writings

Throughout these past few months of isolation there has been a return to a subject dear to my heart in my paintings, the forest. Perhaps I've never really left, but there have been creative side roads along the way which have added a new dimension to the subject. Earlier forms that were becoming completely abstracted are now leaning into more recognizable shapes. At least to me! Can you find the pine cones in the painting above? 

Today, a new exhibition Dimensions of Colour, opens at Winchester Galleries which... cont'd.

Opening next week Winchester Galleries will have an exhibition of my new work (see the collection here) which will coincide with the Oak Bay Gallery Walk in Victoria. With these digital prints of flowers I’m interested in the similarity between sentient beings and humans, an exploration of their energy, life, transformation. I try to capture their quiet joy...      cont'd.

re.ani.mate opens this Friday at Showcase Gallery!  Although I’ve shown in the gallery before, I’m pretty excited that for the first time the Salt Spring Arts Council has given me this opportunity to show some of the mixed media work and idea-generation that's been happening in my studio. Link to Driftwood newspaper article on the exhibiton click here.

Combining paint with drawing and photography...      cont'd

I’m excited to be part of the group exhibition of southern Gulf Islands artists opening this Easter weekend at Mahon Hall on Salt Spring Island.  Last fall we were invited to produce a piece in tribute to a creative person who has influenced our personal work. H o m a g e, curated by Patrick McCallum, will showcase... 

H o m a g e    

exhibition opens  -  F r i d a y   A p r i l  1 9 - A p r i l   2 8   2 0 1 9
artist's opening  -    F r i d a y   A p r i l  1 9    6 - 9  p m

Recently I was telling a friend that I had little new to write about on my website writings page. She commented “… a lot of people would find the story you’ve just been telling me really interesting”. Our dialogue continued about whether everything on the website had to do with art or just life. I’ll share the story and you can decide...

Greetings as we begin the New Year!
January's darker, blustery days gives me permission to sit and read scribbled notes and creative ideas jotted down over the past months. Is there something worthwhile buried in that journal I might explore or did that trickster of an idea only seem brilliant in the moment? From there I find myself mulling over the impact of changes in the art world. When we look back on 2017 I think it will be...

Living beside this massive ocean, walking it’s shores, seeing light transform colour in the sea, smelling the salt air, watching winds gust across tidal waves, peering at the tiniest Limpet on the beach, feeling the... 

Had a great time over the weekend at the opening of Pod Contemporary's 'Nueseam' show on Salt Spring Island. Two of my mixed media pieces are at the bottom of this photo. Or get close up info here http://barbraedwards.com/works-on-paper

Drop by if you get a chance, it's a beautifully curated show.  On View till  July  8th.

A while back I read a tiny gem of a book by filmmaker David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish.  His writing at first seemed deceptively childlike in its simplicity, but I realized that the way it’s written offers time to digest his unique thinking process. His famous ‘weird’ perspective, along with comments about how he ‘captures ideas’ is stimulating reading. It reminded me of classes at Ryerson University where I studied motion pictures in first year before...

I’m excitedly packing art gear for a four- week self-directed residency at Blue Horse Gallery on Salt Spring Island.

'R o a d  T r i p:  a  p a p e r   t r a i l'

Exhibition Opens  -  T u e s d a y   J u n e   7 -  J u n e  3 0

Artist's reception   -   S a t u r d a y   J u n e   11   2:00 - 4:00   Upper Gallery
If you can, drop by the gallery. It would be great to see you!

I pack light in terms of creative materials when I travel... 

A high clerestory window in my bedroom provides a view of tall fir trees. Hanging on to moss covered bluffs, winter winds often buffet these trees every which way. I’ve written in past posts about my early morning thought process that happens before the rest of the world wakes up and I rush headlong into my day. For the past couple of years, as I lay awake and watch one group of branches – they’ve become the perfect, huge, shape of a rabbit’s head. Flopping ears and talking mouth. I’ve become quite attached to the creature. As the head moves I imagine how I’d draw this angle or that. Lately things have changed; branches have grown or fallen off. I’ve been forcing that rabbit head to remain but no, it’s pretty well history. My history. Yesterday morning when I opened one eye…

Winchester Galleries' show 'The Winter Exhibition, An Exquisite Collection of Small Works' has just opened. In the Dream of Dawn is one of my watercolour/mixed media paintings in the show. Drop by when you're out doing your holiday shopping, it's a treat of a gallery.

November 28 - December 23, 2015

view on line catalogue here        purchase the print verision

Creating with Fiona Duthie this past year on our two shows has been one of pushing individual boundaries. Our conversations were most often about making. Although we are image-makers using completely different mediums, the similarities in what we were both saying helped us pull together a cohesive story that became SHIFT. Concepts tumbled out from the inspiration of each other’s work, in fact there were more ideas than...

Reading Susan Cain’s book "Quiet  The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking"  I wondered about how the role of personality or mood shapes my own paintings. Also, how colour itself presents a painting to the world...

This morning offered a pale pink and yellow hint of the day as I lay in bed mentally rummaging through images. Rummaging and reading happens when I want to change subject matter or how I’ll depict it. This past winter I was spending more time than I’d like to admit at the ‘lost’ stage in the studio. I’d show up daily and paint through the dark questions. Then often paint ‘over them’. (there’s history under all those layers!) Now notes, articles and scribbles in journals lay around the studio. Colour-combo swatches that sing to me are pinned on the walls. New music is playing… I’m looking at paintings as they evolved over this past year. I can see traces of my intentions already appearing in each painting.

So what’s inspiring me right now?

On Easter Weekend I'm participating in a new exhibition with four other artists who also explore abstraction in paint, wax or clay. Four painters and a potter!
Easter is the kick off for everything art-related on Salt Spring Island, BC, one of North America's most highly regarded small arts communities.

Dates and times below...with more on the tour here:

http://www.saltspringeasterarttour.com/

Avenue Magazine's ad for my two-person exhibition with landscape artist Micheal Thiesson at Bugera Matheson Gallery, in Edmonton.

The show launches the gallery's spring season, and is my debut at the gallery. I'll be in Edmonton at the opening...click read more for times.

February 28 - March 14 

This upcoming ad in gallerieswest magazine features the group show 'Every Room With A View', January 1st at Bugera Matheson Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta. (click 'read more' below to see full ad)

Here is what's happening at Edmonton's Gallery Walk this weekend.  

http://artrubicon.com/10853/save-date-edmontons-fall-gallery-walk-oct-18-19/

The serene gallery space at Green Raven on Salt Spring Island is where a small paper trail of my watercolours is now showing. I enjoy working in this medium along with gouache, ink, conté…whatever ends up on the paper. Afterwards I think there is...

Driftwood Newspaper Article on the exhibition SHIFT exploring layers of perception.

http://gulfislandsdriftwood.com/entertainment/marriage-forms-exhibit/#.U...

Seems to be a 'two for one' month for those of you who receive my newsletters. I have this overwhelming need to wrap some extra words around the thought process behind the pieces in my new exhibition SHIFT - exploring layers of perception. There has been debate forever about whether an artist needs to say anything at all about their work, or just let people look and decide for themselves. Artist’s are definitely on either side of the fence on this one.  Bear with me this time...

My sincere thanks to Herbalist and Homepathic doctor Seraphina Capranos for posting this article about my interest in all things herbal on a recent blog. Seraphina is known throughout BC and beyond for her wisdom of herbal health-healing. My love of the plant world has expanded through her teachings. Those of you who know my paintings likely see

Returning from eastern Canada, I've just piled my memories on the table and am sorting through them. This past winter I hit the proverbial artist’s ‘block’. I don’t remember ever having a block that lasted that long. It’s a soul-searching experience for an artist. I brought it on myself. There was a long list of what I wanted to achieve in the coming year as an artist. This was not about ‘maybe’s’ but ‘I will achieve’ this and that… fair enough until the FREEZE. Nothing was happening in the studio. Colours, canvases, brushes, sketches, photographs - nothing felt right. 

At the beginning of each school year there was always the excited anticipation of new books and scribblers. The paper seemed too perfect, too fresh to fill immediately with words. Then we plunged in and soon the scribblers were filled with assignments. The act of painting has that similar anticipation as I face the white canvas, visualizing for a heartbeat what will appear, then letting go as the brush touches surface. I do a lot of thinking in the studio, not so much when I paint but it’s more to do with “showing up at the page”. My creative brain knows as I step through the door...

I just returned from seeing KIMSOOJA Unfolding at the Vancouver Art Gallery. This is the first retrospective of the thirty year career of the Korean-born, Paris/NY-based artist. I wasn’t expecting the emotional response I had to the exhibition. It was a tactile, intelligent, visually explosive presentation of her concepts.

The chaos of my island studio has been calmed and simplified; canvas frames stored, books piled in some kind of order, bits and pieces of ideas on paper filed...I can actually see the corners of my studio again. My friend and mentor Harold Klunder arrives next week to teach a Master Class to thirteen painters here at my island studio. I’m delighted to have Harold here as his experience and insight is a treasure trove with which...

Great News! My painting Understory lll was chosen from some 1,350 entries to participate in this summer's largest art show on Vancouver island.The Sooke Fine Arts Show, now in its 27th year, is Vancouver Island’s premier summer arts event.

...may not have a lot to do reality. As a painter and photographer I often live in this visual ‘other world’. These cherry blossom branches have wrapped around the trunk of a Birch tree transforming themselves into an exotic new variety that doesn’t exist! To my eye the sum of their parts has become more beautiful.

Abstraction in painting often undergoes a similar transformation. This scene which I quickly shot with my phone camera, immediately triggered some fabulous visual ideas. Form, rhythm, contrast... Back in my studio I shift

Pod Contemporary Gallery
Salt Spring Island, BC

Since my last gallery show of paintings using cold wax and oil, both clients and other artists are asking lots of questions! One of the unique characteristics of this medium is the ‘finish’ of the painting. It actually is real bee’s wax that gives a matt-waxy glow to the work, a texture people seem fascinated with. Some painters buff up (completely dried) paintings to bring up a sheen. I leave my pieces as they are, enjoying the depth created by the waxy oil. You can see some of these paintings right here on this site. To find out more about this medium you can read about

Wrapped around and in between the everyday painting of my larger pieces is the work I do in my sketch and painting books. This watercolour was used to work out some spacial issues I was considering, combined with a fresh colour palette that appealed to me. These loose paintings feel similar to writing words in a journal. They bring me back to a kind of fluid, primitive mark-making.

We’ve just returned from a adventurous road trip; down the coast of the U.S. through Washington, Oregon and California. The third party on the trip was our Standard Poodle, who unfortunately will not be invited again. That is a whole other story, but suffice to say she hates to travel by car!

After many years of obsessively painting forest, I’m wanting to shift, to find a depth in my creative language. That was on my mind when I was invited to participate in a very special retreat with my ‘old mentor' Harold Klunder. As one gallery owner recently said to me, “it’s rare that a painter of his stature teaches”.

With completion of some terrific design work from the team at Hermani + Sorrentino Design, my new web site has now gone 'live'. The language of painting is one thing, now comes the challenge of the written word to communicate something about my work, my process, my inspiration. If you spend time on my site, bear with me as the beginnings of my random thoughts fall happily onto the screen.

The landscape in Santa Fe and Taos where I've just visited was as magnificent as I'd heard it was. The blue sky that goes on forever, the intense red hills surrounded by gold and dusted, muted greens is fabulous a sight for an artist to take in.

It took the better part of a day working with Showcase Gallery director Helen Mears to hang my show, in spite of her comment that "this show just hung itself". Her curating skills were superb at merging the three-dimensional assemblages by Salt Spring Island basket-maker Debbie Magnusson as they twisted and contorted below my paintings.

Nothing like an upcoming show to get me focused in the studio. From visual meandering about, to exploring various subjects and mediums, then all of a sudden woohoo! it's time to get my thinking on canvas! My proposal for a show entitled 'In the Skin of the Forest' was accepted a while back by the SSAC (Salt Spring Arts Council). The opening will take place at ArtCraft on Salt Spring Island, B.C. this coming September.