Last fall I joined the Kelowna Painters Studio, a group of artists that meet to paint on Wednesdays at the Rotary Centre for the Arts. It is a great way of exploring your creativity.  Ideas pop up and fly around the room.  Seeing how others handle a subject leads to more ideas of your own.

This group has been in existence for 20 years!  The membership has changed over the years but the core idea hasn't.  This year we decided to hold a show to celebrate 20 years of artistic creativity.

The show, entitled "Art at the Top of the World" is going to be held on August 11th from 11 am to 5 pm at the very elegant home of one of our members - Patty Feist.  Wine and cheese will be served. For an invitation and map to Patty's, click here.

As a way of giving back to our community, we are donating 20% of all sales for the day to the HeART Cart program at the Kelowna Hospice.  In addition, I have donated the painting below to be raffled off, with 100% of the proceeds to go the the Hospice. (Click the painting for a larger version.)

This painting was done "en plein aire" (which simply means it was painted on location).  I started with a watercolour underpainting and then developed the painting further with pastel.  It was early in the spring and the trees were just budding out.

I hope you can attend the event.  If you can't and would like some tickets for this painting ($5 per ticket or 3 for $10) just contact me by email or call me at 250-868-3525.

Hope to see you at the show!

My husband and I just got back from over six weeks camping and fishing in the lakes of Northern Manitoba.  

My husband is an avid fisherman and while I like fishing too, I take the opportunity while we are there to paint and photograph the incredible Canadian Shield landscape.

Between catching Walleye and Northern Pike, I sketched with ink and watercolour from the boat. 

We explored Cormorant Lake, Little Cormorant Lake and Frog Creek during our holiday (all of which are just outside of The Pas, Manitoba). There are many beautiful spots to paint on this water system.

I would start with a quick sketch in pen to place the major elements.  Then I added watercolour to the sketch, sometimes using conventional brushes but more often just using a water brush.  This handy tool has a barrel that you fill with water.  It is great for quickly adding colour to a sketch.  The amount of water in the barrel is enough to paint 1 larger or several smaller sketches.

Between massive slabs of lichen covered rocks, trees, a wide variety of skies and beautiful reflections, there was more than enough to get my creative juices flowing. Most of my paintings were done in small watercolour sketchbooks. Everything I used was contained in one bag – sketch pads, drawing materials, watercolour palette and collapsible water container (there was no lack of water available for painting!).

I find that painting on location gives me a much better appreciation of the landscape than simply taking photos to work from later.  The act of painting on the spot forces you to summarize the scene – to get to the essence of the landscape.  I took lots of pictures (over 4500!!) to refer to later but several of my small sketches will serve as the leaping off point for studio pieces next winter.

Enjoy the paintings!  Just click on any thumbnail to view a larger version.