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”. Each time I spend creative time in his company my work, like other artists lucky enough to paint with him, does shift in the most positive sense.

Harold’s been called a ‘painter’s painter’. Perhaps it is his quiet intelligence, gentle humour, and unparalleled experience of ‘all things-art’ that he shares. He doesn’t use ‘art-speak’ but rather down to earth and straightforward ways of looking at the world as we discuss colour or the brush strokes on my canvas. We talk about famous works of art, artists, methods...or garlic or a book and somehow as he walks away - I totally know what I want to do with this painting I was stuck on. Once again, thank you HK!!! (detail above: of painting from retreat)

Here is one of many galleries and museums who exhibit Harold Klunder’s paintings, or google him.