When We Go to the Ocean is about the discussions we have with our friends and family once we have made travel plans. We say, “When we go to the ocean, we will ______.”

When We Go to the Sky was painted after the one above. The title was a creative leap; some call it the angels landing on our shoulder that happens when we pay attention to our imagination while we work. Another way of saying it is, “The topic came out of the blue.”

The motif in both paintings is a return to a shape that I used for my entry in the RBC Canadian Painting Competition, Jethro Tull Coreopsis. The concept was a stem and flower and I utilized the patterns from historical patchwork-quilts. The title is after Jethro Tull  (the agriculturist who perfected the seed drill) and the red and yellow colours found in the coreopsis flower.

For the paintings, I see the shape as a thought bubble and a continuation of various patchwork-quilt designs I have worked with.  From their titles, the paintings might appear to foretell the longing for travel that has come about because of the pandemic. When I painted them, if there was any mention of a pandemic, only a very few could have imagined how the virus would take hold. Now there are vacations available that fly around in the sky, sometimes at low elevations for aerial sightseeing, only to land at their departure point many hours later. While both paintings are about travel plans, the title When We Go to the Sky in particular, is an example of how a painting can take on new meaning with the passage of time.

Hello art lovers. I’m just checking in with all of you. I hope you are managing well with this pandemic. I did lose my father to Covid-19 in May. He was in a long-term care home, unwell with dementia and passed away in May at age ninety-two. 

Jim and I have been home in Canada. We were in Key West with plans to be there until the end of April when Prime Minister Trudeau announced the travel advisory for all Canadians to return home immediately. We scrambled to get our home in order and left on March 17. After three thousand miles of driving we arrived in Toronto on March 19 with our little dog, Tulip.

I was to have an exhibition in the United States, that I had known about for two years, Tools of the Trade at Blue Spiral 1, Fine Art  + Craft in Asheville, North Carolina, from May 9 to July 4. With having to leave Key West so suddenly, we needed to move up our reservation for a U Haul trailer to drive my paintings to Asheville. A trailer was not available so we stored all my artwork in a climate controlled category 5 hurricane proof storage unit in Key West. The date of the show did get pushed back several months. I could not participate and I did not know when we would be back to Florida to pick up my paintings. Fortunately Blue Spiral 1 is keen on my work so at some point I am going to get to show there. Something to look forward to!

I saw the Covid-19 lockdown as a time for experimentation. I finished this painting, POÈTE, in the spring, and yet I still needed to live with it, before sending it out in the world. When creating art there is a lot of tension that an artist feels in trying to get things ‘right’ to meet their vision of the way they imagined the work. It has to look right to them. I wasn’t so sure about the finished piece and felt disappointed that I ended up with such bright colours this time, which was not my intention. So the painting has been percolating for several months. 

For this newsletter I thought I would share what my thought process was on the way to making this painting. To begin, this work is a departure from the hexagon shape that I have worked with in the past years.  

My painting POÈTE is after a paper collage, THE SNAIL by Matisse. He is widely regarded as the greatest colourist of the 20^thcentury. I have been carrying a paper copy of this work in particular with me since I was a student at OCAD University. 

In the early 1940s Matisse developed a new aesthetic and style out of necessity brought about by physical changes when he was diagnosed with abdominal cancer. Complications from surgery left him bound to chair or bed. He developed the art form using paper and scissors. His collages, known as decoupage, were made from cut-paper, pre-painted with gouache by his assistants.  

The painting that I’m showing here has been mulled over for about fifteen years. I started the drawing for the painting about two years ago when I had a studio with Akin Art on Sunrise Avenue in Toronto. The painting replicates a patchwork sensibility, but I felt it needed text. 

I revisited the studies I have done on the history of quilts. I looked to Alphabet Quilts. Alphabets have been used for a learning device on needlework samplers for hundreds of years. Lettering occasionally appeared on quilts before pictorial and bible quilts became popular. The fashion for all-letters quilts became popular in the 1920s with patterns in magazines and newspaper, and companies that sold needlework patterns.  

My question was, “What font?” I chose the letter style from a Pennsylvania quilt, securely dated 1912, also the date when Matisse hit his mature painting style. The simplicity of bulky letters appliqued to a white block that was broken at the corners of each block with a leaf applique, struck a good balance for the irregular sized patches.  

There was no question that the text would be POET because I’m a published poet and I like hanging out with that word, but what language would I use? Spanish, POETE, came to mind if exhibiting in Key West; it could be a nice change and appreciated by the community. English an obvious choice, POET, but I prefer the design rhythm of odd numbers, five letters is better aesthetically. So it was a close call between the French ‘POÈTE’ after Matisse and the Spanish, POETE. So things sat like this for months. I hummed and hawed. It was a true toss of the coin. I decided to go with French, where the grave accent, just seemed . . . poetic.  Canada has two official languages, and it made sense­­ . . . for the French Matisse too.

Have any of you have switched up things in your lives, gone to new pathways, started new projects or taken on something you have always wanted to try that you would like to let me know about? I’m always happy to hear your comments. 

I hope everyone has had a better experience with Covid-19 than my family. Wishing you a Happy Canadian Thanksgiving. We need to focus on happiness and health. 

Until next time,

Janice 

I had the opportunity to visit Warnemünde while on a trip to the Baltic Sea. 

Warnemünde, Germany was once a spa town. The Norwegian artist Edvard Munch stayed at 53 Am Strom for 18 months. Munch was there to work, and for physical and mental recuperation, from May 1907-October 1908. 

The house was the home of the harbour pilot Carl Nielson. It is now a museum. 

Number 53 is second from the left. 

Artists and hollyhocks were in season too!

I so loved this seaside resort-town in North East Germany, for the to and fro of activity, locals and tourists enjoying a day by the sea, fishing boats, cottages and canal shops . . . and the train station. 

I missed my dog Tuli while I was away.

Here's one for her!

Until next time . . . 

Here is a new painting on a heritage wood ironing board. This small work is 40 x 9 x 1.5 inches. The children of a famous Canadian author, Pierre Burton, gave the ironing board to me when they sold their parent's home. 

There is a quilt pattern is called Snowball. While my image looks like a pattern of circles on a wood, it is an octagon shape, one that is much less complex to stitch versus trying to appliqué a perfectly round circle. 

My inspiration came from a metal ironing-board covered with red polka-dot mac tack in an antique store in Lewiston, New York. 

I will exhibit in Key West this winter. I titled my work Not a Snowball's Chance. While there is lots of chance for snowballs in Pierre's childhood home, Dawson City, it's unlikely that Key West will ever see snow. 

See them in Vancouver April 21, before they are gone. They are there for one month! My Blank Boy Canvas titled I LOVE YOU is the one on the bottom left. 

My poem —Elizabeth Bishop House - Great Village, Nova Scotia—was inspired by a visit to her early childhood home in May 2014.

I saw "the bedroom where she slept one hundred years ago."

To read the poem, check out my chapbook, published by Frog Hollow Press. 

My chapbook Rose and Brine, a robust poetry collection of forty-eight pages is published by Frog Hollow Press. The cover is based on my painting Luna. 

On Lake Winnipeg, published in Prairie Fire, and a second place winner in the Banff Centre Bliss Carman Poetry Award is included in this collection. 

Other poems in the collection, that include My Mother's Seahorse Brooch were awarded the Random House Award at the University of Toronto.

Elizabeth Bishop House is a response to a rare opportunity to tour Elizabeth's grandparent's home in Great Village, Nova Scotia  in 2014.

Joyce Wieland: The Caribou Women, (an ekphrastic poem) is about her artwork, Barren Ground Caribou an 8 x 30 foot fabric installation that can be seen at the Spadina Subway station in Toronto. I've been revising that poem over the last ten years so it's nice to see it finalized and published. 

I have been shortlisted for the second Frog Hollow Press Chapbook Contest. My chapbook is forthcoming in the winter 2017. The cover is based on my painting Luna. 

On Lake Winnipeg, published in Prairie Fire, and a second place winner in the Banff Centre Bliss Carman Poetry Award is included in this collection. http://www.froghollowpress.com

October 1, 2016 is Nuit Blanche!

Janice Colbert is a participating artist in The Fleck Gallery Fine Art Catalogue
Catalogue release and Nuit Blanche Opening Reception,
October 1, 2016 7:00-9:00 pm

Exhibition continues until October 15, 2016

The Elaine Fleck Gallery

West Queen West 

1351 Queen Street West

Toronto 

In addition to the Canadian Art at Nordstrom Vancouver mentioned in an earlier Blog, here's a stylish way to indicate where  the washrooms are at Nordstrom.  The work is by Tim Yankosky from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. I like that the figures "Dick and Jane" are placed side by side and made with vintage rulers. It is left to the customer to decide how they measure up.