(“Because of the Duck, no. 13″; 12″ x 12”; oil & collage on canvas) Because of the puppy and the fact that I will be teaching in Baddeck, Cape Breton for a week in September, I had to move my upcoming exhibit at the Secord Gallery in Halifax from October to November. The pressure of creating a new body of work for the show was too much. I like to work under pressure; I like to work without pressure; I like to paint. But . . . . My painting is going well. I’m very excited abou

According to Proust, “Artists are people who strip habit away and return life to its deserved glory.” I’ll go along with that! Definitely I’m very familiar with the stripping habit away part. When a painting feel too “easy”, too “good”, I know I need to go further. Not let habitual means of solving painting issues take over, try something else. And if that doesn’t work, try something else yet again. The one thought dominating my mind this morning when working was how so much

Three of my paintings have recently traveled to beautiful Watch Hill, RI. On the walls now at the Lily Pad Gallery, they represent a new expansion to abstract painting for this gallery. The gallery will also be opening a new space in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and I will be sending some larger pieces there. Right now, I don’t have any photographs, but I’ll keep you posted. The gallery was established thirty years ago by Wivi-Anne Weber, Ph.D. It has now moved into the recently rest

Yesterday, when painting, I had a major insight about how to work with the color field. I have been working on some blue paintings, not my easiest color choice. But I like the challenge and when they work, at least in the past, they are very strong. These were giving me a hard time. I was about to throw in the towel. I had been thinking I needed to limit the marks I make in order to get closer to the impact I created with the more limited palette (for the exhibit at Saint Mar

There is a small room off the large gallery at Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery. We decided to put small paintings in the small room and large paintings in the large room. It worked. The small room was intimate; the large room, expansive. Like moving from a spacious, limitless world opened up by the large paintings, to its inner workings, the heartbeat created by the row of small works. I enjoyed watching people move from one room to the other. A change of expression in bo

On April 30, Jacinte Armstrong, dancer, Sageev Oore, composer and pianist and Nick Halley, percussion, danced and made music in dialogue with my paintings. It was amazing! Hardly a dry eye in the audience. It felt like they were inside the paintings, inside me, expressing everything the paintings want people to know. After the performance, it was days before I stopped hearing the music and feeling the dance. Looking at the photographs now brings it all back. Amazing. #Nonverb

I’ve been obsessing a bit recently about the painting hanging over my piano now for about three years. I didn’t want to sell it for a long time; now I do. I’m ready to let it go. Especially after this morning. I realize what it is I needed to learn from it: first, it has a dramatic edge I have been avoiding recently. Not just avoiding, but actually unable to allow to stay even when I was able to make it happen. So, I was thinking: “Leya, you have mastered the art of subtlety.

Somehow, we started talking about abstraction yesterday. Well, not unreasonable, as it is an abstract painting class. One student, Beth, said an abstract work reveals some kind of truth you didn’t know was there. That just about sums it up nicely. I was having them work with sticks: using the stick as a painting tool. Along with brushes, mixed in before and after using the stick. The results were liberating. Several pieces reminded me of Arshile Gorky’s work so I looked him u

Last week in my class, a student asked me what is abstract art. He wanted me to talk about it because he had never done it. This was his first experience in an abstract painting class. He was, by profession, a microbiologist. Thinking it is such a broad subject, I told him to ask me some questions. Then, coming home, immersed in my life of abstractions, I thought it is, basically, about composition. Within that, there is balance and tension, focus, image, ground: all the elem