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