Big and Small

I have been cleaning my studio the past two days. It is a big, overwhelming job but not without interest. I am finding all sorts of things I had forgotten about.

I started painting when I was 18 years old.  I didn't study Fine Art in university but English Literature.  I started taking a neighbourhood painting course to serve as a creative counterpoint to my studies.  I was never told that I had an ability in art when I was in elementary school, to the point that I didn't take any art courses when I was in high school. I was more often told that I was a good writer. So I didn't expect to love painting as much as I did.  Even after I graduated from university and started working in the corporate communications field, I continued painting in the evenings and taking art courses. I even thought of getting a second degree in Art History but realized that the actual doing of it was what I loved the most.  It wasn't until I was in my thirties and in the middle of a burnout related to my corporate job that I realized that painting was what I wanted to do--all of the time.

What I am finding as I clean my studio is work from years ago. It's quite mindblowing. Some of it feels like it was done by another person and I guess in a way it was.  I have a ton of stuff but picked out a few that I thought you might enjoy seeing.

These three really surprised me as I don't have any clear memory of painting them. Isn't that strange? I am thinking that they were perhaps done during one of the evening courses I took at a lovely little independent art school that existed on Queen Street in Toronto in the 1980s. It was called Arts' Sake.  These are all on full-sized sheets of very ordinary newsprint paper.

I painted primarily in oil when I was in my twenties. The studies above would have been done during that period, so I was experimenting but hadn't made the official switch to watercolour.  That came in my thirties. At the beginning, I used to paint miniatures almost exclusively. I love things that are small and I love detail. Here are some that I still have from 1991 and 1992. They include scenes from my garden, Quebec, Ontario and travels in England, Australia and New Zealand. They measure 3½ x 2½ inches and smaller. (Some I like; some I don't.) I sold many of the paintings I did in this period.

The iris studies at the very top of this post were done in this same period too, although they are bigger.

This mosaic was the result of a class I took about six years ago at the Visual Arts Centre in Montreal. I have taken several courses there.  We were asked by the teacher to bring in a watercolour that we weren't happy with, without being told why. I brought in a still life I had done of a tea pot, butternut squash and orange. When we arrived, we were told to cut the painting into squares (eek!), rearrange them and then add painted detail.  I added three tea bags, flowers and lines and the sentence 'I will make time for tea and art and tranquillity'.  It ended up being a piece that I like to this day.

This final piece is one of the very few 'full sheet' 22 x 30 inch watercolours that I have done.  Some artists work on full sheets all of the time.  I much prefer smaller formats.  This was also done during the course I took six years ago. If my memory serves me right, tears were involved. :)

My cleanup is still not finished. I'll post photos when I have everything organized. I'm already breathing easier as I walk up the loft stairs.