 We went on a half surprise camping trip on Vancouver Island, a picturesque and highly privileged little hill next to a crystal clear river with a small amount of plumbing and electricity - but no internet. These trips are a dreamy way to recharge, surrounded by nature, sleeping in the dew, a little stripped down, but not quite roughing it. Unlike the road trips where you're either touring or waiting in a car, all you have on the river is quiet time. It's perfect for an art getaway. Almost.  If I can't make art with just this, what am I even doing? Every time we go camping, it lands right smack dab in the middle of a heat wave, and I don't function well in 38c sunshine. I would do a couple of sketches in the morning, but spend the long afternoons floating down the river on an inflatable tube instead. The river was wild this year! Way too much water, and many jagged trees had fallen across some pretty important passageways. Enough people had lost all of their belongings that most of the usual floaters stayed well away. It was very quiet.  I'd never seen rapids quite that large before, so of course, I fell off my tube for the first time, pulling it over my head like a big inflatable hat, and holding onto my sunglasses with one hand. I was always afraid of crashing into some big stones and busting up my legs, but to my surprise, there was nothing in the deep. Water kept pushing over my face, and it felt like floating in the sky on a helium balloon. I kept all of my things!  I took with me a couple of Rafi's ebooks about marketing and money management for artists, although it's less like a guide and more like a trail. They're so useful, and although it's all very familiar at this point, it did press me with questions I needed to consider. I've been spacey and lost for a while. It's hard to see so many great artists rise up and succeed and not think, if anyone can get art everywhere they look, what purpose do I serve? It will take time to develop a cogent thought, but my first favourite trait about myself is my appreciation for little things that get lost in the rapids. The way that the details of a tiny flower can make our unfulfilling human shit seem so small, on a cosmic scale. That you don't have to buy, sell, collect, breed, or work long hours to see the best show the Earth has to offer. It's practically free, and all the other animals seem to have it figured out better than we do.  I wish there was a way to bottle up the feeling we get when we're watching a deer chew grass in the yard and wonder, how does an animal with huge predators look so casual and free and less terrified of life than even the safest, most comfortable humans? If I ever do, I'm sure that would be my value as an artist.
But in the meantime... I still have so much to draw, and usually I rush through it to have a video or project to show, but this time, I won't. Like I said, this will take some time.
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I asked for a new and exciting terrain to draw in my sketchbook, and Alberta sure delivered...  Pretty, and horrifying! I'm so glad the canola was blooming, because the bright yellow sea was a cheerful mask for what might have been the surface of the moon. Have I ever told you I'm terrified of space? As someone who has never not been held by mountains, the earth stretching out farther than the human eye can see is just disgusting. The open ocean is relaxing from the beach, but horrifying from the ship, and we were a ship adrift in a yellow sea. I'd never felt so impossibly far away from home. My mom wasn't even using a map during any of this trip, instead just hoping there would be enough highway signs. We were doomed. Well, actually, we were all very confused. How could we be 16 km from Drumheller, a city noted for their multicoloured hillsides, and yet be unable to see it ahead on the horizon? Is the Earth a cube??  It's a HOLE?? Are you kidding me??? This section of earth was underneath ocean for a very long time, and then glaciers, and when the glaciers melted 10,000 years ago, its water burst out and carved this valley in the sandstone. And I guess some people wanted to live in it, cool.  The town itself has seen better days, but the Tyrell Museum has gotten a good share of petroleum profits, and was looking pretty good! I collected 600 images on this trip, and half of them are dinosaur skeletons with questionable copyright use status. I'd been here once before, over 30 years ago, so I wasn't sure how I would feel to be here again. So far, I felt almost nothing, except the blistering heat.  Dang, stay in a haunted looking hotel again, or stick with the one next to the grocery with the t-rex busting out of it? tough choice. Everything looked literally as it would have 30 years ago, like, I don't think anyone repainted anything. Except there was a new-looking coffee shop, so if you live in Drumheller, you might have found a paper bird there! I also reunited with an old friend.  Ah no, not him.  The Ear-Splitter. We used to call these gophers, although I'm unsure now, because there's a dozen rodents that all look the same and have different names. Help. Anyway, I can't believe the sound that comes out of these things, and they expect food so enthusiastically that he ran up to my open hand and gave me TWO slapping high fives. Unbelievable.   Unfortunately, with the heat, and being the end of a stimulating week, the magic of the layered hills wore off quickly. I was disappointed with how it felt less like an old home than I'd expected. There were fewer bird species than I expected. No fault to Drumheller, but I was tired, which made everything feel mundane. It stood out to me then, the purpose of art to me, is for the natural world to never become mundane, to never shrug at an eagle and say, "We see eagles like this everyday at home, calm down about the eagles." I want to be wowed by an eagle every time. I never want to be bored of a hillside by day three and feel a weird pride for it.  There are so many things I didn't draw! But someday soon, I will.
Maybe even on a semi-surprise camping trip, er, artist getaway to Vancouver Island, where there is no internet or touring, and all I have is time with a sketchbook...  I wanted to sketch my way across BC and Alberta, but it was so jam-packed full of sights (and driving) that I didn't draw as much as I would have liked, but I should be good on reference photos for a while! :D We casually rolled through Revelstoke, Golden, and Banff on our little journey, each looking very shiny and gentrified.  Of course, we had to get sucked into Canada's most boastful suspension bridges, which gave us beautiful landscapes to paint later! It was not comforting to press a foot against the shale and watch it crumble like a stale Butterfinger... you know, the mountain stone the bridges are suspended between?? 😬  As fun as expensive tourist shit can be, I have a softer spot for the lower key Cave and Basin reserve, which I sought out only because of, well, this cave picture, but also because of a Google review that I cannot find again. One that complained that people used to swim in these beautiful pools until an endangered Banff Springs snail moved in and kicked everyone out. I know she means a lot of snails, and conservationists made rules, and yadda yadda yadda, but it just TICKLES me to imagine a single snail hoarding an entire beautiful cave from bothersome tourists, so I'd rather keep imagining that's what really happened.  I was disappointed to learn that the gift shop had a disturbing lack of snail merch, and I'm totally not saying I stole a (barkless) sun-bleached stick to carve a snail out of it at the hotel room... 😏
I gave it away, but I'll make some at home later and will just have to pretend they're proper souvenirs. Get with the snails, Banff! Recently, I took one of my handmade sketchbooks with me on a kind of road trip in western canada! Of course, I tend to turn every vacation into an art retreat. I brought along with me the usual suspects:  If I can't make art with this, what am I even doing? I brought the paper birds with me to deposit them in sneaky places, but not nearly enough! Just saying, if you happen upon a little library in Revelstoke, or a cafe in Drumheller, keep an eye out for some free tiny art!  I was so chuffed to stay at the 3 Valley Lake Chateau, especially after hearing it had been ghost hunted (Although I've since watched its episode of Stranded and found it very disappointing). It's easy to spook ourselves in this hotel though, with its maze of weird construction, and the postcards even featured images that looked like they were taken in the 70s. With no TV or wifi or air conditioning, this place felt a trapped in some other time period.  I wonder what's up there??? What we fear is our imagination, and there is a lot of opportunity to imagine in this place. We were also blessed with a dusty ghost town that was filled with so many objects to photograph for later, and had its own kind of hauntings: broken mannequins.  John and I did try to wander the halls at night, but the sun just wouldn't go down fast enough, and the constant chatter and screaming children made it difficult to feel alone. It sure was weird though, especially when we came upon an abandoned hallway.  Now, we're talking. Not even the staff seem to venture down here much, judging from the piles of animal feces on the floor. There were some doors that way, but they were either filled in or boarded up. It got us in a fun frame of mind just in time to get lost in halls that had more dead ends than should be possible... There were so many places in this hotel that we never found or didn't have access to! This isn't a hotel review site, but I must say I have no major complaints except the food portions were quite small for the price. I LOVED stumbling upon the library and getting sucked into a jigsaw puzzle until the late hours with no interruptions. I didn't know jigsaw puzzles were so fun! You can watch a brief tour of our visit on youtube!  I took so many photographs of pretty landscapes and dead dinosaurs and vintage objects, that I've shared some with patrons to be used as drawing references! I didn't draw as much as I'd thought while we were out, but I'm well prepared for the next peaceful "art retreat" that will have significantly fewer activities everyday. I'll certainly be back with something more!   I have a Samsung laser printer whose drum needs replacement, but these companies intentionally make it so unappealing to repair their products! For many years, I dealt with very poor image printing, streaks along the corners, toner cartridges failing, toner not fusing, and suddenly, ghost printing... so I crossed the floor and wandered blindly into the inkjet market. I don't have high demands, I just want it to work for once. I don't want to have to trim splotches off of my prints or colour everything by hand anymore. I just want to print on sticker paper, and maybe make a little colour booklet every now and then, that's all. I decided to try out the Canon G3260. Mostly because it's a Megatank, meaning, I can buy ink without replacing a whole tiny computer every single time. Epson seems more popular, but I chose Canon only for their promise that I can actually replace the parts when they break and reset it without having to download cracks from strangers. After dealing with the laser printer, repairs are the #1 concern for me, personally.  I've been holding off on sharing my first impression on this, because I don't feel qualified to give one. I've been so timid about challenging this printer. I usually don't care about things like speed or sound, because I feel blessed just to have an electronic device function at all! But they were not joking about the noise. There is so much noise, that I fear it is broken with every use! When communicating, it is constantly whirring, like it's feeding paper but it's not. What is it doing? 😆 The other day I sent it a file, and it made a new and unique crunching ruckus while ignoring me for what felt like 5 minutes. I just want to know why?  Oops copy on the right, regular copy on the left All I have on hand is regular, boring copy paper, so I didn't have huge expectations or anything. The first print was a real let down though! It came out really pale. It turns out this happens if you print on copy paper with the "borderless" setting turned on! So I found that, turned it off, and I got the copy on the left. Much better! Why even have a setting that sabotages the colours if you leave borderless on? Why not just disable the option in the menu? I wanted to see how it would handle subtle textures, like the ethereal watercolour texture at the top of the post. I'm just happy they were visible at all!  The dresses were blue, sure, but this looks like it's glowing! Again, these are just on plain copy paper on a low-end printer. I'm not sure how to feel about them. It very much looks like it was printed on a home printer. The colours are very dotted, the cyan is very blown out and opaque. I can't complain, but I'm not excited or anything.  I tried printing a sketchbooklet in greyscale on some toned paper, and it was lovely! I think this printer handles sketches a lot better than other kinds of images. My biggest issue is the paper I'm using. They are too thin. Despite being too thin, I haven't had a huge problem with crinkling from the ink at all. Yes, when they are fresh out of the printer, they look a bit wet and delicate, but they are flat when they have a moment to dry. I didn't have to wait long to print on the back. Seems like a non-issue.  Holy crap it kind of worked Quietly disappointed so far, I can't really complain because I've only been feeding it junk papers. I still hold out hope that photo papers are the real deal, since so many reviews on photo printing were positive. Unfortunately, I am unable to find photo paper in my immediate neighbourhood, except for some 5x7" packs that seemed way too expensive to just play and experiment with. This was really risky, but I had a sheet of coated poster board and decided to run that through the photo paper setting. Just to see.  I told it I was feeding it photo paper, but I lied. I have no idea what the coating is on poster board, but it definitely reacted with the inks! 😬 The colours came out very milky and weird, and maybe it did other things too, because when I looked at these prints, they were much smoother, less pixelated. Also, the printer took its sweet time instead of trying to push it out as fast as possible, something I couldn't get it to do with plain papers or cardstock. I had to lie to it in order to get its best service.  The coating made the ink milky and weird, but the pixelation is gone... But this just makes me even more hopeful that I could do some acceptable booklet covers, or maybe some postcards, literally anything that I couldn't do before. What can it do if I really did give it some nice coated cardstock or photo papers?  Just being able to print on cardstock PERIOD means huge zine upgrades! I'd love to be able to make just a few copies of something to try out without having to invest in a huge stockpile. I'm just happy that with the right paper (or lies), I may get to be creative with my booklet covers instead of just having plain brown cardstock ones!
 Tribute to the Sunflower House in Oil City, PA (if you know, u know) In Spring of 2019, before I would abandon my life as it was, I was having the worst mental health experience I'd had since high school. Weird mortal dread, unpleasant day job, and making art late into the night without much payoff. I took a modest financial loss as a sign that I was just not meant to be a working artist and that I should submit to my boss' desire to own me outright. I saw artists who had full time jobs, but filled beautiful sketchbooks just for the joy of it, and I wished that I could be as happy as they seemed. I could not be happy at any of my jobs (they were just too boring and painful), but I could give up on painting and just play in a sketchbook for a while.  Parksville, city of roses, apparently. I took inspiration from Ikeda Manabu's incredibly large paintings that took years to complete. How impractical, I thought! I was so caught up in turning art into an income that I would hesitate to make anything that I couldn't sell afterward. So I grabbed this Mont Marte sketchbook my MIL gifted to me, and decided it would be an impractical surface to an impractical project - my biggest watercolour painting ever, trapped in a sketchbook, to be tossed on a shelf and destined for nothing important.  Lytton, before the entirety of it was destroyed by fire. It would be a painful amount of work, much of it repetitive and boring. I painted cities as if they were embedded in quartz. I painted cities I live in, cities I've visited, cities I intend to visit, cities that house humans I know, cities I see in videos, until the entire book is full. I took this book with me wherever I needed to pass uneventful time. I took it with me to the flea market as a way to show I was an artist, not a reseller. It piqued strangers' interest, it calmed my nerves. It was a very good book!  Ucluelet, where a meteorite crashed into a house! Each double page spread measured 92 square inches, and took around 7 hours to complete. Doing the math, this sketchbook has 45 double page spreads adding up to 8280 square inches of surface. The equivalent of a 7'x8.5' painting! It took me over 315 hours.  Toronto is a huge city I may never actually get to see. As for the sketchbook itself, this is a plain Mont Marte sketchbook, a very basic hardcover. I loved it! The pages feel really cottony and absorbent. Usually, these sorts of books are miserable for watercolour, but this one took it like a champ as far as drawing sketchbooks go. Will definitely grab another one if I see it. Now that it's finished, I feel a bit sad for it. This was an act of rebellion for me at the time, to do something so big and tedious for little anticipated reward. This will go up on my channel as an emergency 3-minute video, get 80 views, and then rust forgotten on my shelf afterward, as intended.
If that's not a metaphor for life under capitalism, I don't know what is.  Slat wall is wonderful and frustrating at the same time. I've never attempted a solo art show before, mostly because I am an insecure human who shies away from hosting any kind of events entirely! I know that I don't have it in me to draw a crowd, or even pressure a friend to stop by, and so I tend to stick to joint shows where maybe nobody would notice that I am always alone. But not this time, baby! Evasive as I may be, when I was asked to take up the whole gallery space last minute, of course I said yes! I wanted to have a show for the Wild Satellite series, and dang it, it had to happen sometime, whether I felt cool enough for it or not.  They look so much smaller here than they do in my tiny apartment! I wanted to organize my time in the gallery around visitors like me. Entering another person's space feels very uncomfortable. One memorable studio I visited during an art crawl years ago was one where the artist had set up a little interactive art project. I think it involved writing on gift tags and hanging them onto a painted tree. A lot of people hate drawing in public, but the act of doodling and colouring can be very calming and relaxing! I really wanted to incorporate a project like that so that I could offer a bit of fun in what can sometimes be an intimidating space.  Take a bird, leave a bird! The theme of Wild Satellite became a story about a cat who takes off on a satellite in search of a place to belong in the world. It isn't until he boldly explores, and then lowers his guard to be vulnerable and open to the world that all of these magical animals begin to welcome him. With that in mind, I did a quick drawing of Milo with Finches, and cut out a whole lot of little paper birds that visitors can colour and stick to the drawing. Visitors are welcome to trade theirs for a bird left behind as a token of friendship, or just take one that's already hanging as a thank you for coming. In lieu of an opening reception, I'm presenting it as more of an art journaling meet up, because few things are as awkward as an artist reception. A reception is really just a party where nobody knows each other and everybody is hella sober too. I just wanted there to be something to do. A reason to go. Something to take away and remember.  No really, they're for you. Don't be shy. Now that we're finally here, I'm not sure how I feel about it! I think it looks great in there, and I think any visitors would be happy they came. I know it won't get the love it truly deserves. I'm not sure how to feel about all the time I could have spent doing something else, all the other opportunities I missed while I was so busy, all the other spaces I could have borrowed instead. I don't know how to feel about buying a large quantity of frames that I'll now have to hoard. I don't know how to feel when I return to the space to see no new or missing birds on the wall. I don't know how I will handle the disappointment if saturday's craft fair will be empty, and then to sit alone at my art journaling artist reception the next day with a bowl of uneaten snacks. But I do feel more empowered to cope with the uncertainty of it all. I've made a cool thing that could really brighten someone's day if they were fortunate enough to see it. And my patreon friends will have a surprise (whoops) bird in the mail next month at the very least! 😊 These are very good birbs. Wish them luck.  I made a video about how I write artist statements, but forgot to make a blog post, so let's dive right into it. We already know that when we have to do something complicated, it's better to break it down into simple steps right? In this case, we'll visit our common friend from the news media industry: who, what, when, where, why? Tell me if you've heard this one.  How can I talk about everything at once, when everything is different? For an artist statement, the most dominant ones for me are what and why. What are you doing, and what's the point? I'm making watercolor paintings, usually plants and animals, often with little paper tole accents, like many other watercolor artists. So what am I trying to say with all this art? Uhh... Whenever someone asks us to explain our art, we tend to think way too broadly, and it starts to become impossible. There are some artists who find a very specific niche in their work that works great or otherwise just fulfills them consistently. Let's say, you're an artist that just does horse paintings. Maybe you live, breathe, ride horses. You've had years to psychoanalyze your commitment to horse subjects, and thus, talking about horse art is a snap. The rest of us, though, are more likely to have more varied interests, like maybe I paint pets during the day, but draw houses at night, and dabble in acrylic pour art on the weekend? Imagine if someone asked you to condense your entire life into a paragraph. Are there even words that can explain all these things at once? You may need to write many different artist statements during a lifetime for different reasons. It's tempting to write just one masterpiece of an artist statement to point to for the rest of your life so you don't have to do it again, but that feels impossible. Instead, you may want to write an art statement for each different series of creations you make. That sounds like so much more work, but it's so much easier.  I have found some art can be grouped together by theme! Here's how: Take my a giant pile of work and divvy it into groups. I got pet illustrations, landscape illustrations, quartz cities, a series featuring a traveling cat, tarot inspired stuff, text landscapes, and a whole pile of random miscellaneous one-offs. I'll usually take these piles and give them their own space with their own individual write-up. So let's take the Living Spaces collection for example and mind map it. What are they? They're watercolor illustrations inspired by specific locations, I use paper tole. Why did I make these? I just wanted to illustrate places that i visited, not in a literal replication of them visually, but rather as in how they make me feel, or personal memories that took place there, in a way that allowed me to be whimsical and creative so i can practice my creativity. This is a very bare bones and self-interested breakdown. If i wanted to push this further, we can invite our other friends: who, where, and when. Who am I in these places? Where are they? Do they relate to a moment in my timeline? We're just collecting facts here. You can use all these tiny ideas to make up a nice, long, rough draft of everything that you could possibly think to say about this series or this piece. When you're doing that, consider who you're writing it for.  Don't think, just spew words. There is definitely a stereotype that artist's statements are stuffy and packed full of jargon intended to impress the snooty lords and confuse everyone else, but here is a list of people who collect art: people who have pets and want pet commissions, other artists who love art more than most people, people who've never thought about purchasing art before, people who like the artist personally and want to be part of their support circle, you know, just regular people like you and me. For literal writing advice, I really like the 11-sentence paragraph structure if I can get away with it. Otherwise, I just kinda casually wing it. Here's how my Living Spaces statement ended up. It's not a masterpiece, but it's okay. I'm gonna do this process one more time with a slightly different flair.
 Let's do one more for my pet commissions. What are they? These are custom illustrations of pets, in vibrant watercolor, with backgrounds, usually botanical ones, paper tole, et cetera. Why do i make these? Because I like how they help people cope with the loss of their pets. The addition of custom backgrounds keeps it interesting for me and keeps me from feeling like an emotionless camera. I can actually be creative. I could reach people by telling a story about losing my own cat, and how I coped by painting him in whimsical adventures he never got to go on in real life. This artist statement is going to have a different angle, because I'm not likely to hang a show of pet commissions in a gallery or anything. This feels more like a product or service. I'll probably need this on my website as a piece of marketing, which gives me a few more options to pull from, such as, if you're the client who is commissioning a pet portrait, what would you want to know? What are your biggest fears? I would want to know about the timeline and what to expect with communication, how it will be delivered, and would happen if something goes wrong? "Our pets aren't going to be around forever, so I like to paint them living their best life. I got to give Milo a tall vine to climb (he loves to be up in high spots). I gave Lando The Hedgehog a cute teacup house in a woodland. When our animal friends ultimately leave us, we can continue to visit them in the fun spaces we imagined for them.  Very adventurous, actually! All this was to demonstrate how much easier it was to write artist statements about specific individual works and series, compared to trying to write one big boy about everything I've ever made! So maybe you have found something in common about your recent artworks, or you're ready to write about one piece. Let's head back to those press release prompts: who, what, when, where, why, and do a little mind map of notes for each one. See which prompts the most interesting story for you: Who: Could be how your personal life experience (who you are) directs your art, or who specifically you are trying to reach/inspire/comfort/rouse with your art. Maybe your art is inspired by an old artist? How would sharing this information make it easier for a viewer to understand your artwork? What: Is your subject matter, your medium, your process, how you display it (if it's unique), the stories you are telling, just the basics of what you're making. Where: Perhaps your location is important context to the story? Maybe your art is about your former home in a small town or a different country? Maybe your current home inspires you to paint a certain way, or maybe you live somewhere that holds dark historical context which shows up in your work? When: Perhaps your art is connected to a moment in time. Do you use historical motifs, retell old stories, create images of an imagined future? Are you emotionally stuck in a wonderful or traumatic year of your childhood and that's all you can paint about? Are you preserving an old technique/language/philosophy/whatever that may one day go extinct? Why: Considering all you've thought about so far, what brings you satisfaction about making your art? Does it help you heal from trauma? Are you inspiring others? Are you trying to start deeper conversations with strangers to feel connected with the world? Are you making beautiful things to give joy to yourself and others during times of hopelessness? Are you trying to preserve something you're afraid of losing?  When you've hit on something interesting, and you're writing up your draft, keep it in the first person, and keep it as concise but simple as possible. If you read it to a child, would they be able to understand you? Keep your long master copy, but see if you can condense it into a smaller and smaller paragraph, using fewer, more expressive words.
In a solo show or a website, you might have a whole page of space to write about your art, but for a single piece in a group show, you might only have space for two or three sentences. In other words, can you condense your artist statement down into a single tweet? Artist statements are your best chance at making people feel connected to your work personally. Even if you think that your art doesn't have a cool story, it usually does, that just means that you may be devaluing yourself or expecting to say something world-changing with your art... or you just haven't really thought about it that deeply yet! Here's a video where I chat about creating a beautiful story for a painting of pigeons that I thought had no deep meaning. I sure hope this helps. "Motive is difficult, it often occurs to one only later." - Quote from The X-Files (lol)  I will be peddling my art wares in a shiny new shopfront in Lavenderland! All my prints, stickers, handmade necklaces, original sketches, and more will be in attendance!
May 14, 2022 10am-4pm Lavendarland 8460 Steveston Hwy Richmond, BC  I will be having my first ever solo show in a little gallery in Surrey, BC! Show's Theme: A cat builds his own satellite from discarded junk and sets off on a lone adventure, searching for connection and belonging. These travels take him to magical yet familiar landscapes saturated in watercolour. Meeting with other inspirational creatures, he begins to grasp the joy and reward of taking risks and coming out of his own shell. Seeing my art in person is a much cooler experience than seeing it in photos, so I hope you come out when you can! Instead of an artist reception, I will be dropping by for an Artist "Draw-in" on Sunday, May 15th, 2022. We can chill with our sketchbooks, art journals, or just have a good chat! There will be birds posted on a drawing of Milo cat as little symbols of friendship, and visitors can take their birds, leave their birds, or trade their bird with another of their choice. It will be cool and fun! Please join us!
Wild Satellite Art Show May 4 - May 27, 2022 Newton Cultural Centre 13530 72nd Avenue Surrey, BC |
Hello! I'm Melissa, and here you'll find some behind-the-scenes footage of an artful life. Won't you join me?
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