The Annual Juried Christmas Exhibit and Sale at the Kootenay Gallery of Art opens Nov 14th at 7pm, and runs until December 24th 2014. I’m excited to be participating this year, and even created ten new Mixed Media paintings for the event! All of which are on display and available for purchase in the gallery’s main space during the exhibit.

If you are in the Castlegar area do feel free to pop by and check out my new pieces in person, plus a wide variety of work by talented local artisans! Here is the event info:

What: ‘Christmas at the Gallery’
When: November 14th through December 24th (opening Nov 14th at 7pm!)
Where: Kootenay Gallery of Art (120 Heritage Way, Castlegar BC)

For more info please contact myself or the Kootenay Gallery directly.

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I’m super excited to share that my Pet Art Cards are now on display and available for purchase at Sleep Rover Doggie Hotel & Daycare in Calgary Alberta! These greeting cards feature a selection of my pet portrait paintings, and are blank inside so are perfect for any occasion (more pix & details coming shortly!).

About Sleep Rover:

Sleep Rover is a local dog kennel which features an open concept style (meaning there are no crates, so puppies get to lounge stress-free wherever they please!). They are greatly involved in local animal rescue groups, and are all around rad people from my experience (and everyone I’ve ever talked to about them actually!). In addition to their daycare & grooming services, they also have a boutique which features various doggie related items including: food, treats, toys, clothing & booties, collars, and much more! They also feature fun seasonal items throughout the year too. They are located at 99 Skyline Crescent NE, so feel free to stop by and take a gander at what they have in store.

For more info check out their website at: www.sleeprover.ca

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A good friend from high school contacted me about doing a custom painting for his & his fiance’s new home. They are avid travellers, and have been all over the globe! The photo he sent me for this painting project in particular was from a Safari they were on in 2013:

“The picture was taken at Tarangire National Park in Tanzania, Africa. It was our last day of Safari and it was, by far, the largest elephant herd we saw of the trip, maybe 25-30 elephants. Pretty amazing.”

I was so excited to get to paint this for them! And just last week the painting was finalized and went home with them 🙂

Here are some detail shots of the painting:

gradient blue sky

detail of tiny elephants in the background

close up

A full image of the painting can be viewed in the ‘Clouds & Scenery’ gallery of my Portfolio page.

If you would like a unique painting created just for you, please get in touch with me about my Custom Art options!

Yesterday, Cefa & Kani’s portrait was given as a surprise birthday gift from wife to husband. Their special kitties are both seniors, and have been through so much:

“These cats are 15 now and both ill with different things so this (painting) will be wonderful. They were our babies before we had our two legged babies and emigrated with us from England.” 

Since it’s usually tricky to get photos of multiple pets posing together, we combined two photos to create this painting. The photo we selected for Cefa (the black kitty) shows her unique little ‘kink’ at the tip of her left ear, which her mum just loves.

I was told that the surprise gift was a big hit & they even sent me a pic of Kani posing next to the painting (Cefa was camera shy but did give her approval they said 🙂 )

Ben is a 14 year old Jack Russell Terrier, and last week his painting went home! I just love his cheeky expression here – inquisitive and alert lol. So cute.

His mom was given a Gift Certificate from a friend last Christmas, which she used towards this painting of Mr Benjamin. Just a reminder that if you’d ever like to surprise a loved one with a painting, but don’t quite have access to photos of theirs for reference – a Gift Certificate is a handy alternative! Please get in touch with me for more details 🙂

Happy Thanksgiving all!! I hope you’re having a lovely weekend <3

Recently my husband and I went on a quick jaunt to Montreal – and even though our time there was short, at the top of my ‘to do’ list was to go to at least one art store. In Calgary we do have an awesome selection of art supply stores, but at the same time I’m always keeping an eye out for new & exciting products that I may not have seen before. Art store = my ‘candy store’ lol. Anyway, while in town I managed to get to three art stores, yay! Here is my review of these Montreal art stores:

British Blue Print

(1831 rue Ste-Catherine Ouest)

My favourite colour is blue, my husband is British… plus I’ve always found blueprints cool? (nerd) lol – anyway, so I really couldn’t help but check out this shop after finding it in a google map search. It’s tucked in on a busy strip down town, but within walking distance from the McGill area where we were staying. The shop size was on the boutique side, but had most paint supplies you’d need. They covered most popular brands, and had everything a beginner would need, plus some more specialty end items. Lots of street art supplies though, so if that’s your bag, then this is your place!! Ps – check out the fun exterior art!

Their website is: www.centredartbbp.com

Kama Pigments

(7442 Rue Saint-hubert)

Oh my goodness I was in love with this place the moment I walked in. I’ve always been drawn to ‘olden times’ type things, and this place was styled after a turn of the century general store. Floor to ceiling shelving (with a fun built-in ladder to reach the upper items), tin ceiling tiles (I’ve always been a sucker for these!), and everything organized and displayed with precision. Oh. Em. Gee. And as far as the art supplies goes, they carry various high end brands, but particularly specialize in their own line of pigments and paint supplies. So if you’ve ever wanted to make your own paint, they have the raw materials for you to DIY! Which I thought was pretty exciting. Definitely a great shop for oil, acrylic and watercolor painters. In addition to paint they of course carry brushes and other items that an artist would need as well. It is a speciality shop for sure – and definitely a must see! I did buy some pigment there by the way, so I will be writing a post on that down the road 🙂

Their website is: www.kamapigment.com

DeSerres

(various locations around town)

The largest store out of the ones I visited, with the closest comparison I can think of back home would be ‘Michaels’… but better lol. There are multiple locations in the city is my understanding, and the one I went to was located in a shopping mall actually. It had a huuuge range of things from scrapbooking supplies, framing, knitting, all the way to fine art materials. Their pricing was competitive, and I quite enjoyed exploring all the different areas in store even though I was only really on the prowl for paint related items. They also had a lot of art kits for kids, so if you’d like to get the wee ones’s hands dirty too they had a lot of safe and fun art items for kids. But they have the artist grade materials covered too (Golden, Daniel Smith, Liquitex, etc), and lots in between. A good one stop shop really!

Their website is: www.deserres.ca

All in all I had a super fun time checking out what which each store had to offer, and getting unique items at each. We do hope to visit Montreal again in the future, so if you have any places there to recommend checking out (food/music/art wise) please leave a comment below, I’d love to hear!!

My husband and I just returned from a quick trip over to Montreal. Good friends of ours moved there earlier this summer, so when we were presented with an amazing deal on a flight – we jumped on it! And we’d do it again.

At first I was worried about not remembering any of my high school french, but it turns out that almost all service industry folks speak english and french which helped us out a lot! I could pick up the odd word or phrase en français, but that was it. Maybe next time I will bone up beforehand lol! Anyway…

Over the years I’ve somehow got in the habit of not bringing a camera with me, just my iPhone. So the pix are not overly great lol, but I still want to share 🙂

As soon as we arrived in Montreal we liked it there. The cab that picked us up from the airport was playing classical music… who does that? It was great, and relaxing. On the way to our friends’ place we drove by The Monteal Museum of Fine Arts, and I took a quick pic out the window to remember to go back there. We did, and it was wonderful. While there I got to stand right up close and personal to paintings by Picasso, Dali, Boudin, Renoir, Monet, and so many more. I could have stared at them for hours. I was the only one there looking at the paintings from funny angles, because I was trying to see the texture/brush strokes better. I’m sure I looked odd, but I have no regrets lol. Anyway, it was a very cool feeling to be there with such famous pieces – can’t really describe it.

We also couldn’t get enough of the giant glass sculpture outside of the museum:

Since we were staying downtown, we pretty much walked everywhere. At the top of my husband’s wish list was to see jazz clubs, so we checked out as many as we could. Some were amazing, some not so much lol, but still very cool to see what the city had to offer music wise. At the top of my wish list was to go to art stores, and we found three which was exciting (separate post on that to come)! We climbed a huge hill to overlook the city, we wandered by an outdoor fashion show one night, and we had the best poutine ever (the rumours are true lol).

My favourite destination hands down was Jardins Nelson, which is an outdoor restaurant with plants and flowers eeeeeverywhere. It was so beautiful. AND they had a live jazz trio playing all night. Food/drinks were inexpensive compared to the swanky atmosphere, so I would highly recommend checking this place out if you are in town 🙂

There were so many highlights I could write a book lol. But in a general sense my fave aspect was all the old buildings, and all of the greenery. Almost all restaurants had planters outside (and some did inside!), most houses had gardens, and the city itself had trees and flowers all over the place. So green. So charming. Loved it. Would go back in a heartbeat.

Recently a new venue requested some business cards from me, but when I went to grab them I realized that they all said ‘acrylic on canvas’ on the front. This hadn’t been an issue before, however my new artwork includes mixed media (as well as some work on wood and paper). So, I designed and ordered new ones! 😀

Over the years I’ve had various designs of business cards (for both my Pet Portraits, and the rest of my art). My style evolves, so why shouldn’t my cards, right? It has been a while since my last card design, so I was excited to get a fresh look that reflects my newest series. 🙂

Here is the new design (front and back):

What do you think??

A couple weeks ago I got to meet a sweet little lady named Diva, a white Bull Terrier. While there, I managed to snap some ‘Animal Doppelganger’ pix of her posing next to her portrait that her mom had commissioned me to paint. I caught some pix of her sniffing, sitting, and a lot of her waiting patiently for treat bribes lol! These were three of my faves:

When Diva’s mom contacted me to create a pet portrait for her, she lent me a special book full of photos to reference for the piece. She wanted me to surprise her with my pic selection, which was super fun! The photo I went with included a bead necklace with metal heart pendant detail, and it was really fun to paint! And the red background really pops with it too! Love it.

Here is a photo of Diva’s finished painting:

This is actually the second time I got to make art featuring Ms Diva!

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