DATE CHANGE:
Virtual Studio Party will return two weeks later,
on Saturday, October 3 at 2pm.

My co-host Kal Honey and I are taking a break from some of our work responsibilities for several weeks, including the Virtual Studio Parties, free weekly creative events on my YouTube channel, that have seen us through the first few months of the pandemic.

It has become something that we, and numerous regular attendees, have come to treasure, for the creative time, the conversation, and for the community experience.

While we are on hiatus, there is a YouTube playlist of 24 videos available on my channel from past parties. They are there for you to enjoy whenever you feel the need for some creative time with friendly company, in the comfort of your home (or at this time of year, possibly your cottage).

Here is the link: https://bit.ly/31HtbOm

Meanwhile, in the coming weeks, you can expect more posts here in the blog, and updates in the Teaching+ menu above, in my Online Offerings.

I've got my Fall term planned out so I'm busy writing and making web pages for each of the courses I will be offering. Some of them are up already with everything but the materials lists, which I'll post in late August.

UPDATE: All of my Fall courses are up on the website now!
Click here to see what's available.

Finally, if you haven't made it to one of our Virtual Studio Parties yet, I hope you can make some space in your week to attend one live on a Saturday afternoon this Fall, or else by watching or listening to a replay. And if you know anyone else who might enjoy it, please share the link with them.

Creative time, creative community, a friendly artist making things – and it's free! What's not to love? I hope you'll join us!

Hope you had a great holiday weekend (if you're in North America at least).

​I'm currently buried deep in preparations for the Acrylics: Explore, Express & Experiment course I teach every summer in Haliburton. So much still to do, not enough time to write a proper post, but I thought I would share a sample panel-in-progress with you (pictured above).

​I will update this post with the finished result... after the pour! Should be fun, fingers crossed :-)

Above is a wonderful TED Talk on the power and importance of disruption in creative work, with some amazing and famous examples (i.e. the resulting work is famous, the fact that disruption made them possible isn't). This is in fact the source for my title “Play the Unplayable Piano”.

Watching the video will be 15 well-spent minutes of your life – how much of our life on the internet can we say that about? 

​It makes me wonder if I should show it at the beginning of all of my courses – might be a good way to warm up creative thinking and help prevent the instinctive resistance that can arise when I introduce something new. 

Disruptors are an important factor in how I work as an artist as well as how I teach although I've usually referred to the “randomizer” in my brain. A better name for it is “disruptor” since that expresses its effect as well as its role.

​How has it shown up in my studio? How do I even choose instances?

​There was the time I decided to take on my least-liked colour, so I kept working with pink until I stopped disliking it. Pink functioned as a disrupter in every painting I put it in, until it became just another colour in my palette.
​
Or the time I decided to work with a brush that had hardened, caked-on paint, instead of throwing it out, then made the best paintings of my life to that point.

To be more creative, introduce something that disrupts your familiar.



​Disruption is uncomfortable,   even excruciating, at first, because the things that make us           comfortable are familiar.

Top: video of Tim Harford's TED Talk on How Frustration Can Make Us More Creative. Above left and right: Over and Over and Chair with Swatch #1; both examples of work that included disruption as part of their process.

Every residency or workshop I have taken has disrupted my normal practice, sometimes enormously, especially when being far from home was combined with a really powerful mentoring situation.

More often I am inclined to take on things I don't know how to do as aspects of a project where I do know how to do other parts. Like last summer's charcoal figure drawing mural at the Art Gallery of Mississauga; or the chairs I am working on now.

My first efforts to use fluorescent colour was a powerful disrupter, both challenging and fun. When I introduced it in a class I was teaching, I got the full range of responses: from those who giggled with amazement at being completely out of their comfort zones and delighted disbelief at what they were producing, to one who refused to try even a drop, and of course everyone in between.

​There are a couple of things about disrupters that we need to remember, whether they are an old friend or a scary stranger: they make us far more creative as we struggle to adapt to them, discover new things because of them, and they are uncomfortable! They may even feel excruciating at first, but that's natural, because the things that make us comfortable are familiar.

Back in 2005/2006, when I was taking courses at Toronto School of Art, I had weekly portrait and figure painting sessions (both!). It was a great experience as I got to try so many ways of working with paint and with representation – all quite apart from the course content I have to say!

The discoveries I made then continue to influence me now.

The painting here is entitled 'What Remains' and was painted from life during one of these classes.

The canvas is 30" x 10", a pretty extreme proportion, one I took on as a challenge, to see how to compose for it successfully.

I started with a dark ground (base layer), which worked well with the strong directional lighting used for this pose. That made the shadows very dark, though (never one to be limited by mere reality!) I lightened some areas just as I put strong colour in some areas, to draw the eye and make this a painterly experience not one of just recording.

Something else I was playing with here was the paint. I made it into a semi-transparent glaze (acrylic), which creates greater depth than opaque paint. I combined that with experimenting with the marks I used to build up the solids (or semi-solids).

​The paint marks I used created a lot of surface movement (her flesh doesn't sit still even though she does) and a mottled effect that led to the title, as I thought it could suggest, not just decay but more philosophically, the dissolution of what began as solid. Like life!

Recently, when my friend artist Patricia Singer generously suggested I teach a workshop at her studio, I didn't have to think about it for long. Looking at these photos I think you'll understand why I and this small group have been having a wonderful time working in her space and our great luck that the days – and our view of them – have been glorious!

We've been exploring contemporary mixed media, working with photos and other digitized imagery in a variety of ways and combined with all kinds of traditional media.

Collage, working into prints (by drawing, painting, cutting, sanding, peeling, piercing and even embroidering) and trying out numerous image transfer techniques has kept everyone very busy and the days seem to fly by! At the end of each day we take a look at what some other artists have been doing along the same lines to see what's possible and get fresh ideas.

Not everyone has a studio large enough for a group to work in, but if you do, it can be fun and convenient (you don't have to schlep all of your materials somewhere else!). Please get in touch if you'd like to discuss the possibility. Depending on the time of year, my availability can be quite limited.

I'm a little late posting this week's blog as I've only recently returned from teaching a course called Tradigital 2, part of the Digital Image Design certificate at Fleming College/Haliburton School of the Arts (what long names!).

The course is designed to help students develop a fluid relationship between work that is made digitally and in the real world, moving and borrowing back and forth between traditional materials and techniques and digital methods.

I love both the real and digital worlds of making, so the course (along with its precursor Tradigital 1 which I also taught) seems a perfect match for me. 

In addition to introducing students to some specific techniques and tools, I really focus on ways of thinking and working, in whatever medium. 

First of all, to create lots of elements from which to choose. 

Secondly, to think in layers, building them up and creating interesting, effective relationships between the layers, between the obscurings and the reveals. 

Then to work iteratively. Making work is a continuum really and along the way you want to capture certain things. Don't be shy to capture plenty of them if you've struck a rich vein of discovery.

And finally, not to get stuck thinking and working only in front of a computer. There are differences between the virtual and real worlds (despite incredible developments in the former) and how we think when we interact with each. 

Physically, mentally and creatively we are creatures made for change and variety. Working back and forth between our digital and physical studios keeps us healthy, fresh and balanced.