The real and the abstract

This past fall I took an art class at the Vancouver Island School of Art taught by a wonderful instructor named Barrie Szekely. We met for three hours on Thursday afternoons for 12 weeks and it pushed my painting in some very different directions by incorporating "the real" into abstract paintings.

Here's some of what came out of this class.

Text abstracted

These are a couple sections of a large painting using text in an abstract way.

Moving beyond the grid

This assignment was to incorporate a grid with something realistic. I chose an orange.

Incorporating something real into your painting.

I chose to use some rotted wood found on the forest floor and cut it into slices. I was trying for a stream in the forest effect.

For this one we had to create some kind of form on which to paint abstractly.  It just got weirder and weirder--but it was fun painting the sticks and manipulating them in 3D.

One of the assignments was to use dried paint to create a painting or an art piece. Some of the participants did sculptures from dried paint by I did this. It's a poor quality image of the painting I did using the wax paper I'd been using on my palette tray.


Our final assignment was to create a series incorporating the real and abstract.  I decided to try to incorporate figurative work into an abstract format. It took me in a totally different direction, never having painted figures before.  I enjoyed doing it but I'm not sure if I'd follow up on much that I explored--except maybe for the second assignment with the grid and the realistic objects.

What I really enjoyed was seeing examples of art by artists I had never heard of before and pushing my boundaries--as well as meeting a bunch of painters, both young and older (like me). It was an interesting experience.

2018 in pictures

2018 was a year of travel and adventure. We went on four trips in the spring.

In January we headed to Mexico to get some heat. And we sure got it. It was sultry in Zijuatanejo but the water was lovely and so were the sunsets
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In February we left the Mexican coast and took a little trip up to the cities in the mountains of Southern Mexico. Urapan, Patzcuaro and Morelia were wonderful places to explore.

Courtyard in Urapan

Patzcuaro has the most lovely stone and adobe walls.

Back at home in March we just had time to get our house and garden in order before we headed off on a week-long circle tour of Desolation Sound, visiting our friend Sue on in Roberts Creek and driving to Powell River and taking the ferry back to Comox before heading home. A very different ocean from southern Mexico.

In April we headed off for a three-week home exchange in the south of France. This was done through home exchanges with two French families. Both of them had stayed in our home the previous year. We spent a week in Albi, a medieval city built from soft pink brick. We spent days driving to small villages around the area, each different and lovely.

The countryside was beautiful.

The next two weeks we spent in Narbonne and drove to seaside villages and abbeys among other places. Again we were blown away by the beauty and the friendliness of the people. I took literally thousands of photos. Here are a few.

Another very different aspect of the ocean. I'll end with this lovely dog looking out the window of his home in one of the villages. Isn't he sweet?

The rest of the year we stayed home and spent the summer and the fall enjoying the life on Vancouver Island. What a beautiful place we live in.

Saturna's East point above, and Todd Inlet to the left.. Below are hostas from my garden and floating leaves at Goldstream Park, and sun on an Arbutus tree taken with my new camera.

In Victoria the old Johnston Street bridge closed and the new one opened to great fanfare.

We enjoyed the back courtyard and shopped for vegetables at local markets.

Yukon Street continued to look lovely

And the Arbutus Unedo put on its display for Christmas. Best wishes to all for a happy and healthy 2018.