January, Another year gone, a new one just begun

2016! So far in the future. The turn of the century and all the concerns of the millennium are already close to two decades old. Many changes personally and globally.

As always, the Christmas & celebratory season is a time to remember the past and rethink the future.

It’s a time to connect with family and dear friends. Every year I have contact with someone whom I haven’t heard from in a long time or someone that I don’t know so well, and our friendship is rekindled or strengthened. A time of light and laughter.

In my neck of the woods, winter has been oddly subdued. Even though the occasional snowfall has graced us with its presence, it has never been so green and mild in the 18 years that we’ve lived here on Georgian Bay. But that is soon to change! The ice pellets, wind and blowing snow is just arriving, as it must.

Art-wise, I completed two small paintings on paper.

The rest of my focus has been on painting Lotuses on a variety of papers.

Some are handmade papers that I had carefully put on a shelf in my studio, only to have one of our dogs attack them in a fit of abandonment. Luckily, the damage was not severe and I cut off the sections that were truly ruined. The papers I’m using are handmade, mostly from Japan and Nepal. They are sublime! Very flexible, somewhat transparent, almost a substitute for fabric.

I continue to use the same stencils that I have made over the past 2 years, experimenting with layering of colours, transparent paint and composition. Right now, my focus is to make a variety of Lotuses, which I will make into collages during my upcoming trip to India.