Two different artists in one day

The other day I got to see some new paintings by two artists who are a big part of my life: Ben Fox and Bill Porteous. They paint very differently; Ben is a landscape painter and Bill does abstracts. But they are both exceptional painters whose work is to my mind just gorgeous.

First, look at Ben's work. He spent the summer and fall up in Haida Gwaii and came back with some beautiful work that captures the serene beauty of these islands off the north coast of BC.

This is Ben standing in front of two paintings of the deep woods. You can see they're quite large paintings and they really reflect the sense of the west coast landscape. I visited the North Island in the early '70s and seeing these paintings was like being transported back to that magical place.

We got to visit his studio (the living room of his apartment) where he had a showing and sold three paintings in one day. Congratulations Ben.

The same evening we attended the opening of Bill's annual show. Bill has been doing abstract paintings for forty years and is quite well known in Victoria. He is also the mentor to those of us in the Wednesday Art Group.  He doesn't bring his paintings to our group so I hadn't seen these works before.  These first three are smaller works 16 inches wide.  

And this one is larger about two by three feet.

Bill's work uses colour in a really gorgeous way. Looking at his paintings makes me want to run back home and start painting. (Although I won't be able to do that until we get back from Mexico in March).

Can you see why I like these paintings so much?

If I'd had time I would have done a separate post for each of these painters because their work is quite different.  But Christmas approaches and I'm not finding much time to blog.  On December 26th we will go into serious departure mode, packing and organizing our house for the dog and house sitter who is arriving on December 30th.