Category: General

I spent a few days at Nunatuk Campground last weekend, taking a lot of photos, doing some paintings, and being completely ignored by the fish.

One thing that did come out of my trip was hitting another milestone, painting of the day #2000. I rather like the result and so did someone else, since it was sold the day after I got home.

Gulls. Watercolour on paper, 11×14 inches.

Sometimes, we learn a lesson of humility from social media. I posted two pictures on BlueSky today and got somewhat interesting results.

This photo of today’s painting has, so far, received 20 likes.

However, this photo of Darcy sitting in my studio chair has garnered 48….

I’m telling myself it’s not a competition.

It was a whirlwind month, with a solo and group exhibit and teaching a number of workshops. However, it’s a new month and things are, hopefully, going to wind down a bit.

A further complication is the last workshop of the month involved painting holding a sheet of paper outwards and painting backwards. I now have a number of rather annoyingly painful back and chest muscles, so slowing down a bit is a good thing.

If you didn’t get a chance to catch the exhibit, here’s the slideshow of the solo exhibit. Fourteen on these were sold so I’m rather content with the result.

Well, the exhibit has been up for a week, and we held the official opening reception. It has been quite successful so far, and five of the paintings have found new homes.

As per normal, I’ll post a slide show of the paintings a little later.

I’m also in a group exhibit at Arts Underground. Photos from that exhibit will be available shortly. These can be purchased online through Arts Underground.

My three paintings in that exhibit are here:

Sunset, McIntyre Creek. Watercolour on paper, 8×10 inches.

Sunset pond. Watercolour on paper, 8×10 inches.

Solstice midnight, Fox Lake. Watercolour on paper, 11×14 inches.

People often ask me why I often get up rather early in the morning. I will concede that, many times, I’m up early because one of the cats has decided they’re bored and want me to entertain them. And, I will often grant that the last cup of tea I had before going to bed may also be responsible for my early rise.

That being said, my main reason for getting up early is the wonderful scenery. The still of morning and the morning light often gives lots of inspiration for painting… best appreciated with that first cup of tea.

Morning calm, Teslin Lake. Watercolour on paper, 11×14 inches.

Just over a week to go until my solo exhibit opens on July 4th. This one, themed Against the Sky, is an homage to the Yukon sky, a constantly changing milieu of light and colour and is dedicated to the Yukon sky, with its subdued pastels in winter, its bright colours in summer, and its limitless array of sunsets and sunrises.

Against the Sky runs until Saturday, July 26thth. Yukon Artists at Work is located on 4th Ave. and Wood St. in Whitehorse. It’s open from Tuesdays to Saturdays, 11 am to 4 pm, with extended hours on the first Friday of every month. The gallery will also be open some Sundays in June and July (June 15th and 22nd, and July 6th, 13th, and 20th).

To make matters more fun, I also have three paintings at Arts Underground gallery on Main Street, Whitehorse, as part of the Emerald exhibit, a celebration of the 55th anniversary of the Yukon Arts Society.

Hope to see you there.

Well, the week is done, and it just seemed to fly by. I finished four more paintings in the last two day, as well as guiding some people through doing their own paintings.

The second part of that was that part of my job, beyond painting demos, was to get people to do small northern lights paintings, so you may see a bit of a theme in some of the works I did this week.

Northern lights. Watercolour on paper, 8×10 inches.
This, by the way, is the scene my students will be painting in a workshop at the end of the month.

Summit Lake. Watercolour on paper, 11×14 inches.

Northern pond. Watercolour on paper, 11×14 inches.

Full moon. Watercolour on paper, 11×14 inches.

This is my second residency at Arts in the Park, the first being 3 years ago. It’s a great combination of performing arts and visual arts held during the early summer in Whitehorse. I get to be the visual artist for the first week of this season, June 2 – 6. During the week, I’ve been doing demo paintings and getting people to do small northern lights paintings.

In the three days so far, I’ve done five paintings. Since the public participation subject is the northern lights, I’ve been stressing that particular subject…

Fall Sunset. Watercolour on paper, 11×14 inches.

Northern lights, Fox Lake. Watercolour on paper, 11×14 inches.

Pilot Mountain. Watercolour on paper, 11×14 inches.

Twilight, Fox Lake. Watercolour on paper, 11×14 inches.

Forest floor. Watercolour on paper, 11×14 inches.

I have two more days, and will post the works from them later.

I was asked to do some slightly larger prints of a few paintings (I, of course, won’t go any larger than the original painting). These are done and currently available at Arts Underground gallery in Whitehorse. The link to the page is here.

The new ones are 8×10 inches, matted to 11×14 inches, and hand signed. They are available for $55 CDN each, plus applicable taxes and shipping.

First buds of spring.

Starry Night, Kathleen Lake

Misty Pond.

I love my sketchbook, even though it’s cheap and has multimedia paper rather than watercolour paper. Sometimes, it’s easier to do a little practice run to see what a finished painting will look like or see if how you want to approach something will actually work.

Mostly, I like the feeling that a sketch doesn’t need to get bogged down in detail. You can paint as loosely as you like and the pressure to do a “good” painting is gone.

I don’t have a lot of time today and decided to do a quick sketch of an unnamed mountain in the Ibex Valley I want to do a full painting of later. It has character, with its sheer, rugged cliff face.

Unnamed mountain, Ibex Valley. Watercolour sketch on paper, 7×10 inches.
Painting of the day 1908.