The Raging Storm

A few days ago I put some random brush strokes on a page and glued a strip of paper to the side. Today I picked up pencil and pens and let the brush strokes talk to me. A Poseidon-like creature formed in the upper left corner blowing wind and waves and rain to churn up everything else on the page. I journalled about how the weather and the election are conspiring to churn up my psyche.


A few days ago a storm raged along the Eastern United States leaving destruction in its wake. All we could do up here in Canada was stay glued to Twitter and CNN and hope for the best.


A presidential campaign is raging to the South of us now and we are hoping that it will not leave destruction in its wake too. All we can do up here in Canada is stay glued to Twitter and CNN and hope for the best.

I'm linking this post to Creative Every Day and Art Journal Every Day.

Thank you so much for visiting. I hope you'll leave a comment. I love to hear what you think.

Home and Away

The kids are concerned that I'm painting and playing with paper and ephemera instead of with fabric and sewing. "Does that mean you're not a quilter anymore?" they ask.


I am still playing with pattern, texture, colour and imagination. Art Journal pages have layers just like quilts.

They can bring you comfort in a different way. This page uses pieces of paper reminding me of my family's home and travels.
A luggage tag and hotel business card from my father's trips for work and to visit my brother overseas, a ticket to a Broadway play that my husband and I remember with pleasure, and my membership card from the tennis club I belonged to in Venelles during my father's sabbatical in Aix en Provence.


A page from my mother's address book with jottings in her amazing spidery scrunched handwriting and a note card from our neighbourhood community centre reminds me to be proud of my roots.
A photograph of an old fashioned plane collaged on top reminds me to be grateful for my wings.

I tell the kids "Don't worry, I'm still a quilter". 

I'm a quilter, and a designer, and a singer, and a writer and an artist and a...

I'm linking this post to Creative Every Day and Art Journal Every Day.
Thank you so much for visiting. I hope you'll leave a comment. I love to hear what you think.

Fanciful Faces

An Art Journal Page with torn paper, gesso, fabric scraps, negatives, a postcard, pencil drawings. I am slowly becoming more comfortable putting pencil or paper to pen and drawing either what I see in front of me or what I see in my imagination. This comes after a lifetime of telling myself "I can't draw. I'm not artistic."

I tell the children that our brain isn't smart enough to know if we're telling the truth or not. It'll believe whatever we tell it.

So I tell my brain "I am an Artist" and it is starting to believe me.

Linking to Creative Every Day, Art Journal Every Day and Paint Party Friday.
Thank you so much for visiting. I hope you'll leave a comment. I love to hear what you think.

Wordless Wednesday

This post started out wordless because I had left it all on the page. I picked up a page of my Art Journal that I had painted with random splotches of black gesso a few weeks ago poured my heart out. I wrote over and over the same spots to make sure no one would be able to read it.

I hope you can't read what I wrote.


I hope you too can let your troubles out and let them go.



I have linked this page to Wordless Wednesday, Art Every Day and Fall Fearless and Fly. Thank you so much for visiting and for your kind and interesting comments. I love to hear what you have to say.

Come Back to Me

I've been digging through my piles and boxes of ephemera. Sifting through photos, programs, reviews and letters. Yesterday I found some papers from a show I had done and decided to use them to make an Art Journal page. Using gesso, acrylic paints, pens, glue and chalk I delved back into the past.

The year is 1989, the show is Kurt Weill's Johnny Johnson, I am playing Minnie Belle, Johnny Johnson's flag waving girlfriend, and our time at the Banff Centre for the Arts is coming to an end.

The border for this page is torn from a congratulatory letter given to me by 'Chris'. Was he one of my cast mates? In an inspired gesture he has written his kind words to me on the back of "Come Back to Me", Minnie Belle's big song from the show.


The designer or the director handed me this photocopy of a photograph of an early film star and asked me to model my hair and makeup on her look. I can't remember who she is, does anyone recognize her?


Performing in "Johnny Johnson" was a tremendous experience for me. I got to have both a featured role and perform in the chorus. Keith Turnbull's brilliant direction made the production live in my memory. Roy Scheider was in the audience and congratulated me on my performance in the bar after the show. That would never happen again. My future gigs would be "Third Girl From the Right" in Phantom of the Opera and with Opera Atelier and Tafelmusik Baroque Choir.

The torn fragment that turned into a bird says 'We all knew'. We all knew that our time in the Professional Music Theatre Training Program at the Banff Centre would come to an end, that we might never see each other again and from here on in our careers were up to us.

Life Doesn't Have To Be Perfect To Be Wonderful

Life doesn't have to be perfect to be wonderful, your technique doesn't have to be perfect and an idea doesn't have to be the most inspirational ever to deserve being played with in your journal.

Thank you to the amazing Teesha Moore for her incredible generosity. I spent yesterday devouring her videos on Youtube and playing with the techniques she uses. She covers so much including making your own journal, painting the background, adding collage elements and making it your own with outlining, doodling and lettering.

This quote jumped out at me on Pinterest this morning. The most important thing I learnt from watching Teesha Moore's videos is that if you have an idea you should go with it. She reminds us that everything can be fixed and there's no point not at least giving your idea a try.

These pages took me places I have never been before and I'm really excited by how they turned out. 

It was an opportunity for me to be brave and step out of my comfort zone.

This demure young lady is encouraging me to link this blog post to the Fall Fearless and Fly challenge over at Artists in Blogland, to Art Journal Every Day and to Creative Every Day.

How can I give it away?

This year it was my turn to shepherd the Grade Six kids through the class art project for the school's annual Fall Fling Fundraiser.



Searching on Pinterest I came across Art Projects For Kids a fabulous resource for anyone doing art with kids.  I was particularly taken by the blog post Kinder Self Portraits which described how to do multi self portraits on dry wax paper to put on one large canvas.

A quick email to Kathy Barbro, the lovely author of the blog, to ask her where to get dry wax paper led to a drive across town to the Wholesale Club to pick up a 1000 sheet box of "Patty Papers". Several leisurely hours were then spent at Above Ground Art Supplies trying out various brands of pens on these little slips of glassine to see what showed up best, and smeared the least, and came closest to the colour palette I had chosen for this project.

I didn't want to just work with typical kid colours. Something, probably Pinterest again, led me to the first palette in Pantone's 2013 lineup, Conoisseur. I'm hoping one of the parents will be struck by the fashion forward colour scheme and will bid, bid, bid for the children's creation.

Supplies in hand it was time to go to school. Working with groups of four students at a time each of the children was given one sheet of dry wax paper. Although I had originally intended to stick with the self portrait idea I ended up encouraging them to draw a self portrait, a picture of one of their favorite things, or write a short note or story. They were also welcome to play with abstract designs. I figured the colours would unify the finished work even if there was lots of variety in the imagery.

I set up shop in the stairwell at the elementary school for the last couple of mornings so a door could be propped open to ventilate the area. The Chartpak pens worked beautifully for my purposes but were not suitable for use in an enclosed space. My twins to work collecting groups of kids and returning them to the classroom when they had finished making their drawings.









Some of the boys were a little put out that there was no blue pen to work with. I think I should call the finished piece "Why No Blue?"

I hope these close ups will give a bit of an idea of the variety of responses the children had to the challenge. This group was a true pleasure to work with. They were eager to experiment with the materials and most of them made several drawings, giving me lots to choose from when it came time to make the final composition.

To adhere the drawings I smeared the canvas with a liberal layer of gel medium and wiped the excess on the back of each drawing before placing it carefully on the canvas. More gel medium was then brushed on top to seal the artwork and to try to smooth out most of the bubbles.

The gel medium made couple of the pens smear a little. I'm going to experiment on a test piece to see if once the piece has dried completely I can go over some of the smudges with a white paint marker.