It's been a while

The last time I posted was May 2025. It has been a challenging time with many huge life changes. But I'm trying to get back on track and am hoping to start posting her regularly. I thought it fitting to show a photo of my bulletin board since that's what I did before I dropped the ball...proof that despite not posting, I have actually been creating new images. I hope to show them here over the next couple of months.

I'll start with an image I made in February. February is usually one of my least favourite months...winter always seems to be dragging on and I start to long for fair weather and spring. 

This image combines elements from 5 different photographs, spanning from 2010 to 2025. 

Make Hay While the Sun Shines, 2026

Here are the "ingredients" that make up this photo collage...they are embarrassing to show! 

1. Black Skimmers on a Florida Beach, taken January 2025 (just before most Canadians stopped traveling to the US!)

2. a field in Upper Branch, Nova Scotia in 2014

3. balloons on a bench, 2013

4. magnolia tree taken on a dog walk, 2025

5. a sheep taken on a farm in 2010 

When I posted this image on facebook, someone (Hi Helen!) left a comment: "I always love imagining the story that must lie behind one of your images". Such a perfect comment...that's exactly what I want everyone to do when they look at one of my creations. And, even better, I love it when people share what they think with me.

 

Just Keep Going

images created to date, May 2025

My office is quite small, measuring a meager 7 x 8 feet, large enough for a desk and a small printer table along one wall, and a low bookcase running along the opposite wall. This little office is my haven, my sanctuary. As a full time caregiver to someone who sleeps a lot, my office is a refuge where I go to create.

After my husband's stroke in 2017, I started focusing on the theme of emotional healing. Through my images and words, I have tried to raise awareness of linking creativity to wellness. Creating is my therapy. I journal, I work with my photography, and I create my composited images in my little office.

My own health had a major set back in 2022 when I was diagnosed with lung cancer despite the fact that I never smoked one cigarette in my life. Approaching my three year anniversary from surgery, I realize how much I was impacted. Combined with my husband's declining health, my creative energies were quite depleted. I felt empty of any inspiration to create with my photography and turned to other mediums.

I (mostly) stopped blogging, I (mostly) stopped sharing online. I turned to art journaling, hand making books, and hand stitching diary cloths. I created "ransom notes", using letters cut from flyers and pasting them to make cards to inspire myself. The learning and the creativity carried me through. I did make a couple of composited images (my favourite thing to do) in 2024. Somehow, some way, I started to feel a stronger creative urge in February of this year and shared a few of them on Instagram. 

I have a large bulletin board mounted above my desk. For the past few years it has been filled with things I found inspiring, or simply just beautiful to look at. This board has gradually changed and is now filled with my own images, all created in the past couple of months. Are they good? I don't know. But it's definitely uplifting to see my own work filling up the board.

Are you stuck? Just keep going.  

Journal Page Feb 2025

 

The evolution of ideas

Perhaps I'm a creature of habit, or maybe I have a limited imagination? However, I prefer to think that I am persistent in my pursuit of working with an idea until I create something that satisfies my imagination and pushes my boundaries of creativity.

2017 was a devastating year for me. My husband had a major stroke, and my world changed significantly. However, I used art to pull me through the darkest of times and worked on several projects that allowed me to express my emotions and frustrations in a visual way.

One project was during the year 2018. I took photographs and then wrote a verse to pair with the image.

One of my favourites was I Had a Dream:

I Had a Dream, 2018

I reach for the light

but the stars

have fallen

and lay submerged

glittering their promise

like diamonds

beneath the sea

The image is a simple double exposure with no further editing.

During the early stages of the pandemic, I spent a lot of time improving my photo editing skills and started to create digital collages...images composed of elements from many different photographs merged into one. Last year, 2023, I revisited the verse I wrote in 2018 and decided to create another image using this photo collage method. The Stars Have Fallen was the result:

The Stars Have Fallen, 2023

This image was created with elements from four or five photographs. The background is a photo of the side of an abandoned car! To be frank, I prefer my original image, the double exposure photograph.

Fast forward to today, when I watched a video on YouTube made two years ago by an artist in the UK. Mrs Bertimus, episode 4  I discovered her work and YouTube channel several weeks ago and was quite intrigued by her artistic style. So haunting and beautiful. Every few days, I choose one of her older videos and watch them. This particular video shows how she created her image If The Stars Fell Out Of The Sky. Oh my, be still my heart! Her painting visually captures what I was trying to say with my verse from 2018. 

I have contacted her and fingers are crossed that I am able to purchase a print of her image (her website says she ships only to UK and US). Edited to note: she kindly sent me a print, and has added shipping to Canada on her website.

And...I am motivated to work yet again on creating a new image for my verse I Had A Dream. Maybe version 3 is in my future.

I reach for the light

but the stars

have fallen

and lay submerged

glittering their promise

like diamonds

beneath the sea

Note to myself: keep trying!

Building a Composite Image

Ride the Gator, 2024

I often have to supply an artist statement and struggled with writing one. This is the current way I describe my process:

Using my photographic library to illustrate visions I have in my mind, I include elements from many different photographs to make a composited image that is open to the viewer's interpretation. Predominantly using elements of nature, I create painterly and surreal pieces that deal with a range of subjects to help promote emotional healing. 

Quite a mouthful.

Basically, it boils down to this:

Something triggers an idea in my mind. It could be a dream (as in the case of Ride the Gator, above. More on that if you keep reading) or it could be a concept that I'm struggling with, developing a theme I want to work with, etc.

Once I come up with my idea, I decide on a setting and take a look through my photo library for something suitable. I build the image from the background, adding and subtracting details as I go. 

Ride the Gator started with a dream I had two years ago.  I had been diagnosed with lung cancer, a real shocker as I had never smoked and they found the cancer quite by accident, and I was waiting for surgery. The dream was so vivid, I wrote in down in my workbook the next morning:

After my surgery and recuperation, the idea of creating a "riding the alligator" image never left me. However, my artistic drive seemed to leave me for quite some time and I felt unable to work with photographs. The idea transferred to my 2023 workbook, then my 2024 workbook, and finally came to fruition in February.

I started with the background and created it with several layers using elements from different photographs:

I added a moon from another image, created some stars, and blended them to get to this point:

Next came the alligator. I purchased this alligator on Amazon in 2022 and photographed it in September of that year. Then he sat on my shelf, and the photos sat on my computer, waiting patiently until 2024. I took photos from many angles, and you can see by the one I chose to use that the photos were quite terrible:

I flipped the gator and inserted him into the image:

Now, who was going to ride the gator? I tried a couple of things...a ceramic dog, a real dog, and settled on a raven. The balloons were added while giving the first rider a trial:

 

Satisfied with the raven, I added some layers of texture and colour, and fiddled with the lighting and position of the balloons for the final result:

Ride the Gator

The whole process takes quite some time, usually some time working at the computer and searching for images to use, then a lot of thinking time, then back to the computer for changes and tweaking. Sometimes images get abandoned, with me not knowing how to "fix" them, but this one was smooth sailing. Probably because I had a specific idea in my mind.

Is it a strange image? Probably to most people. Am I happy with it? You bet! It was worth the two year wait to create.

Minimalism vs Maximalism

Minimalist versus Maximalist

 

I am intrigued by home design, and confide that I used to be an addict of the many home renovation programs on HGTV. I recorded the shows, and most often just watched the beginning and the end...skipped through all the middle parts...to see the "before" and "after". I have become quite tired of the repetition and similarity of all the programs and seldom watch anymore. I do, however,  subscribe to a couple of home tour channels on YouTube. I prefer the "real people" episodes and not the designer features. Designer home tend to look the same to me. I like the comfortableness of the thrift store, antique store sourced homes.

How does home design relate to the artistic process, you ask? The extremes in home design are minimalism and maximalism. I love watching homes where maximalists live. Not hoarders, but people who collect things they love and fill up their spaces. I would love to spend time visiting those places and hearing the stories behind the collections. But I can't live like that. I lean towards a comfortable-to-me amount of things that other people may describe as more minimalist.

My photography and art are a contrast as well. When using my camera to capture what interests me, I am definitely a minimalist. Simple subject, simple background, minimal colour. (see left, above)

When I create composited work, using elements from many different photographs and blending them together into a new piece, I am definitely a maximalist. (right, above)

Advice from professionals stress that an artist should have "a look", a portfolio should be consistent. I have often struggled with this concept and have come to the conclusion that there is room for more than one way to express myself. 

As I am currently not striving towards creating an exhibit, or looking for representation, that approach seems the right approach for me. Creating art should be fun!