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| Qualicum Cemetery Road, Acrylic, 2021 |
I've started to redirect my energy into something
new: painting, drawing, and making marks. That might not sound like an unusual
thing to do, I suppose, until you consider that I have never been a visual
artist, not even in childhood. I never spent endless hours doodling on paper at
the living room coffee table. I didn't doodle in the margins of my schoolbooks.
Elementary school art classes were a fun diversion from desk work, but I also
remember feeling that I was never quite doing it right. The only memory I have
of any art class was when, in grade two, we made paper mâché masks and I threw
up immediately after placing my hands in a bucket of texturally alarming flour
and water paste. Not exactly a promising sign of future artistic success.
Since
2020, I've tried watercolours, acrylics, gouache, coloured pencils and pastels.
And I'm still amusing myself with all of them. Most of my free time prior
to this had been used up, rather happily, in literary expenditures like writing
stories, poems, book reviews and manuscript evaluations. When art came calling,
genealogy and blogging fell by the way for several years while I tried out
mediums, took courses, and learned basics about creating art.
But recently, family history has pulled me back and
I've been wondering how to mix the two obsessions. That's what this blog is
about: creating stories about my ancestors--glimpses into their lives,
along with a visual piece for each biographical account. I have no idea what this will look like in the end,
but I'm looking forward to working on this new project.
