K.D.Lang’s version of “Hallelujah” is my absolute favourite and periodically I take to YouTube to look for her other performances.  Of course  I went down the rabbit hole and ended up listening to an old interview as well.  I’m glad I did because in it she said something very wise:  “If you just celebrate the fact that you get to be creative, it’s a totally different ballgame than if you look at it as a means to an end.”  Yeats said “Who can tell the dancer from the dance.”  I am a painter if and when I paint.  End stop.


I was assured that retirement meant that every night was Friday Night and every day was Saturday.  There’s a happy truth in that.  But I’ve been noticing that life has been getting busier and busier again.   I am still the kid who did her homework first.  Don’t get me wrong:  I actually like housekeeping and gardening and entertaining and outdoor activities and running errands.  But add in art shows and publishing a weekly blog which purports to be about art (even when it’s not) and I realize that gradually Iess and less actual painting occurs.  When it does happen, too often time’s winged chariot is chasing a deadline,  and many years ago I promised myself and my blood pressure to be smarter than that.  I know you understand.


While I may or may not occasionally post, I will most certainly maintain the gallery (zannekeele.com) and its link to the blog if you wish to reread anything.  I will also finish cataloguing the subjects within the archive.  With any luck, the gallery will contain more work in progress than there has been during this last year.   


So I will say a warm good-bye and and send sincere thanks to all of you who have shared this journey.  While it occasionally felt like giving birth to an elephant, on the whole writing has been such a joy.  Be well.  z

Probably because my mom, a sometime painter, paid attention to beauty, I did too.  Before I turned two,  I apparently sat on my aunt’s lap and pointed to every rhinestone button on the front of her dress, muttering “pretty, pretty, pretty….”.  There were dozens — Aunt Bess was built.  And that little bald head of mine was already advancing towards the future.  Bright lights and subtle darks, reflections and refractions still draw my eye.  It was an easy progression to a love of leaded and beveled glass, and before you know it, I had fallen hard for stained windows.   Our windows are home  to at least a dozen of them, where they have “sparked joy” for decades.

So learning to paint was practically unavoidable.  I realized pretty quickly that I was a studio painter.  Plein air almost killed me.  If it wasn’t the wind blowing my canvas off, it was some bloody hailstorm or the unhappy observations that shadows moved faster than I could paint!  So, because I am a sometime field naturalist and in love with nature, it became obvious that my camera would have to accompany me everywhere.  The once-in-a-lifetime shot wasn’t just going to freeze-frame itself!  

But nothing in life worth doing necessarily goes well and herein follows my sorry chronicle of doomed cameras.  The pre-digital ones were the most challenging.  You never knew what you had until it was much too late to take a second, better shot.  Then there were out-and-out catastrophies like Jon’s stepping into a steep hole in the middle of the Grand River the night before we left town to go to my mother’s university graduation(yes, you read that right).  I found out about this only because next morning I saw that he’d taken the time to remove all of the salmon flies from their cases so they wouldn’t rust, but had completely forgotten to take the soaked camera out of his fishing vest.  He’s lucky to be alive, as is his friend to whom he lent my next camera.  Unfortunately within it was an unfinished roll of a Beaver Valley birch forest carpeted with trillium which vaporized when Moose  opened the (MY) camera to put his own roll in.  Twenty years later, I have yet to successfully replace those shots taken at a particular time of year in a particular place.

The advent of digital photography simply extendeded my catalogue of camera disasters.  One was smashed when an aggressive dog lunged at Jewell.  This happened just shortly after she and Jon had both been bitten by a pit-bull type who had come through a fence to attack them. Jon had gotten the worst of it and had just attended a wedding reception rigged up with an IV Pump. When it looked like a new attack was imminent, I promptly dropped my camera onto the concrete and, with ducked for cover.

The next camera was greatly superior.  I have a general rule, however, which I violated:  never buy technology which is smarter than you are.   For years I walked around with the instructions booklet in my pocket .  That Canon EOS took terrific photos until the moment I stepped right off the sideboard where I had been trying  to get the perfect shot of a large painting.  Don’t ask.  I walked away but the Canon never forgave me, expressing its disgust by releasing its lens lock at inopportune moments. Well, it was too heavy anyway.  

All hail the invention of devices which are light but take good pictures!  Even if it did nothing else, my beloved iPad would still make me happy.  It was basically intuitive and  I could immediately do closeups, long shots on the river and videos of the rhodos.  It was followed by my iPhone, which takes brilliant pictures despite me.  But a funny thing happened.  Periodically one or the other of them would produce a truly splendid shot with unusual effects, but ones I could never replicate.  I decided to put it down to magic.

Then, about a month ago while down in the park, I removed my sunglasses and actually donned my reading glasses.  Didn’t I notice a category called “Portrait”  so I gave it a shot, so to speak.  Wow!  A tiny wheel with five teeny-weeny options showed  up.   I did’t think their descriptors werere helpful, so I just tried them one by one.  Abracadabra!   Now I know how I accidentally took the wonderful photo of the stem of bleeding heart I am currently painting.  If you want a softened background, select “Contour Light.  If it's a stark contrast between the background and a light object,  select “Spotlight” and Bob’s your uncle (if you also pay attention to the distance instructions).  ”   I should also mention that if you select "Portrait" before taking the photo, you can scroll the options after the fact. The only category that baffled me was “Stage Light” .  I googled and found this:


                StageLight is a professional lighting control app for the iPad based on Art-Net (DMX512 over IP). The software combines the classic hardware lighting console feeling with modern and intuitive user interaction design. The user interface is characterized by intelligent use of available space in combination with a huge level of flexibility.


Huh?  Let me know if you understood that because I certainly didn't.    Another post explained that it simply focuses on brightening the subject while darkening the background to absolute black.  Now was that so hard?  The writer of that first Google hit must have been a bureaucrat.

Still,  thanks to the invention of reading glasses, all has been right in my little world until I opened
the iPad this morning.   Overnight it had installed the new iPadOS.  

Everything is different in iPhoto. 

Just shoot me. 

I’m someone who likes to write to-do lists.  The unexpected has not always been my friend.  But once in a while, a surprise of a delicious sort presents itself.

I usually enter the Central Ontario Art Association juried shows and, while I normally am accepted, have never won anything bigger than an honourable mention.  Let me be clear:  ALL levels of recognition are gratefully accepted because it means that the juror “got you.”  And there’s no such thing as a “winning formula.”  Basically, all of the artists submit their idiosyncratic best with trepidation because jurors have varied tastes.  The walls are covered with excellent works.

So when it was hinted that I might want to attend the awards ceremony, I assumed it was a general invitation to the opening reception and allowed that I probably wouldn’t be able to make it, as I was entertaining overnight guests this weekend.  It seemed important to the caller, however, so I promised to try, and did in fact, arriving on time, though festooned with the hair of a highly touchable four legged guest (Cover your ears, Theodore) because we all know that I can’t keep my hands off a dog.  

When it turned out that “Sweet Melody” had won the ribbon for “Best Acrylic/Oil in Show” I was faint with delight and deeply grateful to all of those who make a show like this possible.  My beloved tried to take my picture beside the painting but I couldn’t even manage to stand up straight and might have slid down the wall just a teeny bit.  In one digital after another,  I have the same goofy expression until he finally gave up in disgust.   

Somehow I managed to discuss the painting with people who were interested in it;  they would probably describe the conversation as "She babbled for a few minutes and so we nodded."  It turned out that most thought the violinist, the dog, and the stained window had been staged ahead of time.  That was certainly the intent of the finished painting, but I assure you that it didn't happen that easily.  If you don’t believe me, check out February 18, March 19 and March 25 in the Archives.  At times it was more like planning a royal wedding than simply painting a portrait.  Let's just say that it was a huge relief to finish.  You might have caught the fireworks.

On a practical note, no painting of mine is used to being seen in the bright light of day, a scarce commodity in our old house. I might just have to drop by the gallery with a touchup brush for the edges.  On the other hand, it couldn’t more obviously be an original!