hopes of spring

The evenings are starting to lengthen and now at 6 pm it is still light enough for me to find the light switches to turn the lights on. It is definitely studio time, I just can't stop drawing and it is inspiring. Today the weather was so inviting and the sky so clear that I was compelled to walk to the other studio to work on a new piece I have been developing. Then I wandered through the streets of the old city en route to my other studio to work on a smaller intense tree drawing.

The sunshine tempts me into thinking it is spring. I am waiting for the birds to start nesting in the eaves of the house opposite me. They have chosen a spot next to the central heating chimney and they can manage two nests a year with a long spring and good summer. It is still quiet, so spring is a few weeks away. Cool, crisp days and palest blue skies that ascend endlessly over the city gives vertical space that the 17th & 18th century street pattern misses on the ground.

the year of the forest

Winter is a time for the studio and I am quietly working on more drawings. Newfoundland remains a constant inspiration and I am dreaming of returning. The Newfoundland rock fissure series continues. While I wait for my latest canvases to arrive- my treat to myself is to have someone else stretch my large canvases for me,- I am working on the beginnings of my xyloteque. It is a library of trees and for now it is my own personal trees: ones I have a history with. The latest are the the elegant but manipulated trees that line the canal outside the studio.

Winter tree, Amsterdam, detail of mixed media drawing 2011

This year was declared the Year of the Forest by the UN General Assembly. That is good with me, I am crazy about trees; trees and rocks are my simplest pleasures. I've been selected to make a sculptural piece in the Forest of Schoonoord, Drenthe (the far East of the Netherlands) in May it is an art-in-nature symposium followed by an exhibition. I am working with tree remains and there is a group of Staatsbosbeheer (forestry commission) rangers to help with installation, it is going to be a large piece and I am delighted to have people to help. 

This is also what winter in the studio is about, many applications, fund-raising, collating images and information before a summer of drawing. It is lovely when an unexpected offer like this comes in and even nicer to have been selected.

studio displacement syndrome

What happens after a residency? A residency is so intense that returning home afterwards can feel so strange. I often suffer from what I refer to as studio displacement syndrome. This time it was extremely brief as I was so excited by what I had seen and so driven to create more work that I couldn't stop. Plus I was lucky enough to have the use of a huge space as a temporary studio. Works that dwalf my normal working space looked comforatbly at ease in this context.

preparing canvases

Lobster Head Cove Triptych in progress. This was one of a series of line drawings painted on canvas using acrylic paint.

Lobster Head Cove Triptych completed during open studio

Green Point Triptych

farewells and thanks

This is it, my residency is over. It took me an hour and a half to pack all the drawings into this tube. I took this to the post office on Wednesday and Zanja was incredibly helpful. I miss having a good post office. 

I was thrown a farewell BBQ by several of my new friends, it was lovely. We had huge cheese burgers, chips and salad. Dave braved outside despite the rain and wind to barbeque the burgers. 

 As I left this morning a mist iced the top of the hills. I apologise to any local stuck behind my car as I did the speed limit- the gloom of the morning looked like a moose's dream.

I would really like to thank so many people for making this residency possible. First of all The Rooms for selecting me. Anne Marceau for her invaluable help particularly as I was preparing for the residency and Michael Burzynski for his advice on rocks. Kris Oravec for her help, advice and friendship-this residency would not have gone so smoothly without her aid. The artists I met during this residency including Christine Koch & Barb Daniell. Thanks too to Molly White, Robert Nelder and Peter Lakin for delicious dinners and good company. Barb Gillam for the best vegetables I ate in Newfoundland. Many thanks to Gayle Tapper for more delicious cooking, beautiful harp playing and for inviting me to several events & parties including Ruthie Tapper's 90th. Thanks also to Sharon Chaulk for her hospitality and the lift to Corner Brook and particularly her help with the purchase of the tube (thanks too to Lisa Shears of Shears building supplies for coming to my rescue). Thank you Zanja of Bonne Bay Post Office for providing an exemplorary service, for delivering my post (poste restante) and for sending me to the Legion to meet Danny Williams, the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador. Thanks to Hugh and Barb for being good neighbours and for sending me off with muffins and cookies! Finally I would like to thank everyone I have met during this residency for the welcome they have offered me, please forgive me if I have not named you all. The kindness I encountered has touched me greatly.  

the art of packing

The residency is nearly at an end and now I needed to focus on how the artwork was getting home. I spent the day in Corner Brook. I got a lift and had a really enjoyable day as a result. It could have been totally miserable on my own. Particularly as the plumbing store was reluctant to sell anything to me at all and could only think of problems. Fortunately Sharon knew her daughter's building supplies firm would help, they were excellent. The drawings are so big that they are rolled into a huge industrial tube (a cardboard roll used for casting in-situ concrete pillars) topped with two sewerpipe caps.

I had an educational experience going to "box stores" as they are referred to here. The raw, fluorescent strip lighting flattens everything and adds a surreal, burnished glow to the colours. Strangely I genuinely enjoy these places, especially if I have no vital need to be there but I can relish the enormity of the place. It is not the prettiest of environments but it is a necessary part of living here. Woody Point is beautifully isolated but specialized shopping means a three hour round trip to Corner Brook. The same is true of the hospital.

It did nothing but rain from lunchtime onwards. When we returned in the afternoon I found the view had disappeared again.

Cow Head

Today was an explosion of sunshine. I left Woody Point for Cow Head and there was barely a cloud between them. I spent the evening on the lighthouse trail. I was cushioned by pine needles while walking through the comfortable scent of balsam fir, to reach the rocks on the beach below. 

 The strange formations are a result of ancient underground landslides...

All over the Park there are divided graveyards. It is clearly marked in Cow Head. The society feels intergrated here and this seems incongruous. I'm not sure I would want to be labelled in the afterlife.

 

The cemetries are both on the peninsular. A tiny causeway links them to the town. A huge refridgerated fish truck nearly took me off the road as it hurtled towards a dock behind me.

 

Fall is in the air and the wind blew gustily yesterday, the sky was all racing clouds and light. This morning I am watching heavy clouds encircle the patch of pure blue over the artist's house. 

Soon I will get into action and start being infinitely practical by cleaning floors and preparing the house for the open studio later this afternoon. I am having a slow start because I was working after the 90th birthday I went to last night. It was a lovely party; the birthday girl is in excellent form and had been quoting poetry to me earlier that afternoon. I was profoundly touched to have been asked and it was inspiring to see someone with such a straight-forward pleasure in life and the people around her.