I finally finished my latest piece. Autumn Begins I decided to call it. I was so eager to paint something with a hint of fall colours and I had this frame that was a unusually odd size, I couldn't buy a canvas for it so I stretched my own. This is the end result. I always find the most difficulty for me when painting my larger pieces is knowing when to stop. When I visited this place I got the inspiration from it wasn't actually fall but sometimes I find you see someplace and visually its amazing but that doesn't always make a good painting. It was one of those places. So I had to use my artistic license. When I first found this area it was excruciatingly hot outside and I was on my way home from someplace else. I had to stop to give my dog a break from all the driving and I found this little area, we went swimming it was so nice, the water was warm, refreshing and clear and the tree with the roots wrapped around the rock was so interesting it drew me right in, it kind of had a little bit of a pink tone to it, I suppose it was granite. Anyway I left feeling a lot cooler than I was, my dog felt better and I knew it was a painting in the making. 

Last week of September, hard to believe we’re in the last week of September so I went on a weekend excursion with a friend. The fall colours were on display or a good start we travelled up though the Haliburton highlands area and beyond it was a beautiful weekend and I’m totally stoked to get going on some falls paintings.
I actually have one I’m working on now, probably have a week or two before I complete it. I ate too much good food, bought myself some mementos from our trip and I’m going to be returning without doubt.  I have the most beautiful piece of pink quartz that I cherish, it was actually bought up in that area eons ago and it probably weighs over 6 pounds. When I was a young kid  my mother would pack us all up to go on painting trips. I think we stopped in every roadside shop along the way and she massed a large collection of rocks. Like amethyst, granite, quartz, fossils, etc.
I most certainly have the same love of natural objects. So I added to my small collection. I like to pick up little things on some of my trips that I find along shorelines or where ever. Sometimes there just something that catches my eye, could be a small piece of driftwood, a stone, a stick.

Yes I even have a stick. It was my fire stick on one of my wilderness trips, we just had a really good time it was hard to bring too much out because the terrain was so rough so it was something light I could bring home and I’ve had it now something like 15 years. It's amazing actually considering all the moving I’ve done in the last several years this stick always seems to be right there. Then years later I can say, oh yes I got this when I was here or there.  But some things you can't find on a shoreline or hike so I make a point of stopping in roadside shops and picking up some really unique natural objects.
 
Anyway, it was a really nice time got some new ideas for new subject to paint the leaves were beautiful and there’s still a few weeks left to take advantage of to compile some future paintings.

I thought I'd do a blog on some of my paintings I don’t talk about to much probably more to do with the blog below this one. My art was gone for 7 years give or take, I never knew if I'd get it back so there was no sense trying to promote or sell something I didn’t have. When I got it all back I had to spend a great amount of time looking for damage etc… It was about 10-20 painting in all, it was years and years of work of some of my best work.
 
Having said that and refocusing its two paintings I have in particular that are really a set, originally it was 3 but I sold one of them to my guide who took me to my location. Its was a painting of his canoe we travelled in.
 
So I have to go way back to 2011-2012. I was doing a show with my art, it was in fact the outdoor adventure show in Ottawa. I simultaneously had a massive art show at the Ottawa international airport that was getting lots of exposure.
 
At the Adventure show I met up with some people doing tourism for the city of Timmins, they were promoting glamping. They invited me up to go glamping and maybe do a few paintings of the area.
 
When I got there it was a bit different that I’d expected, a lot different but one part that did not disappoint was a trip I did with Rick of howlingwolfexpeditions.com/ I’ll let his website speak for the area. Needless to say he was professional, a true gentlemen and made the whole week I spent up there worth it.

I’d never seen anything like New Post falls. Less than 1000 people visit the specific place I was a year and artistically it was that “Original” Canadian Landscape I was looking for. I made all sort of connection with people and lots of them were extremely interested in the history of the area.

I am not related to anyone from the area or ancestrally, I took photos when there for painting references, it ended up this was much appreciated for some who were. They discovered me online and asked for use of the photo to which I agreed it was before I'd in fact even started to do any paintings. You can find them here www.redriverancestry.ca
I was a wilderness artist, it was felt my art and style could depict the area artistically so I was invited to paint it, for me it was a step up in my art career I was no longer looking for those unique places to paint I was being invited to places to paint. 
 
 As time came and went we’d planned to do some big events ( Rick and I)  my original art and his wilderness adventure tours. I worked day and night to complete the paintings. We made some partnerships to promote the art and his tours but I had some life altering family health issues and made a choice to set my career aside temporarily to provide some care for a family member. I’ll never regret the choice I made but my career certainly came to a abrupt stop. By the time I was in the position to get back to it, all my art was, as I said in the previous blog, gone.
 
So now more than 10 years later, its like I just picked up this art again, it’s been gone for 7 years. But this adventure is long over.  Its hard for people to understand there was nothing I could do. It wasn’t within my control. The thing about art, particularly landscape art is it never gets old, people do, art doesn't.

In reality it turns into artists early work and it’s defined by a career. Later work, early work etc. The value is much the same, we all hear about artists early works selling for these astronomical prices but I assure you the artist themselves never saw that, probably never dreamed of it either. I won’t get started on that.
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I wanted to do a little blog on these specific paintings because I do hope one day I can find a permanent home for these paintings as a set, in a place where they deserve. I’m not hear to tell the story of the location; I went on real adventure a most beautiful piece of wilderness . It was Ricks story to tell. I hoped the art would help bring that story into another medium, in someway it did. The reason I painted the area is because its one of those Canadian areas of pristine wilderness few will ever see, it was “original”, I was invited to paint this area because of my artistic style of painting the Canadian Landscape. And that is the end. 

​ Something I find hard to explain but really should is; when I'm speaking of my art career why did I take a 7 year hiatus from my art career. I call it a hiatus because for some reason it sounds better than a pause, or took a break when the reason is I didn't take a break or a pause.  Its not because I need to or wanted to, in fact its everything I did need but I wasn’t able to. I moved several times and got close to opening my studio up again then I had to move again so it wasn’t possible. and during all that all my art was stolen. In reality I thought about for 7 years everyday and here's why.

Importantly - virtually and literally all my art was for lack of better words stolen.

It took me all that time to get it back and I got it back almost by complete fluke. I just got that call one day in November of 2022 and they said if you want it you have to come get in now! I’d tried almost every day for 7 years to get it back. Then just like that I got the call, now? like what do you mean now. Its been gone for 7 years, I have to rent a trailer, etc., etc.

So one cool day in December of 2022 a friend helped me load a trailer and I went to get it, by this time it was in the possession of a bailiff, it took about 20 minutes to get it after all that time. It was surreal.

It was literally being held for ransom all that time and I was unwilling to pay. I just couldn’t do that. Despite my desperation and efforts for my work to be returned to me there is no way I was going to pay someone who stole my work and was holding it for ransom. This is very very true.  I did everything anyone else would do if your property was stolen. I reported it to the police, I told people about it and for some reason it just didn’t seem to matter. That meant I didn’t matter.

Obviously with it being held for ransom it was valuable to someone. So it was different than stolen in some way, it was stolen but they said they'd give it back to me if I paid for my own art they stole, that was totally not going to happen, its actually called extortion. 
 
I couldn’t paint anymore; I’d been devalued as a human being. Being a artist who practiced my art as a career was of course a choice I made many years ago. It’s what I do best. But above that a artist is who I am at my core, even if you’d never heard my name or seen a painting I did there was never a time in my life that art wasn’t my center.

I did think about it everyday over those 7 years though I was devastated. I never gave up despite being told to move on, you’ll never get it back . I couldn't paint as I said I felt devalued not as a artist, I felt devalued as a human being.

So some of it was damaged when I got it back, some gone for good, however most of it was still just as I the last time I saw it. I guess being held for ransom they needed to keep it in good condition as if I had paid, which I never did they obviously knew I wouldn’t pay for damaged art. Of course it is more complicated than that, but not really either. When my art was returned or what was left of it, I slowly started to feel my artistic self come alive again, but I’ll never forget how could I.

Seven years is a long time, I don't even know where I could have been had that not happened and I don't think about it because there's no use. You can't undo the past and you can't make it into something it never was.

I  picked up where I left off all those years ago but I'm certainly not the same as I was, we're shaped by our experience and its one that had a profound impact. For sure! I believed some day I'd get my art back or I'd spend the rest of my life trying. That was never in doubt, and it came around full circle in some respects and I'm so thankful it did. So in July 2023 I was ready to open up my studio again and see if I could get back to painting, painting is probably more natural to me than anything else.

Shelley

This afternoon my dog and I set out on a search for painting ideas. Although I do paint plein air for me it's all about having fun and to be honest I think I’ve given away every plein air painting I’ve ever done except for a few and that was not what I was going to do today. I take photos I keep an archive of maybe’s and must paint.

Occasionally if I’m not too far away I will take a canvas with me and do a rough sketch, I mean rough and write in the colours I want to use and the feeling the area gave me. As said I paint all my large paintings in my studio so I need a record of what I’m going to paint.
 
In one of the paintings I recently completed I was staying in a little cabin and it was my view when I got up in the morning. It was peaceful, with dragonflies flying the field. It just had a feeling, it was warm and I felt like I had a good night's sleep which is something rare for me over the last several years. So I painted it “ edge of the meadow”. It goes like that for me, there’s an amazing place to paint all the time, but I need a feeling when I decide to paint something, a feeling I can hold on to and think and hope that goes into my work.
 
 I was in the studio this morning at about 5-5:30am, something like that working on a new painting, …sorry can't tell you about it yet. By this afternoon I need to get out and go for a little excursion to see if there is anything close by I'd like to paint sometime later.

We travelled out to the Silver Queen Mica mine.

My dog and I were the only living things in existence, well other than wildlife and there wasn't much of that either. We went for our walk. The mica glitters as you walk up past the old mine, ( mine no longer in service).  It was interesting but I didn’t find any place I’d paint. I guess that’s part of the thing about what I paint. I like to find a subject that is rare, unusual, not something to commonly found in someone else's painting. Keeping it "original". Probably why I love wilderness painting so much. I could visit numerous areas before I find that specific area or scene with a feeling and uniqueness that I want to paint. So today wasn’t a wasted trip at all and it was very interesting. I have a couple of maybe I might paint that later photos archived. Sometime when we’re all sick of snow and cold and longing for spring and summer again. I almost felt like a hobbit was going to walk out of this doorway today...