Helping your Kids Appreciate Art

My 19-year old son just spent his Birthday money on a piece of original art. As an artist and especially as a parent, I was delighted that he appreciated art well enough to spend his own money on it.  Coming from a family of artists, I have always been surrounded by original art so naturally absorbed the value and appreciation of art. It is a legacy that I think all parents should try to instill in their children – to expose them to creativity and a thought process outside of the everyday.

We found that there were a few key things that helped our kids not only appreciate art but enabled them to start to develop their own tastes and their own preferences.

Things to consider when encouraging the love of art for your kids:

Age 3-6 – At this age, all kids enjoy creating art and think of themselves as artists – keep the dream alive! When your child is young, take a piece of art that they are particularly proud of, frame it to give it importance (inexpensive frames from IKEA are perfect) and create a gallery in their room. Encourage them to hang their friend’s art as well to get them used to different styles.

Age 6- 12 – Take your kids to art galleries. When we travel as a family, we "pop" into small, non-intimidating galleries. Don't stay too long. Keep it light and fun. Encourage them to choose posters or framed  postcards of the artists they like. Encourage their thoughts on different pieces. This will give you some insight as to what they are attracted to.

Age 13 - 18. A perfect time to introduce them to art they will keep forever. A few years ago, my husband and I started buying small pieces of art for our kids (aged 16 and 19) every year for their birthday. This way, they have original art for their bedrooms. As they live with the pieces chosen for them, they will start to develop their own tastes. Generally start by choosing art in colours or subject matter your children enjoy. Picking up small pieces at outdoor shows like the Riverdale Art Walk allows you to buy great pieces from local artists at reasonable prices. For the same price of a video games, you can purchase art. Who know, you may be purchasing the next Picasso!

When your kids move into their first home, they will have a nice start to their collection and will hopefully continue the legacy, passing their love to their children.

Choosing a Name…a Rose by any other name…

I recently re-connected with a friend of mine who just had a baby; she was talking about the challenge of naming her child so that the name would reflect her heritage, be unique and also “fit” the wee one. It had been 6 weeks and the pressure was on!

It made me think about the process of naming paintings. As I paint abstract, I have come to realize that most people need a way to ‘navigate” an abstract work so the names are very important. This process of naming can sometimes be a challenge. I almost always have a photo reference to start with (usually something from my garden) but as I am working on the piece, it often takes on a life of its own and sometimes does not look like the original reference. Where the original piece may have been inspired by a photo of a rose, the result may be more reflective of a cool pond, wildflower meadow or something different altogether. Unless it is truly a series, I prefer not to have multiple paintings of the same name (Rose I, Rose II).

Sky Through Oak Trees

To solve this dilemma, I pour myself a nice glass of red wine, hang the painting in all 4 directions, sit and wait to be inspired. In the end, I called this Sky Through Oak Trees.

Link to the painting: http://katetaylorstudio.com/dataviewer.asp?keyvalue=11453&subkeyvalue=898663&page=WorksZoom

Pushing Your Boundries

As an artist, you control much of your time and can plan what your creative goals are for the day. Although this freedom can be great, there is a risk that you are not doing enough to push your boundaries; it can be easy to become complacent. I recently had a few occasions to push myself way beyond my comfort zone; of my own choosing and one not.

In January, I was intrigued by the thought of participating in the Art Battle in Toronto. Conceived by Chris Pemberton and his partner, this is a dynamic reality show…in real life. Think Iron Chef, with art. Art Battle is live competitive painting. This dynamic tournament style event features 16 artists creating the best work they can in 20 minutes. The patrons move around the easels and share in the fun by voting and bidding for their favourite paintings. As a participant, you are walking into the unknown, they provide the canvas and a limited paint palette and you produce a work of art in less than half a hour. The audience is right at your elbow, asking why you specifically put that paint there. Forced to work so quickly opened me up to capturing the essence without getting too caught up in the detail; this has created a looseness that I really like.

I have become a bit of an Art Battle evangelist – encouraging my sister, Helen Utsal as well as member of SolidColour Art Collective to participate. Karen Taylor will be a battlin’ artist this Tuesday, March 27^th at Great Hall.

I am participating in a corporate show coming up in November, 2012. The commitment is for 30 large-scale paintings – a push for me as I found that scale intimidating. In November, we heard that there was a glitch and 4 of us needed to produce 7 large paintings for delivery in about 3 weeks. Again, it pushed me to work thoughtfully…and large. The result is that I am now totally enamoured with larger canvases and am very excited to complete the balance for my show later this year.

So…scary sometimes but I am going to continue to commit to myself that I will intentionally place myself in situations that push be beyond my comfort zone – continuing to refine and grow my work.

The Power of Community

Exposing your work is one of the biggest challenges and most important indicators of success as an artist. How many artists labour away for years but never expose their work beyond a few friends and family? One of the beauties of being a part of SolidColour and ColourShift is that all of our communities are expanded – increasing the number of people exposed to the work and the number who attend the openings.  Another way to build community is to leverage social media.

A few weeks ago, I was travelling to meet some of my ColourShift colleagues to brainstorm and I got a call from Rosemary Wright. She had seen my work at the Riverdale Art Walk and had recently received my invite to attend our Bright Lights, Big City show at the Gladstone Art Bar. She wanted to write a post on her blog about the show and profile us as artists. Although she is a real estate agent, she found that her followers were really more interested in her community of Riverdale than specific real estate tips. Armed with this knowledge, she now actively looks to profile people and events in this area. So she blogged about us, I Tweeted about her blog post and Sann Sann reTweeted. By forwarding Rosemary’s post, we expanded her community and she expanded ours.

My goal this year is to increase my online presence (good start would be to post more regularly) and actively look for like-minded souls like Rosemary to share, promote and reciprocate with as we all build our communities.  Follow me @KateTaylorArt.

Check out Rosemary’s blog: http://www.realestatebits.ca/

Rail, River, Canvas – What a Trip

About 6 months ago, we went to the McMichael Gallery to see the latest show – a husband and wife team had, in their retirements, made it their mission to track down and photograph the exact locations that the Group of Seven sat when they painted some of their most famous paintings. I had never before realized how these painters were real outdoorsman – canoeing and hiking for miles through the Canadian wilderness, painting into the fall with snow on the ground. The show was amazing and reinforced the unique beauty of Canada.

This week in the Globe and Mail, Conor Mijhell highlighted an amazing canoe vacation that follows the Group of Seven’s footsteps and allows participants to compare the sites with the actual paintings.  I am guessing that this was made possible by the photos and documentation of the couple tracking down the locations earlier. From 1918 – 1922, the Group of Seven made many trips north, spending a lot of time on the Agawa River, travelling via the Algoma Central Railway. The area defined their style and each artist interpreted the landscape in their own way. Paintings such as Algoma Waterfall by JEH MacDonald, Sombre Hill by Lismer and Algoma Hills by Harris were all created during these trips.

It is amazing that, almost 100 years later, the geography has not changed – even down to the location of the trees. I have now added this trip to my bucket list!

My 365 Project -

After being inspired by Karen Taylor and Dave Harcombe’s 365 project, I thought I would try one myself. The concept is that you take and upload a photo every day for a full year, working with a consistent theme. My art and artists statement all focus on colour so this is the inspiration of this project. My goal is to capture a photo every day that have colour as the main compositional element. I will use these photos as the inspiration of my paintings. I am still tyring to figure out how to upload a photo from my blackberry (otherwise this project is going to be pretty sporadic) so the first entry is actually from earlier this year – a brilliant purple clematis that climbs up the wall of my garage. Check it out http://365project.org/katetaylor/365.

Design Hope Donation

When I was at the Queen West Art Crawl last year, I was approached by Peter French to participate in the Design Hope Auction. Design Hope Toronto is a volunteer initiative that raises funds and awareness for local organizations dedicated to helping the homeless. The goal was to donate a work of art that addressed or encompassed the theme of shelter. These works were auctioned off to raise money. The abstract painting that I donated was called “Canadian Maples ll”. Maybe not an obvious link to the theme of shelter but I feel strongly that all Canadians deserve a warm roof over their heads. The red of the maples is representative of Canada in all its opportunity and compassion.

What an amazing evening! I was asked to speak about my inspiration and decision to contribute, drummers from the PARC community performed – they were amazing – and then the auction started. It was crazy – fast, dynamic and fun. My work sold for $700 so I was pleased with that. It was also great to meet the couple who purchased mine…and outbid me for a cool sculpture of steel and stone by Frances Muscat. I did not come home empty-handed – purchased a mixed media work by Michael Brown for my husband’s office. Participants were very generous in opening their wallets for a worthy cause - raising $10,000! I was proud to be a part of this event and hope to participate next year.

Patterson Ewan - Artist and Teacher

Planning on heading down to the AGO to see the “Tribute to Patterson Ewan” – a retrospective shoeing from Feb 8 – May 22. Patterson was my painting teacher at UWO so it will be interesting to see his work with the distance of time. Ewan was a Montreal artist who experimented with pure abstraction before making his name as an expressionistic painter of natural phenomena, mostly events and objects in the sky. He is famous for gouging his paintings out of plywood with an electric router. It was these works that he was creating when he was my teacher. At that time, I had no particular interest in abstract art and was more inspired by photography, printmaking (photo lithography) and paper-making. In hindsight, I wish that I knew at that time that I would end up being an abstract artist – I am sure that there would have been lots more to learn from him with the  have a context. As it was, I found him intimidating and not very ‘present’ as a teacher or a mentor – maybe that is the double sided coin of an artist as a teacher. This painting is Halley’s Comet as Seen by Giotto, created in 1979. Ewen passed away February 17, 2002. For more infor on Patterson Ewan, check out http://www.ago.net/

Learning the Abstracts

With a degree in fine art, of course, I had learned about abstract artists but it was only in the past few years that I have really ‘discovered’ and embraced abstract art – so I thought I would dedicate the next few posts to some of the individual artists who had the vision that led me to where I am now. The goal of painting pre 20th century was to capture, as exactly as possible, reality. In the medieval times, paintings could be read – the size and prominence of an item communicating a specific message of importance to the viewer. Most paintings were descriptive, with a story or allegory in place and created as though looking out a window to the subject. Although the impressionists and cubists were starting to break free of reality in their work, representation of some kind was still very critical to the final piece.

In 1910, Sigmund Freud published “About Psychoanalysis”. This started artists thinking about the disconnection between representational and autonomous art, functioning more as an analogy. In an interesting essay by Dieymar Elger, he argues that abstract art is the most realistic of all since it is not trying to represent anything that exists. In the words of Frank Stella, “what you see is what you see.”

Abstract art is relatively new in the history of art; the first recorded work being labeled “Abstract” was a watercolour by Wassily Kandinsky, dating back to 1910. Even that is under dispute as it is rumoured that he predated the actual work called “First Abstract Watercolour”. Art historians believe that he may have backdated the painting to prove his theories as described in his essay “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”. This also supported his claim of being the inventor of the first work of abstract art.

 

A Reminder of Why I Paint...





Chrysanthamum



I had a very sad call earlier this week – a call from a son who let me know that his mother, Cheryl, had recently died. She had terminal cancer. I met her at this year’s Queen West Art Crawl and she purchased 2 paintings (actually, 2 of may favourites - Chrysanthamum and Peony), commissioning a third. I delivered the paintings to her home and we rearranged her furniture and art to find a perfect place to showcase her newest works. As requested, I brought my painting Maple, Birch, Oak which she loved and also purchased. We chatted about her grandkids and had a great time. It is so sad that she is no longer around. It is things like this that make me glad that I am doing something I love. I sometimes think it is self indulgent – painting what I love and what makes me happy. It is very gratifying to know that it makes others, like Cheryl, happy too.