Painting On-Site

The past two weeks have been super interesting. I’ve been making a painting on-site in my local art store, Opus, on Granville Island. The staff there have been great in welcoming me as I test out painting live in a public space, to learn how the experience might affect my painting practice. Standing on a platform in the paper and sketch-book section affords me a high-angle view of the space, where I can get a bit of distance and a dynamic perspective of the aisles and shelving.

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Day 1 at Opus–the first panel of the diptych

What interests me about this part of the store are the rhythmic patterns of different colored papers as they recede in space, and the wonderful childrens’ paintings hanging on the back wall below the managers’ office windows. I always find it interesting making paintings of paintings.

Opus-Day 5
Day 5 at Opus

For quite some time now I’ve been wanting to act on the strong compulsion to be in the world as I render it; in contrast to the isolation of the studio and working from the flattened image of a photograph, I’m finding the immediacy of painting from direct observation to be incredibly energizing and challenging. And I’ve always loved a challenge!

The occasional conversations with interested passers-by is a welcome break from the focused intensity required to do the work outside of my comfort zone; and the happenstance chats with Opus staff throughout the day have enriched the experience––most of the people working there are artists themselves, so it’s lovely to hear a bit about their backgrounds, and share conversation about creativity, the value of time, some nuggets about the history of Granville Island, and how this month’s friendly goal-setting challenge of “28 days of art practice” has been helpful in encouraging them to draw or make something every day. The wall at the entrance to the store is gradually filling up with wonderful little drawings made over the past two weeks.

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Opus daily practice wall of drawings, by customers and staff

This new way of working has been a bit of a learning curve: the first week I painted four days in a row, then worked on another project and did some teaching on the weekend. The second week I painted three days, and by the fourth day I realized how challenging this process has been on my energies.

The heightened stimulation of this new painting situation, which in a way is a kind of performance,  means I have to monitor how it’s affecting my physical well-being. On Wednesday night I slept twelve hours, and I then took it easy Thursday. I visited the store only in the afternoon to show the painting to a couple of artist friends, but didn’t paint that day. I’m learning that the time between painting is important, to recharge, think about the work and where it’s going, and what might come next.

Loosening Up! with Craftsy

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My new online painting class with Craftsy has launched! I’m excited to announce this because over the past five years I’ve been honing a painting class called Loosen Up! that helps students be more relaxed about their painting process. People seem to really enjoy my classes, and it makes me so happy to see their work blossom! I teach out of my studio, and as a guest instructor in some art schools and various art guilds around BC.

As the Craftsy catalogue already has some solid classes on basic painting technique, they wanted me to deliver something more like a “tips” class so people could take their painting further. So in the class I talk about brushwork, and tips on avoiding muddiness, and light and dark patterns. I especially focus on edges; in other words how to paint objects without hard contours around everything.

Craftsy flew me to Denver for a three-day shoot in October, and everyone there was fantastic and they all love their jobs! I met some other lovely instructors there, like knitters (one in particular whom I will talk about in another blog) and cake makers, who help people to get better at making things they love.

Over the winter the Craftsy editors have been putting it all together and now that it’s live, it’s starting to attract new students from all over. Students can play the video lessons and review what they’ve learned,  as many times as they want, and they can access the classes forever.

Here’s what students have been saying:

“Val, I loved everything about these lessons. The way you communicated the step by step processes, taking us through from start to finish was easy to follow and clear. The filming was fantastic and the way you talked to us made me feel like I was in the room. You’ve inspired me!
Highly recommend this for any painter wanting to loosen up or just enjoy painting! Thank you.”

“Val Nelson’s experience with painting is a joy to watch and learn. Her approach is encouraging, informative, and she offers a variety of techniques of how to paint more loosely. She shows how painting in a more expressive way is about using the materials in a thoughtful and resourceful manner. I highly recommend this course to any artist who wants to learn how to paint in a more expressive style.”

“This class has revealed so many techniques that I have missing at my level of painting. Thank you for sharing your expertise. I’m self taught so my knowledge of the essential elements of composition, structure, and brush work is weak. This class has been so very valuable to my artistic journey. Thank you, Val Nelson and, once again, Craftsy!”

Here is a link to my Craftsy class. Check it out and tell me what you think 🙂

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A Passion for Design

Ainslie CyopicIn the 1990’s, when I was a dance videographer, I first knew Ainslie Cyopik as a sought-after dancer in Vancouver. A number of years later, I witnessed her retirement from professional dance and her beginnings as she started a small business designing dancewear.

dancers in AinsliewearHer success has been phenomenal, and her optimism and passion for what she does is a bit contagious when you meet her. The driving force behind AinslieWear, she has bridged the gap from professional dancer to professional designer. Having spent 15 years dancing with companies such the National Ballet of Canada and Ballet British Columbia, she often found the dancewear available didn’t quite fit right or meet the needs of long rehearsal days. Instead of “just making do”, she created a line of dancewear for herself with all the qualities she was looking for. Over the years, her reputation grew as a designer of dancewear clothing that not only looked great on, but was also made with a personal understanding of a dancer’s needs.

AW102A-Square-neck-velvet-frontCarrying on her love for the art of dance and a true passion for the grace of its practitioners, Ainslie started a business focusing on her design and development of dancewear on a full-time basis in 1997. Today, AinslieWear bodysuits, known for their exceptional quality and fabulous fit, are worn by leading dancers and students alike, from Paris to Tokyo.

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At left  is Ainslie photographed in her first costume she made for herself at ballet school in her late teens. “I used two gorgeous dusty mauve shades of fabric and it flowed so well when I danced. I even kept a little piece of the fabric.”

More about Ainslie’s wonderful designs are on her website.

Doing What You Love

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Below is an excerpt posted from the delightful newsletter I receive each Sunday from Brainpickings Weekly:

“There is an ugliness in being paid for work one does not like,” Anaïs Nin wrote in her diary in 1941. Indeed, finding a sense of purpose and doing what makes the heart sing is one of the greatest human aspirations – and yet too many people remain caught in the hamster wheel of unfulfilling work. In 1949, career counselor William J. Reilly penned How To Avoid Work (UK; public library) – a short guide to finding your purpose and doing what you love. Despite the occasional vintage self-helpism of the tone, the book is remarkable for many reasons – written at the dawn of the American corporate era and the golden age of the housewife, it not only encouraged people of all ages to pursue their passions over conventional, safe occupations, but it also spoke to both men and women with equal regard.

Reilly begins by exploring the mythologies of work and play, something Lewis Hyde has written of beautifully, with an uncomfortable but wonderfully apt metaphor:

Most [people] have the ridiculous notion that anything they do which produces an income is work – and that anything they do outside ‘working’ hours is play. There is no logic to that. … Your life is too short and too valuable to fritter away in work. If you don’t get out now, you may end up like the frog that is placed in a pot of fresh water on the stove. As the temperature is gradually increased, the frog feels restless and uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable enough to jump out. Without being aware that a chance is taking place, be is gradually lulled into unconsciousness.

Much the same thing happens when you take a person and put him in a job which he does not like. He gets irritable in his groove. His duties soon become a monotonous routine that slowly dulls his senses. As I walk into offices, through factories and stores, I often find myself looking into the expressionless faces of people going through mechanical motions. They are people whose minds are stunned and slowly dying.

To illustrate the idea that “life really begins when you have discovered that you can do anything you want,” Reilly quotes Amelia Earhart, a woman of strong and refreshing liberal for their time opinions:

I flew the Atlantic because I wanted to. If that be what they call ‘a woman’s reason,’ make the most of it. It isn’t, I think, a reason to be apologized for by man or woman. … Whether you are flying the Atlantic or selling sausages or building a skyscraper or driving a truck, your greatest power comes from the fact that you want tremendously to do that very thing, and do it well.

Neil Gaiman: Make Good Art

This seems to be the week of excellent tips from friends on inspiring videos. Interesting that both of the ones I am posting are of fellows from the UK.

Recently writer Neil Gaiman was invited to address the University of the Arts Class of 2012. It’s incredibly inspiring for anyone who needs encouragement to keep on making art. Watch this.

John Cleese on Creativity

An artist friend tipped me about this excellent lecture on YouTube by British comedian John Cleese, on which he succinctly outlines key elements for creativity.

Cleese: “Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating.”

Link to the lecture here

The Wanderer

Ever toil away at a problem, getting nowhere, then finally give up in despair and take a shower, or go for a drive? If you have read Jay Ingram‘s book “Theatre of the Mind”, you will recognize that state he talks about, where in doing something familiar that requires little brain energy, your imagination is free to wander and relax, and “eureka!” the solution to your problem pops seemingly out of nowhere.

Creativity needs that open space in order to forge new “links” previously unrecognized. For me, that freedom to follow my instincts in the painting studio is key to making work that engages me, and hopefully the viewer as well.

Play as a creative strategy in the work of Sara Ogilvie

The following article, about play and the creative process, was written by Catherine M. Stewart, who graciously allowed me to include it in this blog. It originally appeared in Malaspina Printmakers‘ Chop Magazine in 2004.

Sara Ogilvie, Little Runaway, lithograph, 61 x 44 cm
Sara Ogilvie, Little Runaway, lithograph, 61 x 44 cm

Play is the exaltation of the possible. – Martin Buber, 20th century philosopher and theologian.

The word ‘play’ is often used in a pejorative way as being a frivolous activity that has little value or purpose. However, it is precisely the freedom from practical purpose associated with playful activity that allows creative people to open up their minds to new possibilities and relationships, to break the bonds of ‘the expected’, and to arrive at fresh ways of interpreting reality. Eighteenth century philosopher, Immanuel Kant, used the phrase “free play of the imagination” to describe this unfettered mindset that he considered to be an essential part of the creative process.

“Free play of the imagination” is very evident in the work of Scottish artist, Sara Ogilvie, who recently exhibited a series of original prints at the Malaspina Printmakers Gallery in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The artist, who presently resides in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, also spent a month at the Malaspina Print Studio as artist-in-residence. In a slide presentation on the work she had done since graduating from the Edinburgh College of Art in 1993, Sara explained her modus operandi. In the initial phase of her creative process, she collects fragments from her surroundings – images that she has either sketched or photographed, textures, signage, and peculiar or absurd things of interest that she has come across in thrift shops, city streets or the library. Nothing is too mundane or insignificant for her consideration. Her visual appetite is voracious and she perceives her surroundings in the greatest detail. From carpets to insects to superheroes, it is all ‘grist for the mill’. As her storehouse fills, Sara begins “playing” with seemingly random elements, exploring the potential meaning that comes from serendipitous combinations and then applying them to particular themes or projects.

Her exhibition at Malaspina, entitled Hither and Thither, focused on considerations about “getting from A to B and the pitfalls, non-starters and spaces we move through to get there”. The prints that Sara selected for this exhibition speak about entering spaces that are known and unknown, imaginary and real, personal and social. With the exception of one, these experiences are examined through the eyes of a variety of animals and toy figures. Besides being very playful in character, the images are thought provoking as well. They pose more questions than answers and are wide open to individual interpretation.

For example, in Husky’s Private Pattern, a dog sits in the driver’s seat (UK) of a parked truck. What is it thinking? If it could go anywhere, where would it go? Does the circular stream of sled dogs around the periphery of the image make reference to its genetic history and, in this sense, reflect this husky’s yearning? Or is the print a more general statement about the frustration of this breed’s present day role in society vis à vis its traditional one– the transportation of goods and people – a function that has been usurped by mechanical invention (i.e. the truck in which it is entrapped)?

Several other prints in the exhibition echo this sense of thwarted purpose. In Little Runaway, a caged hamster is pictured running on a circular wheel. In Midnight Mule, a toy mule with moveable joints is ‘clip-clopping’ in space and getting nowhere. Chuf Chuf Ch shows a humanoid toy figure, eyes wide with anticipation, approaching a break in a circular track. While these prints deal with interrupted or obstructed movement, others relate to unanticipated changes that come about when one enters unknown spaces. In her exhibition statement, Sara cited her time as visiting artist/lecturer at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2002 as being the initial impetus for this body of work. The piece Yonder, which she links directly to this experience, is a metaphor for “venturing into unfamiliar territory and returning, initially seeming the same, but undoubtedly changed”.

To heighten the theme of coming and going, or being caught in between, the walls of the gallery were punctuated with black neoprene cutouts of people and animals attempting to move through portals in space and time. These added to the humorous and quirky character of the artist’s approach to the topic of personal transition and are further evidence of the artist’s willingness to try the unexpected.

The sense of enjoyment in the creative process conveyed through the work, as well as Sara Ogilvie’s mastery of silk screening and lithography, made Hither and Thither a pleasure to experience. Furthermore, the “free play of the imagination” that is so evident in the creation of the prints acts as an inducement for viewers to open their own minds to imaginative readings as they contemplate the images. One can’t help but wonder what new space Sara Ogilvie will occupy next and what intriguing things she will have to say about it.

The Pleasures of Art

In these difficult times, looking at and making art can help us get back in touch with the best things that humans are capable of–– a sense of play, a sense of excitement in the creative act.

The following excerpt,  from David Hockney’s book, That’s the Way I See It, reveals the artist’s philosophy on viewing and making art:

I have always believed that art should be a deep pleasure. I think there is a contradiction in an art of total despair, because the very fact that the art is made seems to contradict despair. It means at least that you are trying to communicate what you feel to somebody else and the very fact that you can communicate it takes away a little of the despair. Art has this contradiction built into it. All one has to do is look at its history.

A few years ago at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York there was a show of Fragonard. He is an artist who has been thought sometimes to be much too pleasurable, much too playful, much too sweet to be serious, and certainly in the early nineteenth century that’s how he was dismissed. It was only the Goncourt brothers who started looking seriously at his paintings and buying them.

Today we see him differently. To me Fragonard is a wonderful artist. I think you can’t have art without play; Picasso always understood that. I think you can’t have much human activity of any kind without a sense of playfulness. Someone once criticized my work, saying it was too playful. I said, That’s hardly a criticism at all, that’s a compliment. I do see it as a compliment because I believe that without a sense of play there’s not much curiosity either; even a scientist has a sense of play. And that allows for surprises, the unexpected, discoveries. Anybody who gets good at it knows that. You can use it. I use it. People tend to forget that play is serious, but I know that of course it is. Some people have got the idea that if it’s boring it’s art and if it’s not boring it’s not art. Well, I’ve always thought it was the other way round. If it’s boring, more than likely it’s not art, if it’s exciting, thrilling, more than likely it is. I don’t know of any good art that’s boring, in music, poetry or painting. Isn’t that why Shakespeare is so exciting?

You can find more information on David Hockney on the Artsy website.

Text excerpt from That’s the Way I See It, page 133 © David Hockney