Springtime Filled With Autumn

Summer always leads to autumn.

That’s true isn’t it? I can count on this.

In every year there will always be a summer and there will always be an autumn. Besides the other two seasons, winter and spring, is there anything else that always happens?

Oh sure: daytime and night and with these on average we get 365 such experiences in a given year. That’s always the way it happens.

The cool thing about painting, being an artist, is the opportunity to create an autumn experience anytime: my spring can be filled with autumn if I feel a need for a walk in a yellow wood. Time of the year really doesn’t matter in my studio. Nor does the time of day.

Note: this painting, “In A Yellow Wood” will be seen at “Limitless Expressions”, an international exhibition presented by VividArts Network at the Vogue Studio Gallery in Toronto, Ontario: July 19 to 29, 2012.

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Jim Pescott is an international contemporary artist who lives and creates in Calgary, Alberta. To contact Jim about his paintings, or a project you have in mind, please phone 403-870-0591 or email him at info@jimpescott.com. Jim’s website is http://www.jimpescott.com

Living With Art

For most of us, sleep consumes a large portion of life.

When we sleep, most of us dream much like we are at the movies but without the popcorn.

When we awake, the show ends and life resumes. There may be day dreams at times, but the awake time is often filled with functions and pragmatics. The theatre of our awake life seldom performs as when we wish ourselves a “good night”.

Can we introduce things to make our day something more? For example: the work of an artist who blends “her classical artistic training with spirituality and healing energy merged into paintings” could be an option. Basically, this is about owning original art: a painting that speaks deeply to you. But not just a painting as there are so many options involving art and what touches you personally. What YOU feel is what really matters in looking at art that provides you nourishment in the spaces where you live and where you work.

Live with art that nourishes you always. The nourishment can be “sprituality and healing” but it can be anything else that matters to you.

Another artist writes , “When thinking of Art one should not exclusively think of museums or art galleries, art should be a integral part of our LIVING SPACE, OFFICE SPACE and inspire our daily lives with colorful and original objects. Living with Art is in itself an Art”.  Include original art in the spaces where we live and where we work.

Don’t walk away from art you love, bring it into your life.

If you’ve been “living with art”, what are your experiences. Please, please share with us.

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Jim Pescott is an international contemporary artist who lives and works in Calgary, Alberta. To connect with Jim about his original paintings, or a project you have in mind, call 403-870-0591, or email hime at paintwithdots@shaw.ca. His website is http://www.jimpescott.com

Painting On The Fly

I’m now home from about six weeks of travel. The journey took me to Toronto, Ontario, Vancouver, British Columbia, Ferrara, Italy, and a wonderful ten days in Arkansas. Most of the journey involved exhibitions with my paintings but I painted lots while travelling as well.

Painting on the fly makes for some fun logistics. Finding art supplies is often an adventure. And managing canvases on a journey back to my studio is a primary need. Painting like this also means working in varying climatic conditions: the impact of humidity on the impact on drying time of water based paint is interesting.

Being in new locations brings insights and experiences that inevitably transcribe to the canvas. Sunlight, and shadows, vary so much from place to place. And the trees are different: where I live the trees are mostly poplars and their variations. In Arkansas I never saw an aspen. And what would Italy be without the cypress. Here’s an interesting link to images of many, many trees of the world to share just a little of what exists when one travels.

While I paint lots of trees, there are often other subjects within the theme. So reflect on how buildings differ in places like Toronto, Vancouver, Italy and Arkansas. In Italy I was especially drawn to people.

To paint when I travel means I may not see two dozen tourist highlights over seven days: it does mean I’ve engaged the places I’ve seen in very intimate ways.

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Jim Pescott is an international contemporary artist who lives and creates in Calgary, Alberta. His studio-gallery is available to view by appointment: please call 403-870-0591 or email paintwithdots@shaw.ca. Jim’s website is http://www.jimpescott.com

 

The Year On The Coin

The date on the coin I’m holding is 1981.

So. .  . what was I doing in 1981?

Here’s the game: look at the date on a coin and ask yourself what you were doing that year. Something, or even a list of things, will reach out from your memory. And sometimes you have an idea you were doing something but you aren’t entirely sure it was exactly during the year on the coin. This too may lead you into another adventure.

Try it. Look at the date on a coin and ask yourself what you were doing that year. Your memory is like a diary and random coin dates from a pocket full of change will trigger much more that you might expect. (Personally, I’ve been able to remember things in response to coin dates back to as early as age three. How about you?)

Then there’s the unknown: those dates prior to your time on this earth. What might you have been doing then? Just let the imagination wonder a little and don’t worry as it is all meant to be fun. An alternative might be to ask yourself about sports and politics during those prior years.

One thing I do know is memories generally fascinate us: we try to remember things all the time.

My clients often bring memories to be painted: people and places that mean so much to them. Maybe a date on a coin will trigger something like this for you.

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Jim Pescott is an international contemporary artist who lives and creates in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. To contact Jim directly about his paintings, or about a project you think about, please phone 403-870-0791 or email Jim at paintwithdots@shaw.ca Jim Facebook page is http://facebook.Jimpescottpaintingsindots Visit his website at http://www.jimpescott.com  

Windows In The Trees

Looking through trees it seems there are windows allowing me a view. And there are tiny eyes looking out from the trees as though windows allow them a view as well. On both sides, we simply watch.

Is a big part of life about watching through windows?

We “people watch” as though people are on the other side of the glass: perhaps they too watch us. And please don’t tell me you resist the opportunity, at dusk while walking in the dusk light of the evening, to look through the windows of homes where the lights are on and the curtains are open. Facebook seems a window place. Weather, too, seems a window moment: we watch the weather from our kitchen window. Television augments the window experience with an entire weather providing a window on meteorology anywhere in the world.

Perhaps the most interesting window of all: when we frame a work of art.

 

Upside Down Buildings

What if all buildings were upside-down? What would we call them?

So let’s do it. Let’s imagine all buildings are in fact upside-down and you just discovered this has happened. How would you feel about this: upset, amused, annoyed, interested, concerned, jazzed?

The choice is yours to accept upside-down buildings or to reject them. If you accept them there may be benefits you didn’t expect. It you reject upside-down buildings you’ve kept the status quo which is fine as rightside-up buildings seem to work pretty well.

Alright, now let’s say that actual buildings are all upside down: this is our “normal”.  And then someone constructs a downside-up building. Will you be upset, amused, annoyed, interested, concerned, jazzed? Will you want to keep the status quo?

Art can be like this.

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Jim Pescott is an international contemporary artist living and creating in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. To contact Jim directly about his paintings, or a project you think about, please phone 403-870-0591 or email Jim at paintwithdots@shaw.ca. Enjoy his Facebook page at http://facebook.com/jimpescottpaintingsindots Jim’s website is http://www.jimpescott.com

 

Not Ever Been There

I’ve been somewhere recently but I’ve not ever been there.

You’ve done this, right? Places in your thoughts like a vacation spot you dream about or maybe a new place to live that sounds wonderful. You have an image based on something but it isn’t based you having been there. Where have you been but you’ve not ever been there?

For me, as I work on a canvas, I’m often taken to see a place but I’ve never been there. I paint lots from real sources, real places, but there are options and eventually there is interpretation. It is something like looking at a black and white picture in a book and not knowing what the real colours are or what exisits beyond any edge of the image: with this, creativity awakens.

So I’ve been there but not ever been there. Every new canvas is so exciting.

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Jim Pescott lives and creates in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He is an international contemporary artist: he recently exhibited in the Salon 2011 held by the Societe Nationale des Beaux-art in Paris at the Carrousel du Louvre. http://www.jimpescott.com   http://facebook.com/jimpescottpaintingsindots

Coffee Talk

Over coffee, at the kitchen table, Morse shared, “If someone can draw a rock they can draw anything.”

We weren’t talking about rocks and we weren’t talking about drawing but it didn’t seem to matter to Morse. He just thought it should be said.

Many years later, as we sat with our coffee, there were some rocks on the kitchen table and Morse was drawing them. I watched. Moments like this say so much about how lives happen. How many rocks in the garden do we see but decline the opportunity to spend time with them.

Morse never said why he waited so long but it was very clear drawing rocks had been on his mind for some time. The wonderful part is Morse finally gathered some rocks to nourish the artist he held within.

Do you know stories like this?

 

 

A Rainbow Landed

What does a painting look like before it gets to the canvas?

Close your eyes and imagine a rainbow splashing down somewhere, having missed the proverbial “pot of gold”, and the image you have is fairly close. This photo is the real deal: an “in process” look at my palette box filled with a spectrum of musings in a bare all image of raw colours, mixed and swirled, pending application to the composition evolving on the easel. I can only speak for myself in this. I’m not suggesting other painters work the same way.

“Palette” is an interesting word. It refers to a thin board used by artists as a surface for mixing colours. Palette also refers to colours selected by the artist as revealed in a finished painting. In my case the paint is water base acrylic so I use a box-type “wet-able” palette: the colour palette is evident.

I like too that the other “palate”, found close by in the dictionary, involves much focus on the sense of “taste” these days: in my world this is always about art.

In Paris, the Musee Marmottan Monet , a must see, holds a palatable surprise. Apart from wonderful, wonderful paintings on exhibit, there is, behind glass, an actual palette board used by Claude Monet : traces of paint colour are still visible on the age darkened wood. Would seeing an artifact like this be a thrill for you?

 

Love Affair

 “You have a love affair with aspens.”

I heard the words and immediately felt so guilty. I’d not ever thought about aspens as an object of love but I knew it was true.

Right now, in my studio, I’m painting a group of seven canvases that include a total of seventy-five aspen trees around the theme “In A Yellow Wood”. Proof enough. Who would do this if they didn’t love aspens?

Aspens are so interesting. Each aspen is an individual: it looks nothing like its neighbour aspen as a douglas fir would. Every aspen is its own shape and this, together with the scars it displays, relates the individual life it lives. How like people this seems.  Perhaps each aspen I paint is a portrait.

What is the tree that you love?

The aspens in this painting are on a hillside that slopes toward an escarpment. They endure a nearby roadway, certainly gravity and people who brush against them. Of course the raw elements of various weather systems throughout the year are a significant endurance as well. This group of aspens seems much like a family as they reach to each other and touch.