Tiny Pretty Things

Well, it's been awhile since my last post and I'm still thrashing around in my studio trying to produce some new work...it may be a long time coming but I'm keeping at it and I promise to share once there is something worthwhile. It will take time.

Meanwhile here's my annual bird Christmas card and a few other things. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season!

For our last Trading-Card session I had done some quick ink sketches of faces but found them a bit boring so decided to cover them with masks done on tracing-paper. The result is much more exciting and gave me an excuse to embellish like crazy.

The three following cards were done using the NEVR DULL method I learned from Kate Strickland in her demo article which appeared in the last issue of Ronna's publication, ATC Quarterly. I found it a lot of fun in an experimental way.

Thanks for the lesson, Kate.

And now, a word from the kitties who are still roaring around the house at seven months old.

"All the very best to you in the new year!"

With love from Samanda...

...and Bridget

More From the Past

Here are some more of my paintings that are not on my walls which people have sent for my blog. Might as well post them now because the 'new works' are slow in coming. I keep going off in different directions recently and have a lot of iffy unfinished unconnected work. I think it means either I have too much to say or nothing at all. And one of my big concerns now is ending up with a studio full of pieces that will some day be somebody else's headache. Arg-h-h-h!

O.K. I'm going now, back to the drawing-board.

'Between A Rock and A Hard Place'

I sold these two watercolours about 15 years ago and the owners were kind enough to send me these images, having discovered my blog recently. Bill took classes with me and went on to become an accomplished painter in his own right. This one is called 'Chez Minou' so of course the next one is called...

Chez Pitou'

I painted this for my sister and her family who were living in the country at the time. I included their two horses, two cats, the dog and their daughters who are now young women in their twenties. Lots of good memories. Thanks for sending this, Lynne.

What's Not On My Walls

This is me circa 1998, painting by our little pond in Chemainus. What follows is a retrospective of some of the paintings I've sold over the last thirty or so years. These are the ones I was clever enough to record; there were many others that I'll never see again but wish I could.

I'm going to take a little break from regular blogging for awhile in order to spend more time with my paints so please enjoy these images while I try to create more. And please comment, I love your comments!

'The Waterford'
This and the two next paintings were commissioned by their respective owners while we lived in Chemainus, on Vancouver Island, 'The Little Town That Did'.

Another restaurant on Willow Street...I can't remember the name any more.

'Castle Cove Inn'
A Chemainus B&B on the ocean.

'Wanda'

You could say this and the following three paintings are from my Blue Period. It's the only one done in oils. Originally I had painted her naked but decided to clothe her, it was too distracting with all the fish around.

'The Bride'
The white fish is being pursued by a posse of males all hoping to pass on their DNA.

'Enough Is Enough'
Mixed media with glazes, glitter, sequins and metal bits.

'The Way Out'
A mixed-media piece, featuring plaster, oil glazes, fabric and gold leaf, this concludes my Chemainus- oriented work.
The following images were done in Hudson during the 80's.

'Strolling'
Here's a scene from what was the Hudson Gift Shop. It has changed hands and roles many times since then.

'Red Umbrella'
Hudson nostalgia: Legg's store with a bit of Glassblowers' Cottage at left. Both just a memory.

'Is This Seat Taken?'
From the terrace at the Hudson Yacht Club.

'Churchyard Gate'
( St. James Church, Hudson.)

'Tiny Maple'
This small watercolour is part of a series I did on Rigaud Mountain, near Hudson.

'Blue and Gold'
Nothing says summer more than this. Our kids used to play in the gully near the house, building forts and fishing for pollywogs. In winter we could skate on the frozen stream.

'Narcissus'
A true nature morte subject. Dead and wizened since their Christmas forcing these narcissi inspired me to paint them in spring. I still have the bowl which was created by my friend Glenda, though some bits have broken off over the years.

'Snow Shadows'

'Red Sled'
This late afternoon scene was taken from Simon's Farm before it was sold to developers. In those days we could hire Mr. Simon to take us for a sleigh ride all around his property. We did it for Andrew and his little friends one birthday many years ago.
And so concludes my little retrospective. Bye for now.

I'm Trying to Enjoy Autumn

Maybe it's because we've had such a non-summer followed by a few glorious weeks in September then bang, a crashing descent towards winter, by-passing our usual Indian Summer over the Thanksgiving weekend but I have been feeling more melancholy these last few days. My tristesse is compounded by seeing George mow his last lawn of the season yesterday, though he is undoubtedly not unhappy about that . And then he put the mower in the shed and retrieved all the parts of the snow-blower hut, ready for assembly. He also put the lawn chairs away. And the big umbrella. And I cleaned off the cushions that have been outside all summer. And took down the hummingbird feeder. All the sad chores are being done. There are a few more to take care of but I'm still holding out for a slight warming trend so we can do them in relative comfort.

One thing that's still looking good is our pond. So here are a couple of recent shots as an attempt on my part to lighten up the mood. My mood default setting is usually hopeful and seeing the water so clear and the fish so healthy- looking gives me a lift.

A Day In the Life...Cuteness Alert!

Hey Bridget, what do you wanna do?

I dunno. I'm getting tired of watching for birds.

We could rearrange the studio...

...or maybe play this kitty classic...

...or we could play 'Linen Closet". Turn on your headlights.

Isn't it lunchtime?

Sorry, I can't wait.

I'm in the bag.

And now we must nap.

Menagerie in Montreal

O.K., summer is over and we're having a wonderful autumn so far and I know this will annoy some of you but I just did my Christmas shopping last Saturday in Montreal. Well, most of it anyway. And I did it all here. This is the Menagerie Experience....

Menagerie is part of the Beaux Arts building on the south side of Sherbrooke West.

The gardens are fabulous and designed by the owners, whom you will meet later in this post.

You go down a few steps and enter here.

Once you are inside Menagerie you feel as if you are in another world. The atmosphere is warm and relaxed with soft music in the background, (real music, not elevator) and so you slow down and take it all in. There is so much to see, a wonderful bazaar of beautiful and original things for your home or for gifts. If you visit give yourself a lot of time to look around.

This window looks out onto Sherbrooke Street.

Another window displays lamps, window hangings and elegant floor-length draperies.

Here's a wall of frames, trays, boxes and vases in leather, lacquer, metal and ceramic.

A row of silver (pewter?) birds wait to cross the road.

If it's pillows you're after this is the place! All one- of- a- kind. All gorgeous.

This pillow is all feathers.

This pillow needs to be adopted. By me.

This wall display, reflected in the green lacquered counter-top, features glass plates and paper weights by John Derian of New York, highly collectible signed pieces featuring birds, insects, animals and other whimsical subjects.

The two proprietors of this establishment are Anik and Jon, interior designers in both residential and commercial venues.

Here's Jon, looking busy. (Yes, he's my son and I'm a shameless promoter of his enterprise.)

M-M-M...I added to my collection of Margo Selby one-of-a-kind pillows from England. Her colours and patterns are delicious.

Here are the rest of my purchases...the question is, what will I give away and to whom? Another question is...what will I keep?

Sainte Anne de Bellevue...Again

As you approach Ste Anne de Bellevue one landmark stands out: the watertower. When we were kids my sister and I would argue over who saw it first as we returned from a trip out of town, driving our parents insane, but in a good way.

Last weekend my sister and her husband, Frank, drove down to visit us from Toronto. It was another of the gorgeous September weekends we've finally been enjoying. So we took one more trip down memory lane, wandering around the town of our childhood and realizing what a fine place it was to grow up in.

We start with a walk to the boardwalk to visit the Farmer's Market and choose a suitable restaurant of which there are many, all with outdoor terraces for the season. George is at the far right, waiting for us to catch up.

The market is accessible from the boardwalk or the main street.

This shot is taken from across the main street, rue Ste Anne.

Here's William, surrounded by his heavenly honey. He also sells some great goat cheeses.

Lots of lovely veggies.

This booth provided some entertainment. It appears they're sold out of produce. Just as well, it was almost closing time.

After the market we strolled along the boardwalk...

...and saw a lot of people and a lot of boats.

Some of these boats are waiting to go through the locks to the Lake of Two Mountains which is really a widening of the Ottawa River. But I suspect that many are tied up more permanently and use the canal as a venue for sun-worship and partying. It's certainly a lively spot on a beautiful day.

We walked to the end of the boardwalk to Peter's Cape Cod for a bite of lunch. Lynne and Frank look pretty happy about that.

Lynne is wondering what the people at the next table are having. She and Frank had roast beef which looked delicious. George and I had the grilled salmon, which WAS.

And of course we all descended on Ryan's house again and had our pictures taken at 25 Lamarche. Thanks, Ryan, you've been such a great host!

What's On My Walls?

The following paintings are what is sometimes referred to as 'the artist's private collection', a phrase meaning they haven't been sold yet but the artist still likes them. In this case the artist (me) has decided to hang on to them and display them on her walls. Naturally everything has a price but I really enjoyed the space I was in when I did these, they make me happy, so I'm glad they were never sold.

The first four were done without any preconceived idea of where they would end up. They began with plaster applied with a spatula, acrylic splotches randomly applied and developed further with oil glazes as the ideas began to form.

SPIES IN THE NIGHT
This is one of my all-time favourites.

WOMEN'S WORK
Another painting that just evolved.

MANY BELLS DOWN
I named it after a line from e.e.cummings' poem 'Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town'("with up so floating many bells down") simply because I liked the sound of it.

MARBLE GAME
That's what I saw at the time...maybe you see something else. It doesn't really matter.

ENIGMA
Using oil glazes and gold leaf I painted this to illustrate a poem about shattered minds. It is the only one in this group which began with a specific idea.

Sainte Anne de Bellevue---NOW

This is the neatest thing! A few weeks ago I got an e-mail regarding my blog post about the house where I grew up. It was from the present owner, Ryan Young, who teaches media studies at John Abbott CEGEP. We arranged a meeting on Labour Day weekend. The above picture shows the house as George and I walked up the hill towards it. I felt pretty excited and a tiny bit apprehensive, but as it turned out there was nothing to worry about; we had a wonderful visit and met two lovely people.

This is it. 25 Lamarche. It still looks the same and as I was to discover, much of the interior remains unchanged.

I can hardly believe it, here I am sitting on the front steps with Ryan. I was 13 the last time I sat here. (in 1956, you can do the math!) Ryan and Kate graciously showed us around. To me it was like the Twilight Zone.

Ryan is inviting us upstairs.

Here is Kate at the top. The staircase is exactly as I remember it. The painting is one of many by Ryan's Mom. There is an elephant in this one. I'd like to meet her some day and talk about art.

The old grate is still there!

The only room I never saw when I was a kid: the attic. It was not like this back then! Ryan's Mom has hung it with fabric so it looks like a Moroccan tent and was used as a loft/t.v. room. There is a ladder permanently installed to gain access but being a bit of a chicken about heights I only went half-way up to get this shot.

My old bedroom window overlooks the screened porch. The poplar trees are now HUGE.

In what used to be our dining room a music studio has evolved containing a beautifully refinished old piano and Ryan's drum kit...

...and another painting by Ryan's Mom. Creative expression abounds throughout the house.

The door from the kitchen is still the same, leading to the porch.

After our tour we sat on the screened porch, drank tea and chatted. As you can imagine there was much to discuss, to remember and to discover. One of the bonuses was Ryan's film about the history of the village, its merger with the city of Montreal and its subsequent de-merger. George and I purchased his DVD called THE VILLAGE RESISTS and watched it when we got home, a perfect finish to this extraordinary day. I would highly recommend the film to anyone who has the slightest connection with the delightful town of Ste Anne de Bellevue. It's available through:

Vision 9 Productions,
25 Lamarche, Sainte Anne de Bellevue, Quebec, H9X 2A9
(514)-457-9758

September

We have to change our mindset. Summer is not over.( Not that it really had much to say for itself this year.) We still have three weeks of official summer and the forecast looks wonderful for the next little while, so Labour Day or not, Back-to-School or not, I think our best weather of the year is here. September in this part of the world is usually blue skies and relatively bugless except for a few welcome honeybees. Also on the plus side: humidity is low, nights are cool and the lawn-mowing is slowing down.

So I just did a quick tour of our gardens to share what I saw today, staring with this photogenic lettuce, probably bitter but not twisted, (above) as well as...

...green tomatoes, just ripening...

...some beets...

...a ferny frond...

...a few violas...

...a tiny blood-red rose...

...coreopsis...

...California Poppies ( I think!)...

...asters...

...and of course...

...more...

...glorious pond pictures. Here's to September!

My Mom and the Bedspread

Here is my Mom, Phyllis, at the age of 17 or so. It is during the 30's. Sometime soon she will begin to make a bedspread out of scraps of fabric. This bedspread will have a long life, as will Mom. It will travel to many homes along the way and it will be remade several times. Many hands will work on it besides hers, but it will always be Mom's bedspread.

This is the bedspread today. I just took it out of the trunk. I learned it's called a 'Yo-Yo' coverlet and that this was a popular form of recycling during the 1930's, what with The Great Depression going on. Well, that figures, given my Mom's practical and patient nature. But I never found out why she never finished it herself. For years it sat in her bottom drawer, partly pieced together but never completely joined nor attached to a backing. So unlike her.

But then, many years later, as a 'surprise', my grandmother secreted it away to the neighbour's house to be finally assembled by a group of seasoned quilters. The backing colour was lime green and the edges were done in little points. When Mamoe presented my mother with this labour of love, no doubt expecting a huge outpouring of gratitude, she was met instead with barely concealed dismay. I guess Mom felt this was a tresspass, just as I would feel if someone finished up a painting I'd started. Nevertheless, she put the bedspread on the spool bed in the guest room and said no more about it.

A few years ago I inherited the bedspread and decided to make things a bit better by getting rid of the green backing and replacing it with a black one and no pointy bits at the edges. It was a winter project and when I showed it to Mom she was delighted. I'm glad for that because she passed away several years later.

I tried using it on my bed but the fabric was becoming too old and needed frequent repairs so I put it away.

Here are some closeups. I'd love to know what all these circles used to be before being lovingly cut out and gathered. Dresses, blouses, tablecloths? My Dad says he used to write little notes and hide them inside some of the circles for Mom to discover. He's such a Romantic! I never found any notes when I was working on the piece. I bet they were too mushy and Mom removed them. Too bad.

So what do I do with it now?

Oh Bridget, you're such a poser.

And now Bridget and Amanda (aka 'Sam') are exploring the possibilities of cavorting on it so I'm going to put it back in the trunk before it gets totally shredded. I would hate for all that work to end up destroyed by our adorable but bratty kittens.

Sainte Anne de Bellevue, Quebec, ( Way Back When...)

This is the house I grew up in. I still dream about it and everything remains very vivid. It had a certain smell and atmosphere which I can conjure up at will. The rooms were small by today's standards but we were lucky to live there and particularly enjoyed the wraparound porch which was screened in the summer. The only room I never went into was the attic, understandably, since the opening was just above the stairwell and a pretty scary climb.

The rent was something like $25/month. There was no garage, few people owned cars back then. My Dad walked to work, Mom walked to the village to shop and we walked to school. Train service was excellent and again, within walking distance. It was a nice way to live.

Our kitchen had five doors; back-porch, side porch (pictured) front hall, dining-room and cellar. There was painted burlap wainscoting around all the walls with dark wood trim. The colours I remember were teal blue and cream. Mom made the vintage frilly curtains on her treadle sewing machine and did the laundry in this ringer-washer. Forget about clothes-dryers...she used the line outside and in winter the stiff clothes were arrayed over the various radiators which we referred to as 'coils'. I would sometimes wake up at night to the sound of urgent thumping followed by hissing. That meant Dad was 'bleeding' the coils. It didn't bear thinking about.

Mom used the coal stove which involved carrying lumps of coal from the cellar (not a basement, it was very rough) in a skuttle and feeding them in through a hole in the top and poking them around to adjust the flames. In winter she would warm our clothes by the open oven door. The neatest thing was the upstairs grate which let the heat up to the bedrooms and through which my sister and I used to spy on the visiting grownups, sometimes sending down messages tied to a string. Messages like 'We need gingerale' or 'Come upstairs and see us.' It often worked.

Here I am, aged five, proudly holding my cherished Maggie Muggins doll on Christmas Day. I remember the beige and white flocked wallpaper installed by my parents. Tres chic for the time! On the table next to me are several tins of cigarettes, either Players or Export A, destined to be given as gifts to the milkman, iceman or coal deliveryman.

This is the idealized watercolour version I painted for my parents some years ago. The property seems considerably larger and the adjacent houses no longer exist, but everything about the house is correct and the poplar trees and hollyhocks were really there.

Bridget and Amanda's New Hardwood Flooring

"Here we are a few weeks ago, before the old wall-to-wall carpet was ripped up and the new hardwood flooring was installed. Little did we know what chaos was to come!"

"We didn't like it much when they banished us to the basement while all that noise was going on upstairs, thumping and vibrating and strange footsteps. But Fran and George did bring our food down and visited once in awhile so it wasn't too awful."

"Well, they did a pretty good job and now everything is back where it should be. We hate it when things are all over the place and we can't even find our favourite chair."

"We can really do a lot of sliding here. It's so cool!"

"It's been a lot of work and we're tired."

"Yes, we think it looks just fine. Now let us nap."

My Sister

This is my sister Lynne Deragon at the age of several months. She was born after WW II and thus was in the vanguard of the Baby Boomer generation. ( I, on the other hand, was refered to as a 'war baby', conjuring an image of tiny Maurice Sendak fighting troops.) I remember very clearly the day I first met her.

As you can see I was thrilled to have a little sister!

A few years ago Lynne and family visited us from Toronto on her significant birthday. We all watched as she opened her gifts on New Year's Eve. What was she looking at here?

She was looking down at this pouch which contained something I had spent the previous autumn creating from bits and pieces of stuff and memories.

This is what was in the pouch; an art journal celebrating her life. Details follow.

These first two sections represent the day of her birth, January 1st, symbolized by a champagne glass bubbling forth, followed by the blue bunting bag she wore home on the first day I ever saw her, riding along in the back of the taxi. I remember feeling quite disappointed that she wouldn't even open her eyes to look at me, no matter how hard I stared at her.

Ever the actress, even in school she sometimes assumed roles, arriving for class in costume, ready for recognition. She has told me of her Dutch Girl attempt, showing up in grade three wearing a Dutch cap, folding her hands on the desk and awaiting the teacher's approval. Apparently that teacher was not impressed.

However, a few years later she got her recognition and starred as Snow White. I remember sitting next to Dad in the school gym, watching her sing and dance while Dad stifled tears.

In her teens she sang folk songs in the Joan Baez tradition, playing at Montreal's Yellow Door and Toronto's Riverboat coffee houses. She had long black hair and played the autoharp.

Then she went to National Theatre School in Montreal and performed major roles in plays at Centaur Theatre and other venues. She has also done a lot of radio, t.v. and film work.( You can Google her name to find out more.)

These sections show Lynne in her longest-running roles: as daughter to Phyllis and Jack and as sister to me...

...as well as wife to Frank and mother to Melissa and Joanna.

These final sections show Lynne, the friend to all creatures, holding her Bichon Frisee, Lillie. She has also cared for horses, dogs, (Lillie is not really a dog), cats, bunnies, canaries and even fawns.

The birthday cake depicted to the right is my idealized version of our favourite cake, butter-brickle, which Mom used to make so well.

And here is how the cake really looked when I made it. Definitely homemade, not so photogenic, but delicious nevertheless. I know she enjoyed it. So did we all!