Daily Practice 127/365

Title: "Constellation"

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I've written before about Jennifer Bartlett's year in France, when she produced a staggering body of work using the mundane garden of her temporary home as the source for the images. I found the work instructive about how using a variety of approaches can teach our eye a great deal regardless of subject matter. Looking around today for a subject for daily practice, I realized that I sit in our garden at the moment, enjoying the rhododendrons and iris in bloom. Yet flowers are a subject that is difficult to approach without falling into standard renditions of "beauty", and so I rarely use them as a source material. However, today I got caught up in the potential for more abstract compositions in the garden, picking out tiny, delicate details in a sea of tones and colours, in a way making the actual subject matter irrelevant yet also making a bold declaration of "beauty".

Daily Practice 126/365

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Nothing prosaic, just some dried flower petals that have been lying around in the studio for quite sometime. They've been bunched up in a pile, randomly dispersed, their colours and shapes antagonizing or complementing each other. It's that every changing dynamic that I find interesting.

Daily Practice 125/365

Title: "Sensation of breathing"

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I always find walking in the forest to be a meditative experience, an environment where senses are more acute. In the early morning or late afternoon, there are little scenes lit with filtered light, as if the forest is drawing one's attention to its tiny jewels. I came upon this scene, the quality of light on the rock and foliage just sublime.

Daily Practice 124/365

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Dramatic sky to the west, spotted as I reached the parking lot at work. I was drawn by the heaviness of the clouds at the bottom contrasting with the light veil of cloud above.

Daily Practice 123/365

Title: "Still life with avocado and egg cooker"

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I've recently (in the last year or so) slowly started to collect books of photography by artists who are generally known for their work in painting or sculpture. So far I have books of photographs by Jim Dine, Gerhard Richter, Kiki Smith and Cy Twombly (I may be missing a few names here). Twombly is an example of an artist who made photographs on an on-going basis, although these were not exhibited for a long time since they were generally visual notes to himself. They were generally photos of things lying around his studio and the studios of other artists. What I find endearing about the Twombly photographs is the link between their quality of blurriness, shapes and tones with those qualities of his paintings and drawings. Tonight I put together a little still life in the studio, which ironically consisted of elements I would not normally find in my studio, were it not doing dual duty at the moment as my "camp kitchen" during the renovations. I like the way this image turned out - the somewhat incomplete shapes of the two objects, the varying tones and physical imperfections.

Daily Practice 122/365

Title: "Nestled"

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The tide was out very far today, as I went beach combing in the misty rain. There were rocks that are rarely above the water line, glistening black underneath their mantle of blackish green vegetation. And like an old dowager dressed in her finest, there were some shining pearls dotted amongst the rocks. Half shells that remained embedded, presenting their beautiful white interiors. I was taken by the sharp contrast between glistening white and glistening black.

Daily Practice 121/365

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We recently installed a skylight in the kitchen that has completely changed the quality of light in that room, and the adjoining hallway. I liked the soft light on this wall in the hall, the emphasis of the shape with shadow and light in the small cutout.