Catch up and highlights

Back home in Pouch Cove now, after what felt like a very quick trip to Toronto and to my parents place in rural Ontario. I was shortlisted for the RBC painting competition and traveled to Toronto and Moncton, New Brunswick to attend receptions. It was a great trip; met a lot of wonderful people and had a bit of time to visit with friends in Toronto, there were many people I wanted to see but ran out of time. The other artists on the short list were a solid group of painters; I feel honored to have been included.
While in Toronto I gave a talk to the Painting thesis students at OCAD; I was nervous but I think it went okay. One student asked me what piece of advice I would give to those about to graduate and I think I said something like keep painting as your priority if you are really serious about it because "life" will always try to get in the way. What I should have also said was: to find inspiration in your other passions in life, sounds like common sense but, as an artist one often struggles with 'what do i paint?'. After school is done and a few years go by it is sometimes hard to figure that out; I have struggled with that question myself at times. The way out for me was to look closely at the things that I love and incorporate that into my work. Its those things that you will find in these pages.

This tree in Moncton had many varieties of lichen happily co-existing and looking gorgeous in their subtle colours.

Moncton has this huge pink silty river running through it that fascinates me; the locals I spoke with thought it was just a big muddy river, but I loved watching the patterns on the surface of the water as the tide coming in collided with the flow of the river.

I had an afternoon before my flight home so I went to Kouchibouguac National Park; gorgeous warm day, wide sand beaches, and almost no one there but me! It was pretty perfect.



Here is my flight out of Moncton at sunset, that is the river I was walking along.

Clouds coming into the Bay of Fundy. More soon.