Sources of Inspiration

Photo by Karen Wardle 2011

The Secrets of the Snow Queen: An Eco Tale

I have illustrated my first publication!  Titled The Secrets of the Snow Queen, An Eco Tale written by Ruth Asher. This Eco Tale invites the reader into a fairy tale setting, including an evil queen, a captured child, a quest, talking animals, even a goofy gargoyle. At its heart, however, is a contemporary issue about living harmoniously with plants that supply us with food, animals at risk, and one another.  Big kids and little kids might enjoy receiving a copy of The Secrets of the Snow Queen.

The book is available for purchase at McNally Robinson and online at amazon.com as an ebook.

Painterly Challenge

Why not paint with acrylics instead of oils?  Acrylics have several advantages.  They are water soluble and there are lots of mediums available that can help make acrylic paint imitate oils.  Moreover there are mediums that can allow an artist to paint with thick heavy impasto with very low risk of cracking as it dries and enables an artist to paint quickly as acrylics dry very fast.

Oil paint on the other hand can be tricky.  You are required to paint in layers allowing each to dry as you proceed.  The use of underpainting white, thinner, and wingel expedites this process by speeding drying time.  However you are still required to allow for drying time before putting one colour over another or you risk making a muddy mess of your colours.  Just to make it even more challenging as a painting dries oil will rise to the surface making it difficult for the next layer of paints to bind to the surface.  If you use too much oil mixed in with pigment you can lower the tone of the colour or impede the paints ability to bind while not enough oil will do the same.  The ready availability of colours in tubes along with various mediums take much of the guess work out of oil painting but knowing when to stop painting is important to a successful painting

Interrogate Space, Oil on canvas, 2009: Private Collection

The Jar

The things people throw away become part of a microcosm growing and/or decaying, being consumed and consuming. Each piece of detritus is the seed of change an evolutionary chink in our planet. The full potential of these plantings has yet to be realized. There is a cosmology of destruction and growth contained within an environment encapsulated. The glass jar will never decompose but the metal lid slowly oxidizes rusting away as chunks fall into and around. Once the air penetrates the semi-opaque contents are warmed by the sun slowly turning the jelly yellow-brown, releasing the unctuous aroma of petroleum within. In 50 years the soft pvc lining on the underside of the lid begins to decay perhaps cracking becoming brittle, taking over 450 years to breakdown. The glass jar may at some point be crushed melding container and contents with the mulch of rotted wood, leaves and dirt. Various bugs, seeds, plantlife unfortunate enough to fall into the jar become encased in the petroleum become part of the soup of jelly crushed glass, plastic and mulch.

The Best View

The best view can come from visiting the past or in this case sites laden with the past.  Seeing something old like this can give a fresh perspective.  What we leave behind becomes embedded in the landscape.  It becomes part of the landscape around us.

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Ordinariness and Inspiration

I took a snap as we were passing by mostly because something about the features drew my eye. The dull grey sky flattens the light and the ethereal quality of this image is enhanced by drawn and heavy clouds suspended over twin humps of forest in the distance. Railway lines, phone and hydro lines trace the boundaries of wilderness and act as familiar markers delineating the flatness of prairie.

Robert Kroetsch writes in Seed Catalogue of the indelible imagery of the Canadian landscape. His prairies are spare dry and dusty boned; the seeds of growth and the patterns of prairie life are unearthed touching upon a place that dominates as it nurtures. His poetry recalls the plainness of the prairies much like the place in this photograph. To me Kroetsch's poems drum a message of Canadian prairie and prairie living that inspires a host of familiar memories and images from the countryside I grew up in.  When you look at something that is so familiar its familiarity makes it ordinary you have to make an effort to appreciate the beauty.  To really see what makes a place remarkable you need to recognize its power, its ability to unite us and invoke a sense of the sacred.  This is what inspires me to paint.

This image is from a most interesting site, an abandoned bottling factory. A blue corrugated steel building with foundations thrusting out of the ground, the place is littered with machine parts, building materials and mattresses. This image is a porthole on a large steel tank behind the building. I can't say if I took the picture or I got my cohort (my husband) to take it but the reflection is perfect.

I find this site interesting because so much effort must have originally gone into planning and building this. Now lying to waste it holds significance in its slow decline. Once a place of industry now a space recombining, it is no longer exclusively nature made or human made.