Camellia's - work in progress

work in progress- 30x30 oil on canvas

Camellia's were blooming everywhere in Victoria this past week!  Nice, because I was able to spend a lot of time really looking at them, as well as get heaps of photos.  We just got back from our trip there last night. I so enjoyed being in the temperate climate with so many millions of spring blooms everywhere.  I was thinking about those Camellia's the whole time painting this evening.  Tender flowers with a tendency to expire quickly; the white ones quickly turn brown, then drop.  This is where I'm at now...will be letting it dry for a bit, then let it speak to me again.
  My mother once told me a story about Camellia's on her wedding day.  She was married in Jasper, Alberta and she had ordered her wedding bouquet of (pink) Camellia's from a shop in Edmonton.  When the flowers arrived on the train the morning of the wedding, she was very disappointed to find that they were all wilted; a sorry specimen for a wedding bouquet!  In the end she had to hurriedly replace the bouquet with a bunch of pink roses from a local florist.
 
...that's Teri, me,  Linda & Dave's mum, Julie, last Thursday in Victoria at Butchart Gardens.  Such a special treat.
 

Plain air by the sea

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 Posting this 9x12 plain air I did on Tuesday morning. When I began the mountains across the strait were visible, but after about half an hour the clouds formed over them blocking their peaks, so I went with that instead of my original intention. Truly the pleasure was in the experience.  No wind and sunshine with a high of about 14 degrees.

I have never been in Victoria in the spring before, it is gobsmacking to a girl from Ontario!! the blooms of hundreds of different varieties of flowering shrubs and bulbs turn my head in all directions.

 Above is Dave's mum's garden which greeted us on Sunday when we popped in for a visit. She is 85 and she does all the work herself! She is an amazing woman, and such an inspiration.

 I'm not sure what this purple flowering shrub was, but it caught my eye while out walking yesterday morning.

This painting is the little 9 x 12 panel that I worked on in the Ross Bay cemetery on Monday.  This cemetery holds the grave of Canada's beloved artist Emily Carr. I forgot to take a picture of it but will get one tomorrow.

Spring plain air

Finding plain air painting spots by bicycle this week in Victoria.  Spring is full and lush here at the moment. Ross bay cemetery provides a quiet spot with lots of protection from light showers under the shade of a giant cypress tree. Daffodils near a crabapple tree under an overcast skies today.

happy to get started again

new start on the left, 'White Roses' acrylic on right

After weeks of not painting at all, I did get into the studio yesterday after Dave left for a work trip.  It felt good to make a start (one on the left). Yahoo!  Plans are for it to be Camelia's, but we'll see what develops. 

The 'White Roses' next to it, is an acrylic painting I completed in January.  You can see I'm still on a similar theme, but I was hankering to get going with my oils again. I love the softness and subtleness of colour, that oil paint allows me for blending.  Since it's warm enough outside now to open windows, there's no reason not to use my oils.  Although I work with odourless mineral spirits, I'm big on making sure I ventilate when working in oils.  

'Pub Door'  - no more! ha ha

  

I started this one over a previous painting 'Pub Door' that I was sick of looking at. I had showed it several times and it had never had any interest, so figured it had lived a good life.  Besides, I like working on top of an older painting for the dimension it provides as an under-painting.  
Usually I create a warm ground, but this time I picked thalo blue to cover it, wondering if it would aid the subtle white shifts that I wanted. 

Daisy's - SOLD

Happy to say that Gallery on Gore in Perth, Ontario sold my little daisy painting yesterday.  Thanks Johanne!