As I re-build my business, not quite from the ground up, (the foundation remains, but the structures above must be replaced), I find I am spending a lot of time in the realm of not-knowing.

Life under pandemic has changed our rhythms and routines, our customary locations, and how we spend our time. My husband and I (but especially him) used to spend way too much time driving from place to place, because our work was in-person but also in a variety of locations.

Now by building up our tech and online skills, there is so much new and in flux but so much less by way of complications and travel. We just have to adjust to frequently re-arranging our home and studio to accommodate all the new virtual events and courses.

But looking deeper than that, I realize I am accustomed to spending a lot of time in that place of not-knowing, whether I'm developing new work for an exhibition, or at an earlier stage even, when I am excavating in order to discover new ideas in my studio, it is imperative that I enter that psychological space, or I will not get to what matters or what's new. Neither I nor my work would grow.

Other artists may work differently, but I think most have to work like that at some level, (and not just artists either!) or they would not make discoveries. And without locating something new, something fresh, where would art be? It would not move forward, nor would it deepen.

Spring is a season of the new: new growth, new life. And as this weekend is one of sacred spring festivals, Passover and Easter, it may be the perfect time to contemplate this.

​Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

The In Situ arts festival in late October was an extraordinary experience for me as an artist and a fun one in general.

With two large scale pieces in the main space and an entire room installation (allowing plenty of space for dancers to perform in), it was wonderful to stretch out (mentally and physically) into so much space.

The intensity required to conceive and execute so much in so little time is not sustainable for long (by me at least) but has some benefits. As I was just describing to a friend, it kept the threads of my thoughts white-hot, so every hour of work built 100% onto the previous hours, days and weeks of work – since most other distractions had been put aside... even sleep!

As well, working with the festival's fabulous lighting designer Joe Pagnan and working with light in the drawers and other components of my room installation 'Containment', has forever changed my thinking around light.

The incredible support and enthusiasm of Heather Snell, director/artistic director of the festival, and her wonderful husband Ken, was fertile ground in which to grow (thank you both!).

While I had nothing like enough time to get ready (in fact I am still trying to recover from the 24/7 preparations) but the joyful, creative and expansive experience that this was, coupled with the new work I produced for it, means I am glad and grateful for the opportunity.

And I still love that gorgeous, decrepit building!

Thanks to all who visited! For any who could not, I hope these photos will go some way toward compensating.

I sing. Alone in my car. Oh, sometimes my husband’s there too. 

I used to sing a lot: in choirs, while walking along quiet streets, at friends’ houses, in Girl Guides, around campfires, in the elevator of the apartment building where I once lived… all over 30 years ago!

So this summer I had a free week in Haliburton and the chance to take a course at the HSA+D instructors’ discounted rate while my husband Kal taught collage there (I had taught the previous week). I thought about taking his course, it was a chance to focus on a medium I only lightly touch on in my own work and guaranteed to be fun as well.

So why didn’t I? 

As my regular students can attest, there is a quirk in my nature that means I will move along methodically for a while and then what I call my “randomizer switch” will kick on and I’ll find myself talking about or teaching or doing something unexpected, not quite sensible, but sometimes just the perfect deviation!

That’s how I found myself a student in Creative Choral Music I, taught by the magnificent Sherry Squires (far left in photo).

There was also a level II choir, taught by Andy Rush (an amazing man who could make a high impact aerobics workout video just based on his conducting!). Our two classes came together the first (Monday) afternoon, as we would do throughout the week to prepare for our concerts and to celebrate at the end.

I was in skilled and capable hands, and there’s safety in numbers, right? (Imagine me laughing, so hard that tears are probably coming to my eyes!)

Well, the first part was actually true, Sherry and Andy were terrific instructors. It is also true that we covered a LOT of content in a few short days: warm-ups, voice management, enunciation, reading music, rhythms, breathing, blending, following a conductor, recognizing cues, coming in on time (surprisingly hard not to be early or especially, late), holding music, engaging the audience, being onstage, sight-reading (rather difficult for those who like me don’t properly read music for voice!), an amazingly large and varied selection of songs, etc.

What I discovered, and experienced, was how much my brain had to juggle more or less simultaneously when I wasn’t used to doing any of it! Even singing: it’s entirely different to sing a melody solo, in a key that’s perfect for your voice, (and do whatever you like to it with no consideration for anyone else, because there is no one else to consider) than it is to sing as one small part of a whole having only just been introduced to a song, and (and it’s a big “and”) sing a harmony part.

Singing a harmony part (I was in the tenor section) was a sometimes bizarre experience because depending on the song/arrangement, it might relate closely to the melody or it might be off on what feels like a completely different tangent. All contributing to making a wonderful whole of course, but difficult to process and adapt to (never mind learn well enough to get right consistently!) in a few short days.

In my studio I am used to working solo almost all the time. I have had a number of projects where for certain periods a variety of truly generous people have helped me out, and I’ve also hired fabricators and services to complete certain aspects, but even those cooperative experiences were very different than singing in a choir.

A few short days can get you surprisingly far in the right circumstances, including the right instructor(s), and to feel our 50+ voices blend into a unified whole during sections of both concerts was pure bliss. I felt like one small star in a galaxy of stars – an amazing reward for almost a week of head-exploding mental challenge, voice-shredding physical challenge and moments of pure panic!

The other reward was all the warm, friendly, welcoming veterans (and not) whom I met in both choirs, and I didn't even meet everyone! 

It was not easy being a real beginner again, to leap straight into the deep end, especially when you are expert at other things, but it is vital. It quite literally adds to your vitality, stimulating and nourishing you all at once; and by exercising "muscles" that you don't normally use or aren't skillful with, you increase your mental and creative agility, possibilities and courage.

That fantastic week prepared me for new creative adventures this fall and beyond, but more on those later!

Please share in the comments below any leaps (large or small) that you’ve taken and were glad you did... or if you too sing in a choir. 

The combined choirs of Choral Music I and II, led by Sherry Squires and Andy Rush respectively (far left and middle front). Yours truly is partially hidden behind the white hair of one of my fellow female tenors, top left. This picture was taken right after our concert in the Great Hall at Haliburton School of Art + Design.

Here's a little video excerpt of Choral Music I and II classes' concert, singing one verse of Susan Aglukark's Song of the Land. The cameraman sneezes at one point I think :-)

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.
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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!

Anyone who has taken one of my painting courses, or even attended one of my talks, will have heard me describe my studio as a laboratory.

I call it that because I am always experimenting, trying out new ideas, but also testing very specific things like I am today.

Curry's Art Store has a relatively new line of self-branded mediums. I was disappointed with their first product about a year ago, but they seem to have re-formulated so I've bought their gel and medium+varnish products specifically for testing purposes.

If they turn out to work well then they will provide a lower cost alternative to the premium brands. Some of the cheaper brands are not worth their apparent cost savings because they simply don't perform well. That's why I test!

Stevenson (officially D.L. Stevenson & Son Ltd.) is another line to consider if you're trying to lower your cost while keeping professional artist quality. Maybe I'll discuss them more in a future post.

Personally I will use the premium lines like Liquitex and Golden for most of my work, but not everything I do needs the top product lines, and many of my students are looking for affordable options whenever they're viable.

If you work (or play!) with art or craft materials, do you have a favourite way of saving money that you wouldn't mind sharing in the comments?

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.

“Seek experiences that make you nervous, where you’re right on the edge of blowing it. Try not to blow it, but if you do blow it, learn from it and keep on keeping on.”

— JASON HARDY, digital designer and 
self-proclaimed “creative generalist”

I read this quote today in a profile of Jason Hardy and had to share it with you. He's found a vivid way of expressing what I seem to keep doing, what I know I must do, though I have times when I shrink from it and other times when I embrace it whole-heartedly.

There is a nervous sensation I get just below my solar plexus that I've come to recognize as my friend (my exciting, daredevil friend!). Without it I would not grow or learn or DARE the way I do. Those experiences in turn shape who I am as an artist and as a person, so I would not recognize myself without that "friend".

"Explorer's instinct" might be a good name for that impulse, one that has led me on some life-changing physical journeys as well as guided me to the challenging projects I've taken on in recent years.

My current show 'Chains Unlinked' was the latest example. I submitted a proposal that I thought was exciting, that would create an interesting, integrated experience as well as a visually distinctive and dramatic use of the space. I felt good about sending it in.

Then I got the acceptance letter! At first I was (of course!) pleased and excited, but at a certain point reality set in and I thought "Oh sh*t! Now I have to figure out how to actually do this!"

Figuring it out as you go along is part of the fun, terror and excitement of straying into unknown territory. What's important to remember is that it's rarely fatal (!), and you are allowed to ask for help and advice along the way! 

We often forget to ask for help. It's something I'm still working on myself. I know I've made progress though because this group of work only happened due to the help and support of many people.

I thought it would be fun to include a few photos of projects that were big stretches for me, that led to some moments of dark terror as well as giant leaps of faith and many miracles, large and small.

Whether the new challenges you take on are massive or modest in scope, they are the most direct path to growth, in creativity, experience and confidence. They make us nervous though because by definition they require us to risk failure.