Sign Me Up

This is painted with acrylic on a piece of primed canvas about 3.5 ft x 4.5 ft.

t is for rose

A few days ago, Jean's Flower Shop, a floral place near my house, was giving away free bunches of a dozen roses for good neighbour day. If you show up in time, there's many different colours of roses to choose from, as well as complimentary timbits and coffee. There's also a food bank donation box where you can bring your dry-goods. So Clarence and I walked over with some non-perishable food items in hand and picked out some lovely pink roses. After arriving back home and arranging the flowers, I was struck with a design idea for a new sign to hang by my display at the upcoming Grimsby Festival of Art. Two words: Flower Alphabet! I've done the flower alphabet before on a thankyou card, and the beautiful pink roses reminded me to use it again for my sign. The late night photograph that I took of the banner after I finished painting it last night would have looked better if I'd taken it in daylight, but c'est la vie. 

The Festival tomorrow takes place on Nelles Blvd. & Central School in Grimsby. I'm going to be located inside at the School. The GFA goes from 9AM -5PM so you can check it out and still be able to go to the SuperCrawl in Hamilton that's happening at night. I thought about having a display at the Supercrawl, but I think the emphasis there is on all the free, live musical performances that will be taking place. If I have some energy left over from the day, I hope to go have a listen. 

                   

Bunny Horse?

It feels like quite some time has gone by since last I wrote and I hold the weather and reading accountable for my absence. Most of last week was wet and dreary which made me want to spend my evenings on the couch with a book in hand. A friend of mine loaned me her copy of The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill (the book is published as Someone Knows My Name in the USA, Australia and New Zealand), and I can barely put it down. In the novel, the protagonist Aminata Diallo recalls her life story, starting with her abduction from a happy life in West Africa when she's eleven years-old. So far I've read about Aminata crossing the Atlantic ocean in a slave-ship and her first couple of years as a slave in America. Although The Book of Negroes is a work of fiction, knowing that it's based upon the historical realities of the18th and early 19th centuries makes the novel that much more impactful. Considering it was a Canada Reads 2009 Selection, I'm late out of the gate in reading this book and I'm probably telling some people what they already know, but if you haven't read it, The Book of Negroes is worth reading.

As of the last few days the sun has come out again and so has my inclination to get some little tasks out of the way. It's amazing how much more verve a little sunshine puts into your step. That, and the news of a possible Canada Post strike--since one of my little tasks required going to the post office. Today I mailed away my applications for two different markets. One is the Grimsby Festival of Art that happens Saturday, Sept 10, 2011 and the other is the Harvest Crafts & Marketplace Fiesta at St. Paul's Church in Dundas which happens Oct 28 & 29, 2011. I'll be selling prints of my watercolour paintings at these evensts, and since both markets are still some time away, I'm thinking about also including some original oil paintings.

In other news, since I last wrote about my latest painting being a commission of a horse, I came across a veritable horse convention this past Saturday while out for a walk. My family and I went for a hike at Dundas Conservation Area and there were a lot of horses out with their riders. I guess the wet weather had made the horses pretty anxious to stretch their legs as well. Looking at these horses I photographed on Saturday, and the horse that I'm currently painting, has reminded me of how expressive horses' ears are. But I also find them kind of odd, although not in a bad way. The more I look at horse ears, the more I think of bunny rabbit ears.

I inadvertently gave the woman in the background a horse's head.