2010 Updates

So another Christmas and new years has come and gone. David and I had our first Christmas dinner at our home. We wanted to give mom a treat so we had her and four friends over for dinner. It was a difficult Christmas for both mom and I since dad’s death and I can’t help but feel sad that our first Christmas dinner in our home was without him. I have to admit that it is strange to celebrate Christmas with out my dad it was such an important time of your for him but we still managed to have fun and that is what he would want us to do. Mom helped me prepare dinner so it was a busy and distracted day. Even though it is supposed to be a time for celebration and good cheer, it seems that the festive holiday season has a tendency to remind us of the ones we have lost. All I can hope for is that my father was with us in spirit.

I don’t care for traditional turkey and bread stuffing all that much. I will eat it if someone serves it but I won’t prepare it myself so for dinner I served Cornish hens with wild rice stuffing, sweet potatoes and home made cranberry sauce that mom made. Our friend Malcolm brought over a green bean and almond dish that was awesome and Gwen and Dave brought over some home made wine yum! After dinner we sat around and had a few drinks and visited we all had a great deal of fun. Friends are the family that you choose!

On Boxing Day David and I took down our small fiber optic Christmas tree. This will be the last time I use that tree with dad gone I feel the need to create a new tradition so this year I am going to do a Nightmare Before Christmas theme for my new tree. We picked up a three-foot tree at Walmart in Cranbrook. I will spray paint it black and use orange lights on it. Since I am the queen of Halloween and pretty much celebrate it all year round all my friends thought that this was a great idea and a nice way for me to incorporate my favorite holiday with Christmas. I will decorate the tree with Halloween themed items; I think it will look great! If I have time I will try to create a Tim Burton-esque village to place under the tree! We will see how busy I am this year.

Once we got all the Christmas items packed away for another year we headed over to our friends Malcolm and Jon’s place for their annual Boxing Day party. I have to admit that we all over indulged that day but hey that’s what this time of year is for! The rest of the week before new years it was pretty quiet we needed to recuperate. We were invited to a party on new years eve that we had every intention of attending, hot tub outside and everything but when the day came we were just too burned out and decided to have a romantic evening at home instead. You know this was equally as fun as going to the party and we are going to get together with Rae another time! Some hot spiced wine, my sweetie and our four cats, what a great way to bring in the New Year. When David and I don’t go anywhere for New Years it is our tradition to make hot spiced wine. If we weren’t so tired we would have had a fire in our wood stove in the back yard.

I didn’t manage to get my three feet by five foot acrylic painting of Cat City finished until after the New Year but that’s ok. That’s the nice thing about being an artist you don’t have to have deadlines after all you can’t force creativity it must flow. This is one reason why I am not to fond of doing commissioned work unless they give me total artistic license which is what I usually get when I am commissioned to do a piece. So Cat City is my first painting of 2010. It was difficult for me to work on Cat City. Originally it started off as another painting called Mistress Catarina, which was going to be a painting of a gypsy fortune-telling cat sitting in front of her table with a crystal ball and her tarot cards. I had started the painting before my dad’s death. I remember showing it to him and he was looking forward do seeing it when it was finished. He was a big fan of my cat paintings and drawings. After he was killed I tried to finish the painting but couldn’t it was just far too painful so it just sat there in my studio for almost a year unfinished and taking up room. Finally I covered the original painting in black to prepare the canvas for a new painting. It took me a while to know what I was going to paint I just wasn’t sure but that is the way it works for me with my art. I don’t plan the drawing or painting it has to come to me. The idea of a cat filled city came to me and I was able to complete the canvas which now proudly hangs in my gallery. I think my dad would have liked it.

Now I have to focus on getting the book illustrations done, these will all be in pencil, which is my favorite medium. I haven’t worked with pencil for a while so it will be a nice change. Many of you who read my blogs know of my grandpa John’s stories and that I am publishing and illustrating them. As you know for many reasons I have had to put this project on the back burner over the past two years but it will be published this year for sure come hell or high water. I have about eight more illustrations to do. My friend Louanne who is a professor of writing and the author of several books will be proof reading the stories for me I am so honored to have her give me a hand with this project. I am happy to announce that the German version of grandpa’s book is now in print so I am now officially a published illustrator! This title will be a wonderful addition to my resume! Also and most important my grandpa’s dream of having his stories published has finally come to fruition. So now the family is pressing me to get the English version finished.

As many of you know after my father was killed I couldn’t do much for a bout a year. It is amazing how his death stole the creativity from me as well as a few other things. I tried to be creative that year but it just wasn’t in me and I needed to mourn his loss. Now it is time to move forward I know that is what my dad would want. He would say,” Little one you have to get back in there and start creating and make me proud!” So this year my goal is to focus on doing more art work in fact my new years resolution and my promise to myself, my husband David and dear friend Jon, is to spend at least two hours a day in the studio. I really need to produce more art and it is going to be a long winter! Everyone around here knows my work and who I am so I need to expand the exposure that my art gets by traveling to cities such as Calgary or tourist areas like Banff and try to find a market for my work there. It would be nice to go to Calgary this year for fun instead of for appointments. David and I worked hard building the studio and gallery and it is beautiful so we also want to promote our business so we will start to find ways to increase the amount of traffic that comes to our gallery and my website. Also my poor website is very dated so I have a big job ahead of me updating that.

Is it my imagination or are the days starting to get noticeably longer? As much as I love the nighttime I appreciate the return of longer days! Oh how I long for a warm summer night and a good thunderstorm! At this time of year while others our out skiing, snow shoeing, skating and such I spend my day longing for warmer weather which makes for a very long a tedious winter. I guess David and I will have to start trying to find ways to enjoy winter. Maybe taking up cross-country skiing or snowshoeing would be fun and a great way to get some exorcise out doors? I workout in the house with free weights and on my treadmill but it would be much nicer to get fresh air. When I was in high school our physical education class gave us skiing lessons in Fernie. It was fun but with my severe visual impairment down hill skiing was quite a challenge I could only go so fast and really had to watch out for others. I suppose if I had kept up with it I would have improved and it would be more enjoyable. I did meet my best friend Tracey there and we had a lot of fun together and are still the best of friends.

One good way to get outside and enjoy the winter weather is to soak in a hot spring and that is exactly what we did last week. Malcolm and Jon took David and I out to Ainsworth Hot Springs and for lunch, oh what a treat that was! It is about an hour and a half drive along Kootenay Lake and I must say that it was beautiful! Even though the winding roads are a bit treacherous to drive on the lake road is breath taking in the winter. Even though I have live here for about twenty-four years, every time I take the thirty-five minute ferry ride across kootenay Lake I feel like a tourist. It was a sunny cold day and we sat in the hot springs for about four hours! David has a bit of time off work so we were able to go in the middle of the week so there was practically no one there. There is also a cave that you can sit in that is much hotter then the main pool and when the heat gets overwhelming you can take a dip in the ice cold pool which come straight out of the mountain. Jon, David and I dipped in it a few times. They say that it is supposed to be very good for you. Well who ever “they” are obviously haven’t done this because it was bloody cold!!! Needless to say that night we all had a great nights sleep! NOW that’s the perfect way to spend a winter out side in my opinion!

Well folks I am off to the studio to go and work on my latest illustration for grandpa’s book so bye for now and may 2010 be a fantastic year for each and every one of you!