I often find it necessary to leave a painting for a few days at least, especially when there's a lot of sun around.  My stone studio, while charming as hell, faces due south.  This is not good.  On a sunny day in a season of low sun, it's almost impossible to read the image through the high reflection.  So I find something else to work on and wait it out.  

Only now, with the high shine gone,  is it possible to detail the paddlers.  The canoe on the right is the painting's focal point, so there I've placed the darkest darks and the lightest lights.   Jim's white hat gleams, contrasting with the shadows on his face and the faintly seen blues of his shirt;  the red of the canoe is so dark as to be almost brown.  The canoe paddling behind, with Brian and Jon, contrasts with the background but less so than does the first canoe with Jim and Moose.

There are a few adjustments to be made to the foreground water, where the lighter sky is reflected, and to the range of hills, but Ugly D is beginning to grow up.  She's "Coming into View."

I don't know about you but I am plagued by "earworms"  (the term that the Japanese give to those snippets of melody and sometimes lyrics which circulate endlessly in your brain).  This week I've been treated to at least a hundred rounds of "Grandfather's Clock."  If you can overlook the literary conceit that the clock was his doppelgänger or Siamese twin, the song does explore the idea that our possessions age along with us and in that sense we share a common history.  I came to realize this when we were clearing out my dad's family home in the prairies.  Nobody else was interested in the old stuff so I packed it up and brought it home;  for me, it resonates with meaning and memory.

Thus it came about that, because my teenage aunts sold war bonds during World War II, I am the proud possessor of a red apron with "Miss Canada" emblazoned on it, as well as a jaunty navy cap.  They nicely show off my clown nose, which also appears every Halloween.  I also have bronze blocks with the Keele family crest reversed on them.  I suppose that if I were in the habit of sealing letters with wax they would come in mighty handy too.  Then there is my dad's ruby glass cup, with his name and his birthdate engraved on it.  Because I treasure it, I store it away safely so, again, not much use.

Speaking of useless artifacts,  I have both my uncle's wooden hat form and a wooden laste  (although no-one in the family does or ever did make shoes), not to mention my maternal grandmother's tiny wedding shoes, made of white kid and elegantly beaded.  I keep the latter mainly because of my mother's description of having worn them when she was a little girl playing dress-up; unfortunately, they drew the attention of her older brothers, who saw fit to lassoo her and run her through the pasture.  No damage but to pride.  She had a delicious temper and I relish picturing the aftermath.   Let's just say that the boys lived to regret it.

Grandpa's clock, however, is most closely approximated by our house as a whole.  We have left our mark on every surface here, and know which stair will creak and which radiator will clang as the heat comes back up in the morning. We have no desire to leave it.  Occasionally I have a dream in which we have sold it and moved away.  The new place is fine and loaded with bathrooms, but my heart aches and it is a relief to wake up.  We put our souls into this old house and it shares its soul with us.

 Yup, I was right.  She's a stinker.  Today was overcast until a few minutes ago but I, the crazy optimist, began the final glazes anyway.  As predicted, the tonal shifts were so subtle as to be M.I.A. at times.  That, combined with the fact that she's at the ugly duckling stage, has led to the kind of painting session where I end up with paint on my nose and a bucket of frustration.  Like every other artist, I move in to peer and out to scan, toggling values constantly.    The reds are still predominant, but milky blues are at least beginning to make their presence felt.  It might necessitate leaving this babe to settle down for a few days.  When the shine dies down, it's much easier to make correct judgments.

I don't even want to start the detailing of the canoeists until I can go in with a tiny brush.

So I shall move over to the second "Above the Credit."  Jon and I were walking last week just before dusk and I was reminded why autumn makes us shiver with delight:  on a sunny day it's the orange of the leaves against the blue of the sky;  later, at dusk, (as it is in the shot I took), the leaves look yellow against the purple banks across the river.  In both cases, complementary colours perform their usual magic of making the lighter colour POP.  

​And I need a title for the duckling.  Any ideas?

There's a scene I've been dying to paint -- a shot on a canoe trip.  It is early morning and the world is misty blue, with forested hills falling away in the background.  The water is all softnesses too;  only the two canoes stand out against these soft blues.  How could it be anything but a joy to paint?

It was only when I got down to work yesterday that it struck me:  98% of the painting will reside in the same three values, all of which are in the low scale.  Hmmm.  More easily said than done.  High key painting is easier in this regard, because you might misjudge a value and still pull the thing off because of the high contrast.  This baby, on the other hand, necessitates really careful sequencing so that the hills recede rather than looking confused.

So yesterday I toned a 24 x 24 and laid in the value foundation.  I am shooting for the relative values by tweaking the combinations of white and burnt umber.  I'm not worrying too much about the canoes or their occupants (one of whom is Jon, though only I would know that).  They are problems to be solved another day.  The issue at hand is staging the background, which consists of four ranges of forest, all of which are soft blues.  I hope you can find them already.  

​I'm starting to scare myself.  Tomorrow - the beginning of the colour foundation and the blues will begin to show themselves.  Wish me luck.

It could be said that I am a born-and-bred movie-goer. I come by this honestly. My father, as a young teacher in Saskatchewan, would take the train into Winnipeg for the school holidays and stay with his aunt and cousins so that he could see every film in town. Literally. He would start with an early show (sometimes as early as 10) and either stay to watch a different feature or go a few doors down to see something else. And repeat. He said he could fit in five on a good day if he mapped it in advance. This did not seem unreasonable to me. In fact, all I felt was admiration and envy.

Later, when Dad had a family and was living in the city, taking Mom and me to the show was a sacred weekly ritual. The aircraft business still worked a five-and-a-half day week and Saturday afternoons were spent on the golf course, but Friday nights were devoted the movies from the time I was an infant. As soon as we finished eating, we would walk to the theatre and plunk ourselves down in front of what was usually a silver screen. We might arrive at any point in the first film of the double-header. When that point was reached again, hours later, we got up and left.

It didn't strike me until years later that this was an unusual practise. I was on the phone with a boy while we looked at the movie listings in the newspapers. We agreed on a likely show and Bill asked, "What time does it start?" I replied, "What difference does that make?" A long pause ensued. Turned out that mostly everybody else began at the beginning and ended at the end. Who knew? And what was the fun of figuring out what might happen next if you already had all of the foreshadowing clues. Conventional patrons didn't know how much mystery they sacrificed to custom.

Of course there were some challenging sections. The film about Martin Luther was a bit of a stretch for a five-year-old but the theatre walls referenced a three-dimensional North African city complete with balconies and indoor lights so I could pretend what might be happening there. Despite the helpful surroundings at the Uptown, however, my absolutely favourite theatre was The Park, which boasted a crying room with piped-in sound, a plate-glass viewing window and big comfortable chairs. I sometimes brought the dog and he and I enjoyed many a movie together there.

I don't think I'll be in many more film theatres. Willing to walk on broken glass to see Benedict Cumberbatch's Hamlet, I bought a ticket for a simulcast and went early for a good seat. The theatre was sold out. Benedict was brilliant. I was less dazzled by whoever brought the tuna sandwich or the woman who sat beside me, crackling plastic as she tried to sneak candy out of her purse, or the person behind me with the bronchial cough. As usual, the volume was ear-splitting; I have a theory that the sound levels are set by young guys who have already rendered themselves prematurely deaf. So next time, we shall stream, rent or watch at home; dogs welcome!

My mother knew how to laugh.  Her mouth would open, her shoulders shake;  sometimes her eyes would run.  She particularly loved to be around merry people.  She and my dad were a great match in this way, as in many others.  For one, he instantly recognized humour.  Apparently his presence at the local movie theatre was unmistakeable because he always caught the joke first and started to laugh, alerting everybody else to what was coming, as well as to where he happened to be sitting.  Apparently I have something of a loud laugh too.  

One of my favourite memories is of the day my mother (my mother!) talked me into skipping university so that we could go to see "Mary Poppins" the day it opened.  Luckily we comprised the entire audience because the two of us laughed till our stomachs ached.  When we left, the manager dryly commented, "Hope everybody else likes it that much."

Dad had one skill, however, which Mom and I lacked.  He could tell a joke.  Mom was hopeless.  She had a tendency to start with the punchline and work backwards:  "Bill, what was that joke about Pope Sicola?"  Remembering that Mom's approach was faulty, I work hard at sequencing some joke I have just heard and really loved, but rarely get to the end without having missed some detail essential to the point.  So I am going to write one of my favourites down.  Here.  Now.  And I don't have to post it until Jon has checked it for completeness.  Here goes:

Starting to doubt his wife's hearing and not wanting to insult her, Harry went to the family doctor and asked for strategies to determine whether she had hearing loss.  The doctor, remembering that Harry and Martha lived in a long ranch house, suggested that Harry go to the room farthest from the kitchen and call Martha.  If she didn't answer, he was to move to the next closest room and try again.  

Starting in his study that afternoon, Harry called out, "Darling, what's for supper?"  No answer.  He moved into the hall.  "Darling, what's for supper?"  Nothing.  Same at the other end of the hall.  Not even a response when he stepped into the family room adjoining the kitchen.  Finally, despairing of his wife's hearing, Harry walked up to Martha, who was at the sink, and put his arms around her.  "Darling, what's for supper?"

"For the fifth time, Harry, CHICKEN!"

I'm still working on whether the fact that my parents and my husband have all called me "an amusement" was a compliment or not.  

**By the way, thanks to all who enquired as to the state of my back.  All is well!  I'm buying stock in Robaxicet.

In my defence, let me explain.  Today was absolutely glorious weather for November.  For any month, actually.  And the siren call of the garden could be heard.  Putting a garden to sleep for the winter is a ritual I love, although some years it has been done to the tune of mitts and a tuque.  But I'm busy tomorrow and seasonal temperatures are returning along with rain, so today had to be the day. 

Naturalizing the tableland behind the house has turned me into a leaf miser.  While the City will come and vacuum up leaves hauled out to the front street, autumn leaves are too precious to give away.  So I drag them from the patio and the driveway into our young forest, where they obligingly protect the English Ivy and the ostrich ferns over winter while turning themselves into crumbly rich mulch by spring, thus liberating us from watering during the dry spells. ( Dirty secret: sometimes I even cruise leafy neighbourhoods in the fall and shovel unwanted leaves into the back of the Prius.  Bet you too do some things you wouldn't have predicted as a ten-year-old.)

After redistributing the leaves, I crawled down the curving pathway Jon created to lead to the ravine.  I should have weeded it months ago.  But the ivy clippings could be planted in the perennial bed, so that was the next job.  I sure hope they do better than the echinacea seedlings which I transplanted last week.  Disturbed ground seems to inspire Grand Theft Auto in squirrels, who assume that it must conceal something edible and desirable that a competitor has hidden and that they themselves deserve.  So after I replanted the echinacea, I stamped hard on it with both feet.    

Then it seemed like a good idea to drag the ten foot ladder over to the far side of the house and climb up onto the roof to wash the bedroom windows.  Somehow I got back down too.  At that point I checked my watch.

Seven solid hours had passed.  My happy little brain might have been oblivious, but my back was no longer speaking to me.   Luckily I can occasionally appease it with extra-strength Robaxicet by pretending that it is green and white candy.  So while the garden has been put to bed for its long winter sleep,  I think someone will have to do the same for me tonight.

(This clumsy little watercolour was one of my first paintings.  It reminds me of how stark the house looked at the time -- a stone farmhouse without a foundation planting to be seen. A blank canvas!)

It occurred to me today as, on my hands and knees, I washed the squashed blueberries off the kitchen floor, that housework is only noticeable in its absence; had he visited here, Hamlet would have said "more honoured in the breach than in the observance."   My Beloved can live in perfect harmony with a pile of clothes on the chair, the detritus of a fly-tying marathon on the hardwood in his study, and every species of footwear scattered (sometimes in pairs) throughout the three floors.  His version of "unbearable mess" would be more likely constituted by a calculus lesson which is imperfectly clear.  However, as one who is plagued by mostly visual disturbances, I have not reached that state of nirvana where they don't bother me, despite my best efforts to ignore them and paint.  Housework is the hag that rides me.  

​This would be fine if I were wed to Spartan simplicity.  I read about one woman, an engineer, who decades ago constructed her entire household to be washable:  a flick of the switch and the house transformed into what must have been an early version of an automatic carwash.  Even granting that one could handle the issue of where to be during a wintertime wash cycle,  I think this approach still unlikely in the average home.  Slippery, for one thing. And even as one who likes stainless steel, I can't imagine a home populated by cool metal, without a range of colours and textures.  Most of us hyper-visuals (aka artists) particularly love the change of seasons. Right now the coming of winter is making me crave the warmth of glowing surfaces, hand-woven rugs, and the fireplace alight.  These seasonal adjustments will arrive slowly, as I fit my mind around the end of autumn.  Stuff will go away and different stuff will emerge.  All will need dusting.

​Even the paintings which conjure warm spaces will re-emerge.  After all, one can't spend one's entire life under a bed.

Believe it or not, I have tried for my whole life to blend in.  For example,  I had no previous plan to score on our own basket when I found myself in possession of the basketball during a high-school game,  Nor did I choose the turquoise Volvo.  And I had absolutely no intention of marrying someone that much younger.

The only arena in which I unerringly blend is on the canvas.  I cannot stop myself and I am not alone in this, as artist friends have uttered the same plaint.  This unfortunately means that we cannot be true Canadian artists.  John David Anderson, a talented painter in the Group of Seven tradition,  gave a wonderful workshop several weeks ago in which he stressed brush-strokes - loaded brush, short strokes, and definition.  I honestly gave it my best shot, but it was hopeless.  I cannot resist lengthening the stroke and blurring the difference.

Thus it came about that my version of the subject matter (remote snowbank sculpted by the wind and lit by daylight)  entailed so much colour-morphing that not only the season but the hour was unclear.  I had wandered away down a colour path of my own choosing.  John's wry critique was "Congratulations, Z'Anne:  the tones are well integrated but you've painted a night scene."  

See?   I might argue that it was more like dusk but that is splitting hairs.  He was so bang on that we all burst into laughter.  Oh, well.  Back to the blending primer.  

But while we're on the subject of Canadian Impressionism, I've been enjoying the huge new overview by Prakash, which my brother gave me for Christmas.  One of my favourite painters is Clarence Gagnon, especially his later work.  Have a look at the painting of the ice harvest with the red-blanketed horse (ice harvesting was a favourite subject)  if you want to see colour, composition, and life!  Notice lack of blending.