KirkwoodWagnerGallery Blog

I returned last week from my (now almost annual!) seven day painting trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the opening of my “Prairie Tide” show at the Art Gallery of Grand Manan, New Brunswick, this past Saturday, July 7, 2012.  “Prairie Tide” was the clever idea of Deborah Upton, Chair of the Grand Manan Art Gallery, who thought the melding of my Saskatchewan roots with my maritime motifs was provocative.  The paintings from this show will be divided between two further maritime “ports” ….. the Pilar Shephard Art Gallery (http://www.pilarshephard.com/)  in Charlottetown, PEI, and The Avenue Gallery (http://www.theavenuegallery.com/) in Victoria, BC.

This Sunday, July 15, 2012, I am off to Charlevoix, Quebec [my second trip there] with a group of like-minded painters who are, either now or will be (!), my friends.  The Charlevoix trip is under the tutelage of the renowned, Toronto based painter, Barry Coombs.

For the past 4 months I have been painting, almost exclusively, with oil, both on canvas and board; both small [12″ x 12″] and large [36″ x 40″].  Painting with oil is a very sensual experience because of the way the paint smells, feels and looks.

Also, because of the ‘winter without snow’ I have been drawn, strongly, to scenes where it is abundant.

I just returned from a fourteen day painting trip in the Puglia region of Italy with the renowned Barry Coombs and a group of sixteen other accomplished painters from Ontario and Alberta.

Puglia is white ….. and I mean white!  It quarries the world’s finest and oldest marble, granite and limestone.  As such, the architecture is predominately white [especially after the sun’s bleach and the applied milk wash] with subtle shades of ochre, sienna and umber.  [Those who aren’t artists try to sound like artists!]

My supply of ‘titanium white’ was soon exhausted but, luckily, the local Alberobello art store had four tubes for me to buy!