In the news

We still have no electricity - or heat! - since 1400 on Wednesday (April 5), due to the latest Montréal ice storm ...
With a windchill below the freezing point!
But I couldn't bear another day without my watercolours, now that the sun has finally come back out - and it's light enough to paint once again.
So I'm sitting in the sunniest spot in my home, wearing my outdoor sports snowshoeing clothes, and wrapped in a sleeping bag for extra warmth.
Sitting, for extra heat, so I'm using a table rather than an easel.

It feels fantastic to be mixing pigment on paper again, but I'm still hoping our heat and electricity will be back soon.
If you're also experiencing this power outage - Good luck & keep safe. If not, have a cup of coffee or tea - for me!

Something cool! I took a 3D printing workshop last weekend, and then designed a 3D "creature" based on one of my recent paintings.
This watercolour was conceived to express something about the 1 in 5 Canadians living with chronic pain - as part of one of my upcoming pain patient advocacy activities (more on that coming up soon, by next week!)...
The background represents flames for the burning neuropathic pain of my rare disease, CRPS (Complex Regional Pain Syndrome). The orange "creature" is someone like me - one in five people - living with a persistent pain condition.
It was fun to see tthis little "creature" from my 2D painting come to life as a 3D object! Stay tuned for more information about the pain awareness activity for which I'd created the original painting.

My award-winning local library, part of the City of Montréal's large network of libraries, houses something called a MakerSpace.

This provides publicly-accessible creativity tools within a walled-off area of the library, including sewing machines, computers with design software, scanners, 3D printers, and more.

Today I had some fun in the MakerSpace, taking an introductory-level 3D printing workshop. At the end of the workshop, all participants were invited to 'play' with the software to design... anything we wanted to.

I opted to design a 3D version of an imaginary creature, from one of my recent watercolours. It's a semi-abstract painting for one of my upcoming chronic pain and CRPS rare disease awareness activities.

The MakerSpace staff run the 3D printing jobs overnight, so I should get my little 3D-printed model sometime this week. Once I've received it, I'll share a photo of it, alongside the painting that inspired it.

This was lovely timing!
One of my group art exhibitions wrapped up yesterday, for the 225th anniversary of the Trestler House historic site, so I'm very pleased to have just received the poster for my next group art show.
The Vernissage - or opening night - will take place on Saturday April 1, from 1900 to 2100 ET, at the Pierrefonds Cultural Centre in Montréal. If you're in the area, please feel free to stop by and say Hi.
And, by the way, this is not an April Fool's Day joke!
The Spring Show of the Artists' Circle of the West Island will run from March 28 through April 14, 2023 .
This art show is free and open to the public, and will feature a wide range of artistic styles and mediums from more than thirty artists based in Montréal's West Island area.
Three of my watercolours will be on display, all paintings of flowers this time around - as my tribute to springtime.
The original artworks to be displayed, all created by members of this community art group, will include acrylic, mixed media, oil, and watercolour paintings.
There is truly something for everyone at our exhibitions.

Address:
Pierrefonds Cultural Centre, Lower level
13850 Gouin Blvd West, near the Pierrefonds Library
Montréal, Québec

Opening Hours, March 28-April 14, 2023:
- Weekdays 1400 - 2000
- Weekends noon-1600
* Closed: Friday April 7 & Monday April 10, 2023

If you take a close look at the bottom right side of this poster, you might recognize one of the artworks; the close-up watercolour view of a rose, that I mentioned in last week's post.

Do you like flowers? The ones that I most love to paint are wildflowers, and the perennial almost-wild flowering plants that can survive our harsh Montréal winters.
My own rather wild flower gardens are a source of constant joy and inspiration, when they're not buried under 3 feet (1 metre) of snow as is the case today!
So when my sweetheart gave me a bouquet of cut flowers recently, for an anniversary, I took plenty of photos and practiced painting them from "live models".
The lovely thing about painting these was that they didn't move and sway, in the wind, the way the flowers do when I'm plein-air painting - painting outdoors.
And while I was taking these photos, I suddenly realized that I'd never before tried to paint a rose with my watercolours.
This is my first attempt at a rose, and I chose a very detailed or 'macro' view - with very little foliage - as I wanted to try to understand how the petals were organized and how some of their edges folded outwards.
I also loved how the baby's breath was cradling the edge of the rose, and had found its way between some petals.

Then I started to paint another view of the same rose, a bit later in the week, after the petals had fully opened and the bloom was starting to fade away. The purple flowers had already died off, leaving only the  greying baby's breath.
This time I painted the rose from above, and included much more of the foliage in my photo and my painting.
You can see how much the colour has paled in this one, although there is still that one darker petal off to the left - which will hopefully add to the feeling of the rose quietly fading away...

My first two paintings of roses, with two very different yet quite detailed perspectives.
I definitely prefer the second one, but the folks in my art groups mostly prefer the first one - possibly because it's not a common view of a rose.
Either way, thanks so much for stopping by!

For International Women's Day this year I'll be doing something a bit different – particularly for an emerging artist and chronic pain patient, I think. This afternoon I'll be teaching a full 2-hour university class on the Limbic System, for a course called "Brain & Behaviour". I'll be doing this as a Patient Partner, from home, as a volunteer.

This speaking invitation was from a professor and researcher who's also a woman, and a firm believer in STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) for girls and women. My focus will be on teaching these future healthcare professionals about chronic pain, which predominantly affects women. And veterans, a point that I'll definitely highlight as a former Air Force reserve officer. 

A few weeks ago I taught another class for this professor, for her course on "Perception & the Brain". It went so well that she and her students convinced me to come back, to teach a class for her second course.

That first 2-hour talk was for final-year students, and I presented on "Perception & Chronic Pain"; not only the patients' perceptions, but also how pain conditions are viewed by healthcare professionals.

My goal was to teach these health-sciences students not to dismiss, disregard, or disrespect their future chronic pain patients, because that’s something that still happens today. 

My talk this afternoon will be on the body’s Limbic System, and how it's involved in our experiences of pain and chronic pain. I’ll also touch on its’ role in anxiety, depression, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), stress, serious trauma, vicarious trauma, and more. What exactly does the limbic system do?

“Processing of emotions, positive or negative, has long been attributed to the brain’s limbic system, which is nestled in the inner part of our brain and consists of at least a dozen smaller structures… the limbic system also enables us to sense and react to our environment through pain.

Like physical pain, emotions have evolutionary importance.

For instance, fear helps us avoid danger... emotions are powerful motivators of our actions and reinforce behaviors that help” ensure our survival.

[Emily Orwell; When Everything Hurts. Science in the News Boston (SITN); Harvard Graduate School, 02 Nov 2018.] 

Perhaps the most important of these brain structures, for my presentation at least, are the amygdala, hippocampus, and hypothalamus, along with the prefrontal cortex which helps us process or control some of our emotions and reactions.

There are tools and techniques that can help us influence our limbic systems to a certain extent, such as art practice and creativity, breathing exercises, mindful meditation, physical activity, visualization, etc.

So hopefully my Women's Day activity will have a positive impact at some future point, for other women living with persistent pain – or even with my own disease; Complex Regional Pain Syndrome or CRPS, formerly called Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy or RSD. 

My motto is “Art Despite Pain”, because my art practice is heavily intertwined with my chronic pain awareness and outreach activities. This is a good example, as I’ll be discussing the benefits of artistic and creative practices on the limbic system – on the brain – for managing chronic pain and other conditions.

On that note, I’ll wish you a happy and inspiring International Womens’ Day. And, as I'll say to the students today for attending the class, and to the professor for inviting me as a guest speaker: "Thank You", for taking the time to stop by the website.

This weekend I participated in an art workshop in England, via ZOOM. "Virtual Owls" was hosted by Art Safari, the group of artists with whom I first picked up a paintbrush two years ago.
Our instructor was British artist Alice Angus, known for her quick and lively plein-air (outdoor) sketches. Her work expresses the movement of wildlife, something that I've struggled to do.
This workshop was about sketching owls - including from "live-cam" video feeds - rather than creating detailed paintings, and I learned even more than I expected to.
We began the first day by studying owl anatomy, creating pencil sketches of the skeletons and skulls of these magnificent raptors.
That gave our small group a solid foundation for understanding how owls move, the true length of the legs which are so often hidden by masses of feathers, and much more.
From that we progressed to pencil or charcoal sketches of owls, adding colour only at the end of that first session.
Day Two of the workshop began with an exploration of mark-making, finding different ways to rapidly create an impression of feathers or movement.
By the time that we progressed to sketching owls from "live-cam" video images, I had a better grasp of how owls move - whether flying or roosting - which was very helpful.
This two-day workshop led to what I view as a real improvement in my owl sketches, so I'm looking forward to getting out and sketching some owls en plein-air... once our Montréal weather warms up a bit.
In the meantime, I'm sharing my favourite sketch from this weekend's workshop; a sleepy owl who seemed to be winking at us from the live video-feed.

In the weekly virtual watercolour painting classes that I've been taking, we learn at least one different technique or challenge each week.
Then every second or third week each student in this intermediate-advanced class email one painting per weekly challenge to our instructor.
She then provides her feedback and suggestions, called a "critique" in art circles.
These critiques are very very helpful, particularly when learning a new technique.
These are the some of the paintings that I've just submitted for critique later this week, all in very different styles.
These were all painted from my own photos, with some in-my-mind editing to improve the compositions; raising the height of mountains, moving some buildings, changing the colour of a barn to that of a prettier one a bit further down the road...
Although I ensured that my photos were somewhat similar to the sample photos provided by our instructor, I prefer to paint from my own references or photographs.
The watercolor below is from an area of old farms, just a thirty-minute drive from my home.
In this one, my challenge was to "use a straight road to show perspective, with one midground + several distant background buildings".

Next, in a completely different style, is an abandoned and about-to-implode barn.
I ride past this one on my bicycle almost every day during Montréal's warmer months, and have been watching the bulge in its side wall grow from year to year.
The goal for this painting was to "create an impression of texture on a wood surface, in a close-up or from-below perspective". And to paint darker than my usual style, as well.

I'm curious to see what my instructor will have to say in her critique of these two watercolours, and expect to learn as much from her comments as I did from painting these.
Given that I couldn't even draw a stick figure - let one a building - when I began learning to paint just two years ago, I'm quite pleased with these two farmland watercolours.

This afternoon I attended an absolutely fantastic virtual art and exploration talk by David McEown, for the first "Speaker Series" event of this year presented by the Canadian Society for Painters in Watercolour (CSPWC).
His presentation - "A Walk in the Wild Blue Yonder" -  included several on-site video segments which he narrated, sharing his up-close yet respectful guided adventures with wildlife.
These included bears - even Spirit Bears and polar bears - in Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest, in Russia, and elsewhere.
Penguins, walruses, whales, and other wildlife in Antarctica, calving icebergs in the Arctic, skiing to the North Pole...

Not only a master watercolour artist, David McEown is also a member of the Explorers Club and is a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.
And an enthralling presenter!
I was fortunate to have the opportunity to take a virtual watercolour workshop with David last November, four Saturday afternoon sessions of 3-4 hours each, and to see how he layers his work with a limited palette - and no environmentally-unfriendly cadmium pigments.
A truly inspirational contemporary Canadian artist.
For more information about David, visit www.davidmceown.com.

I've just finished this little watercolour painting of the Pont Royal (Royal Bridge) in Paris, from a photo I took almost twenty years ago, and am quite pleased with the result.
For landscape or cityscape scenes in particular I adore both the warm pink light of dawn and the cooler mauves and blues of dusk.
So the light of this sunrise scene intrigued me, because of the contrast of 'warm' and 'cool' tones within the same area.
The sky above the bridge was a warm pink, while the bridge itself was bathed in the much cooler blues being reflected by the blue-grey water of the river.
Adding to this atmospheric feeling, each of the distant buildings had a a cool mauve or purple tinge on its shaded sides with a warmer tone where it was lit by the rising sun.
I hope you enjoy it!