were on portraits, not my favourite so I procrastinated a bit but eventually completed them. I think I finally found a way to create faces that makes sense to me! Since I started painting, it is my most struggled-filled creative process, so having this new technique that makes sense to my brain is such a relief and it dials down my anxiety around faces. It feels like a huge roadblock has been removed and although I still need to practice its a great feeling to not be totally paralyzed around the subject.

The new colour palette for summer, is pyrrole red, teal and cadmium orange. The first workshop was an “aha, I love this colour” revelation and it was on Canada day!

Compared to 2020 and 2021 I am painting on canvas very little this year. I often wonder if I was so prolific during the height of the pandemic that I exhausted my creative self. I have started and stopped about a dozen pieces and have only completed about the same in 2022, for or me it’s usual. I am however creating more pages in my art journals, discovering a love of collage and still trying to learn watercolors. In my art journals I finally have a place to create the memories from my all travels to Scotland. Not really canvas worthy, I never knew what to do with my desire to create art from those images and memories. Creating those pieces fills me with joy at remembering my adventures and makes me miss Scotland a little bit less.

I keep reminding myself that this art journey of mine is an ongoing evolution and to be patient and kind with my inner artist. I had a sale in June that reminded me of patience, a large painting completed in 2019 found it way to its forever home out of the blue one Saturday afternoon. I call it my “bing-bang-boom” sale; they had been looking at it for some time and that weekend it was time! yayy! Other than the sales from the art show in May, it is my only online sale of this year.

Cedar Moon #5

Maybe there’s a point my inner artist is still trying to learn..don’t judge, just create. I didn’t start making art to sell, it was always an unexpected bonus. When I make art to with the intention of increasing my sales, it lingers and acts like a vacuum to my creative doubt. The sale in June was a piece of a favourite series, Cedar Moon, and when I sat down to paint another, it came out quite easily. In one of my workshops the line “you love what you love” really stood out for me that I turned into “paint what you love” for my creative practice. Lately that has turned out to be red canoes, my Scotland memories and Cedar Moon pieces. I’ll just keep painting and sharing!

Cedar Moon #8 12″x36″ Acrylic on Canvas $450

See you next month! 🎨on!!

What Happens To my Art Community When I Lose Access to Facebook?

This has been a difficult 36 hours. I woke up yesterday to find my account on Facebook was hacked; passwords, email address and phone number all changed! Just like that! I tried every tip found on the Facebook help page and nothing worked. I am not overly computer savvy, I am not overly Facebook savvy but why oh why is it so hard to recover your hacked account?

According to my friends, my personal page is just gone, removed from friends lists and contacts, no trace of any online presence from the last 12 years. The only thing left is my now inaccessible Art by Anne Forsythe page. I can deal with my lost memories and photo’s; I’ll be able to reconnect in some fashion with my friends and family but what upsets me the most of I can’t get into my art page. Unless I can resolve the hack, it will just go on, no new uploads, no new art. Very upsetting. I cant reach my followers to tell them what’s happened, again, very upsetting.

I’ve spent the last few hours trying to reach someone, a real live person at Facebook and to no great success. Due to covid restrictions, no person is manning the phones? Really Facebook? come on..No real person anywhere to help one of their users sort out this mess!!

In an effort to communicate with FB, I opened a new account, found a few different links in which to leave messages and following a note on a community help board, my new account was then disabled. I kid you not!

I am not a well known or a well established artist, but most of my sales came from regular postings on FB, so what will it look like now? I have no idea. I have Instagram, I still have access to that, after I quickly moving to secure that account at 530am yesterday.

I am at a loss. Is there another online forum similar to FB? Has this happened to anyone? Should I just build another profile and start again on FB? ugh..this is not how I wanted to spend my long weekend!! If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear from you. Normally this would be shared to my personal FB page and I’d move it over to my Art page..so can I please ask you to like, follow and share my blog? Leave me a comment if you have experienced this an how did you resolve it? I’d appreciate hearing from you. Until I decide what to do you can reach me here or on my Instagram. I will be disabling the FB link found on my website if it hasn’t been already.

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  Bloom 9″x12″ Acrylic on canvas $110

2 of my most recent Bloom pieces to keep me company while I navigate this FB mess. In the meantime, I’ll keep painting and posting here, Fb’s loss is my blogs gain!

🎨 on!!!

Anne

Mother’s Day

The Mother’s Day inspired “Mom’s Garden” series is ready to be wrapped up pretty and delivered to you so you can brighten up your Momma’s day!

All the pieces are uploaded to my available artworks gallery. I can arrange delivery for you within Canada or free delivery with the Ottawa/ CP area.

🎨on!

More from The Garden Series

Looking for a unique Mother’s Day gift? I might be able to help!

The collection is called Mom’s Garden and they are mainly 8”x8” acrylic on canvas colourful garden scenes.

Mom’s Garden #2 8″x8″ Acrylic on Canvas$65

Check out the available artworks menu on my website for all the current pieces. I will be uploading more as they are completed so be sure to check in often.

Shipping within Canada can be arranged in time for Mother’s Day. Please don’t hesitate to contact me through the website or on Facebook.

I’ve also uploaded a few more pieces in Garden Series too! Prices and sizes are with each piece!

If you are looking for a custom piece from either collection please get in touch to discuss your options!

http://www.annescanvas.com

🎨 on!

Everything Old is New Again

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Early in my art life I created a couple of floral paintings: nothing elaborate, because I didn’t know how to be elaborate but using techniques I learned at a Paint with Janet class. To my surprise, they sold!! And ever since, at irregular intervals, the purchaser who happens to be my massage therapist, would suggest I paint more, that she receives lots of compliments, and she was sure they would sell. I thought I was done with that style. To say I was hesitant and resistant 😏 would be an understatement.

In January, I was wondering what was next; Christmas was over and I was looking for my next idea and Amy’s words rung in my ears. A few weeks before I had reworked a few repurposed highly textured canvas and I thought they’d make nice backgrounds. So I dug out my old brushes, and some colours that I haven’t used in many years and got to it.

In one afternoon I created these 2

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  The Garden Series #3 Sold

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  The Garden Series #4 Sold

And a new/ old series was born. I have since made 5 more. (One is enroute to its new owner so I can’t reveal it yet)!

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  The Garden Series #8 11″x14″ Acrylic on Canvas $125

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  The Garden Series #9 12″x12″ Acrylic on Canvas $130

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  The Garden series #7 12″x12″ Acrylic on Canvas $130

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  The Garden Series #6 Sold

I love painting landscapes but I learned over the last month that I also need to play and create joy-filled pieces and this series, with their pops of colour on rich backgrounds; really do fill me with joy as I create them.

My available artworks gallery has been updated with the 3 remaining pieces of this series. I will be making more, no worries there! I’ve got an idea for Mother’s Day so stay tuned!

Announcing …

I’m very excited to announce my newly redesigned website! Welcome to the new and improved annescanvas!

The redesigned site features a user friendly menu with a separate page for both my available artworks and my sold gallery, and also a new commission page, but I’ll talk about that on a later post.

I couldn’t have done it without the help of @choleenaditullio! Thank you! I am no longer embarrassed to refer to my website by name! 🙏

One of my pre pandemic goals was to get my website updated and even though it’s early 2021, better late than never!

Enjoy! And now, back to the studio! Paint on!