After a year or so of reading art books and playing with paint, making more "gifts", I finally signed up for a workshop with Kai Liis McKinnis. Watercolour mono prints. Intuitive, and lots imagination needed. Still more gifts, but I did sell one...plus three more from that year! My mother said " You have arrived" bless her heart. 

In this year I did a lot more watercolour monoprints. What fun, and I sold several of them. I had my first little show at the Daily Perk in Midland. That year I started venturing into regular watercolour painting techniques as well. 

This was a year of study and finding my passion for my subject matter. I took a drawing course with Nancy Vincent and loved working with pencil, but the paint still called. I painted snow, and buildings, and my first pet portrait....all exciting and still experimental.

For some reason I was fascinated with monotone. Maybe it had something to do with just coming through the 9/11 attack the previous September. Colour seemed to be lacking in the whole world. I did realize that the world would never be the same. The world was still there but seen through a very different lens.  

   In 2003 the colour came back with a vengeance! This was the year I discovered a synthetic paper called YUPO. Non-absorbent and environmentally friendly. The only other people I could find that were working with it were very much into pouring and letting the process decide the outcome. 

Tried that but I really wanted to do something different. So I made a huge number of small pieces and sold most of them.

   This was also the first year for outdoor shows, one of them being the Toronto Outdoor Exhibition at Nathan Phillips Square. That was an adventure in a borrowed tent, a borrowed place to stay and thankfully a not-borrowed husband that was there to help. Thanks, Frank!

This is the year I decided to go larger with the Yupo paper. I did a series of Georgian Bay landscape which became the future design for my fabric items. I also had many of them reproduced on archival paper and am still offering some limited number editions now 20 years later.

I also managed to get out and experience plein air painting for the first time and it became a passion. 

2005 was a year of exploration in many areas. •The exploration of light and dark through florals using only ivory black paint and the white of the paper. •The exploration of background simplicity to show off the main subject such as the figures in the minis. •The exploration of working on watercolour canvas. •The exploration of connecting lines and abstracting content. •And the exploration of how ink can enhance a plein air watercolour sketch. 

The year I discovered oil painting! This was a transitional year for me. John D. Anderson, a painter and teacher that I admire, introduced me to the world of oil painting. After taking a couple of workshops with John, I was off and running with it. I practiced painting glass, and dinner rolls, acorns, and water taps when camping, historical buildings and finally did my first Georgian Bay oil painting. I have always loved rocks and when I experienced the richness of the oil paint in the rendering of the GB rocks, I did not look back....not yet and not for a while. Let me have more of this please.

More experimentation and building a body of work. I got brave and did my first very large painting, which was in three pieces but measured 6 feet across. I enjoyed painting figures in action this year, from dancers at the local pow wow to kids on the beach, and groups of people enjoying the company of each other. 

This is also the year that I played with a form of impressionism that looks like a shimmering pixelated image. I favoured a flat brush for this and became known for my square-brush technique. 

coming soon