Archives for posts with tag: artist

Three Great Years and Moving On

By natashahenderson
November 15, 2014 //
5

 

 

 

 

a bit of our view

a bit of our view

It is with a mixture of pride and sadness that we are announcing that after three great years of art, herbalism, community-building, collaborations, vernissages, workshops, special events and fun… we are moving on.

interviewed for Documentary

Tammy interviewed for documentary Fairly Foul

So very much happened in three years!  Special events in Fleurbain included artist presentations, poetry readings, and yoga and dance classes. Workshops in herbalism, crafting, felt-making, painting, cosmetic creation, and health were always well-received. We had a lot (a LOT) of fun putting on these productions and we wouldn’t have done anything differently.

Our dear friend Cindy and her husband Bob came to visit all the way from Michigan.

Our dear friend Cindi and her husband Bob came all the way from Michigan for a visit.

 

Posing with Darlene St. Georges during her beautiful vernissage.

In the beginning.

 

 

 

holiday views

holiday views

 

People were the most important part of our experience.  Thank-you to all who came to the events!!!  Popular vernissages were a chance to not only see some artworks and enjoy some treats, but provided an opportunity for attendees to meet new friends, and to connect with other artistic folks. This was one of the most valuable benefits of maintaining a physical space, so we hope to see all of you again in the near future around town! Do connect with Tammy on Facebook, and Natasha too.

the impermanence of plant pigments on snow contrast well with the bright lights of an electric cityThe impermanence of plant pigments on snow contrast well with the bright lights of an electric city.  From Nuit Blanche the year before we moved into the downtown space.
Abundance by Lorraine Miller Emmrys.

Abundance by Lorraine Miller Emmrys.

 

 

great visits

great visits

food, art, herbalism and fun at Fleurbain

food, art, herbalism and fun at Fleurbain

 

Natasha with a few of her own works-in-progress

Natasha with a few of her own works-in-progress

What are we doing now? Tammy is booking private consultations and making tea and natural products for all your herbalist-needs in her new space in downtown Montreal. Contact her for more details or if you want to be added to her mailing list.  Her email is tammy.schmidt.herbalist (at) gmail (dot) com. Natasha is happily selling her work online, and through ArtBomb. Please email her (NatashaHendersonArt(at) gmail (dot) com) if you would like to be added to her mailing list for upcoming exhibitions.

Thank you everyone for all you have done, for your support, and your friendship. Looking forward to hearing from you soon!

Natasha Henderson and Tammy Schmidt.

Tammy leading a large workshop for Femme Toxic on organic, herbal skincare

Tammy leading a large workshop for Femme Toxic on organic, herbal skincare

during the exhibition "Art and Architecture" we hosted artist talks

during the exhibition “Art and Architecture” we hosted artist talks

a student paints during a class

a student paints during a class with Natasha

Fleurbain Naturals is launched!

Fleurbain Naturals is launched!

Bye for now. Hope to see you soon!

Bye for now. Hope to see you soon!

 

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Categories Art, current exhibit, Food, herbalism, Uncategorized, workshops

How To Paint: a hand

By natashahenderson
May 8, 2011 //
3

Sunday is here again! And, as with every Sunday, it is time to paint.

Each Sunday, artist Natasha Henderson will guide you through some simple “How To” tips for painting. Having been (honestly) inspired at a young age by the oft-spoofed televised artist Bob Ross, Natasha would like to offer some simple tips on How To Paint Stuff.

This week, I would like to try painting from observation, rather than from memory. One thing that is usually available for observation, is a hand. As with all the paintings in this series, I started by rubbing a bit of white acrylic paint onto my paper in order to seal it.

model is comfortable

Now, I want my model to be comfortable. So it is important to not only be happy with the shape that your hand is making in space in regards to the painting, but it should be a pose that is not tiring. Tense poses are interesting, and you can try that later, but to start I’d suggest a relaxed pose.

something of the shape I saw in the middle of my palm

Start with the centre of the palm. Try to find a shape within the palm. This will act as a sort of map, a guide on which to gauge distances and markings of reference points later.

markings, points of reference...

Next, look closely at the distance of the fingertips from the palm. Try to mark the outer edge of each finger.

more painting in the reference points

Next mark where the little lines where the joints in the finger are, and paint around the edges of the fingers and hand.

working in some lights, darks again... thinking about the shape of the hand before me

After this, it is all a series of “back and forth”, similar to when we painted an egg. White, black, grey, wipe, mark, white overtop… all based on observation. If you find that one of the fingers maybe is too short or too long-looking, paint it as it should be, and “erase” any paint that is too dark with some white.

a bit more work...

When you think the hand looks pretty good, you can fill in the background. This situates the hand in space, and is also an opportunity to fix any weird bits and straggly edges to the hand. 

painted around the edges... I will probably let it dry, then touch up the edges again with a dark grey, then the purple.

Paint on! Paint on.

Natasha Henderson, Montreal
 

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Categories Art

April’s Featured Artist: Mary Blaze

By natashahenderson
March 31, 2011 //
4

 Mary Blaze is a Vancouver area artist, whose works traverse from painting, to mixed media, to performance. You can see more of her works at http://artforcecollections.com/.

Artist In Her Studio With Ceramic Vase 18" x 12" copyright Mary Blaze 2010

 What to Do with an Old Water-Stained Piece of Building Paper?

             Creation begins coincident with my husband’s attempt to discard an old, water-stained roll of building paper.  In a spontaneous act, I retrieve it, lop off an eleven foot length onto my studio floor, and go to work.

            My stack of newspapers, used to protect studio surfaces from over-brushings and roll-outs, is at hand.  Therein are my first images for collage.  As I place them randomly on the substrate with acrylic medium, I begin to see window frame forms, across the horizontal length.

Artist In Her Studio With Candle and Candlestick 18"x12" copyright Mary Blaze 2010

            Onto the suggested squares and rectangles, I collage scanned and printed drawings from my sketch books, along with some recently completed drawings and prints.  From this point on, the work is directing me, as different from me imposing conscious determinations onto it.

Artist In Her Studio With Ink Bottle 18"x12" copyright Mary Blaze 2010

            I am in my studio, driven to using things at hand.  I look around me and my ink bottle comes into focus, so, with Aquarelle water soluble crayons, I draw it.  A friend had left a luscious looking, red skinned pear, and I draw it, too.  This work is becoming a very personal statement, but now a shift takes place.  As I add my Dad’s lantern and my Mom’s lamp into the spaces at each end of the paper, these two, coupled with my own central candle and candlestick, bring the work into the realm of heritage, and here it is: the cross-over of my two abiding passions, art and genealogy, having come unbidden into visual coexistence.

Artist In Her Studio With Wild Flower Bouquet and Lantern 18"x18.5" copyright Mary Blaze 2010

            I wonder if, during the elapsed year of this work, the undemanding nature of the remnant from our house building project, gives me the freedom to work at a sub-conscious level, to create “Artist in Her Studio with . . . ,” but whatever, it is something to do with an old piece of building paper.  

Artist In Her Studio With Teacup and Lamp 18"x18.5" copyright Mary Blaze 2010

 If you would like to be next month’s featured artist, check out this link! Thank you, Mary, for sharing your art and artistic process with us.

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Categories featured artist

Featured Artist: Natasha Henderson

By natashahenderson
March 4, 2011 //
3

"Dolce". Oil on canvas. 14"x18". 2010. copyright Natasha Henderson.

Natasha Henderson is a painter who has resided in Montreal for almost four years. Originally from Comox, British Columbia, she graduated with her BFA from the Emily Carr University in Vancouver in 1998. Her work has been exhibited and collected across North America.

"Ghazal Four". Oil on canvas. 18"x24". 2009.

Her paintings delve into questions about artistic representations of landscape. She uses the language and codes of other artistic forms, such as poetry and music, to examine representations of thought and meaningful patterns within her painting.

"Gathering". Oil on canvas. 20"x30". 2010. copyright Natasha Henderson.

Environmental concerns are touched on in her work, however, those concerns are not forefront. She combines an aching beauty, a seeking of light and meaning, along with the recognition that there is a cycle of life that sometimes just stops.

"Fracture". Oil on canvas. 30"x36". 2010. copyright Natasha Henderson.

In the future she plans to paint using home-made (free range) egg tempera paints and to eliminate toxic chemicals completely from her practice. See much more of her work at NatashaHenderson.com.

"Fermata". Oil on canvas. 48"x36". 2010. copyright Natasha Henderson.

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Categories Art, featured artist

Featured Artist: share your art

By natashahenderson
March 4, 2011 //
3

Fleurbain is proud to announce that we will feature a different artist in our online space every month. Our first artist is one of the women behind Fleurbain, Natasha Henderson. Artists who are interested in being featured are welcome to email:

– three to five jpegs of their work (no larger than 1200 pixels on their longest side, at least 300 pixels on their shortest side)

– short descriptions of each piece (Title, Medium, Size, Date)

– a link to their personal website

– and an artistic statement/short biography (about 200-500 words) to: fleurbain@gmail.com.

We can’t guarantee that everyone will be featured, but why not give it a shot!

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Greg Howes – Part Two

By natashahenderson
December 27, 2010 //
2


Punkwrr. Collage, photomorph, slogans. Copyright Greg Howes.

Greg Howes continues the story of his art, inspirations, innovations, and fearless creation. Please see yesterday’s post for the beginning of this story…

I moved to Carmarthenshire, south-west Wales in 1990, where fortunately I was able to continue my horticultural career. Shortly after that move I began to combine my love of plants and my passion to create something a bit different. I started to make pictures and designs from pressed flowers, leaves and grasses that I found growing locally. This medium allowed me to be creative whilst expressing my love of the plant world in all of its different shapes, forms, colours and textures. Moreover, I didn’t feel that I had to apply the more traditional methods to make interesting art.

Mantra. Photomorph, clematis. 2007. Copyright Greg Howes.

I spent many hours and days making pictures in this fashion. Looking back I used to spend hours and hours on a single card which was probably thrown away within a week of the recipient receiving it, but the main joy for me was in creating something new and out of something readily available, beautiful, and free. I still have one or two small pictures I made at that time, but how I wish I had photographed some of the designs that really worked well. One in particular I can remember had a background of pressed white poplar (Populus alba) topside up, this gave a mottled lake finish to it, a single passion-flower, (Passiflora caerulea) as a centre piece, surrounded by small blue flowers and a tiny amount of foliage from love in mist (Nigella damascena) plant.

Serenity. Photomorph. 2008. Copyright Greg Howes.

I bought my first computer in 1997. It had a very basic photo morphing facility which I never used because I did not have a digital camera at the time (nor, I suspect, did many others). Things changed about a year afterwards when I bought myself a scanner and started fiddling with old, already developed photographs of friends and family. Being an avid countryside walker, I then started picking bits of fungi and lichen up and scanning to see what they looked like morphed with my computer software. This did make for some interesting results; though I must confess I did not enjoy wiping off the squidgy mess from my scanner afterwards. It’s interesting that we can see beauty in sweeping landscapes and flower gardens, and even in singular blooms, but the beautiful intricacies of some of nature’s most useful foot soldiers go largely unnoticed.

JKL LM. Collage and photomorph. 2007. Copyright Greg Howes.

 

The real change for me artistically happened in around 2005 when I bought my first digital camera. Upon reflection, it seems much more like ten years ago rather that five as I have spent so much time with it ever since. I soon found that the ease to get a reasonable-quality picture, with a minimum amount of fiddling about, was very seductive. I then managed to get myself a copy of Microsoft “PhotoDraw V2” which was a rudimentary photographic design software which was produced some years earlier. However dated it was, it opened up new horizons for me and allowed me to create at will. This change fortunately coincided with my joining of the “Social Networking” site called Myspace. I found that this site gave me an ideal platform on which to display my work whilst also getting the opinion of friends and other artists alike.

 

Originally most of my photographic art work came from the natural world, which I would then morph and play around with colour and form. Trees were high on my list of subjects, but so were other more unlikely images like dew riddled sheep’s wool stuck on barbed wire fences and etc and etc. It soon began to be apparent that beauty and intrigue are often ringed, fenced by our own limited perception of where it can be found. If we all learned to alter our focus a little and live “outside of the box” from time to time, a whole new world can open up to us.

Butterfly Girl. Collage, paint, photomorph. 2008. Copyright Greg Howes.

 Greg Howes will share the third installment of his fascinating story tomorrow.

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Categories Art, Gardening

Non-Toxic Art

By natashahenderson
November 15, 2010 //
0

by Natasha Henderson, Montreal

In This World solo exhibition in BC a few years back

As some of you may know, I am a painter. I paint in oils, which are a lush and rich material. Pigment is suspended in oil, it slowly dries, it holds its body and texture and translucency… it is like painting with light. Who wouldn’t want to paint with light? It sounds like magic, like miracles. Like painting with rainbows. You layer this suspended pigment over other layers of suspended pigment, time passes, it dries so slowly… slowly. Because of the intensely slow drying time of oils, many artists add in products and other things that are not oil to make the oil dry a bit faster. Up until very recently, and then starting again yesterday, I used Alkyd Medium. There are a few options out there for that stuff, and I use the Gamblin one. With this “goo”, a layer of paint will be pretty much dry within a day. This is important for an artist who is always inspired to paint, and who sells her paintings to make a large chunk of her living. We’re talking practicalities, here. (Don’t even get me started on the feeling I get when I think about the painters who have come before me, the links to a shared history and a huge family of painters. Maybe some other time I will wax historical and poetic about that.)

I take issue, though, with needing to buy “product” in order to paint. I am even leaning away from the idea of using store-bought pigments. With my friend, Tammy the Herbalist, I have been discussing natural dyes and pigments. I like the idea of gathering plants and natural substances and using them to make my own paints.

Bucka! Bucka!

I recently saw (and was very moved by) the Otto Dix show at the Musee des Beaux Arts in Montreal. Otto Dix would use mixed media in his paintings, and lots of egg tempera. I want to paint with egg tempera! It is an age-old method of applying pigments to canvas. Why not? I would start with buying free-range eggs for the paint, and, hoping that the bylaw to allow chickens on the Island of Montreal will pass, one day might raise my own hens for egg-eating and paint-making!

Cluck 'N' Lurt, my cartoon chickens (Lurt is the round one)

I had chickens when I was a kid, an illegal arrangement in a small town. My Dad always wanted a farm, and this was as close as he could get. My neighbours enjoyed very cheap, excellent eggs for many years, ’til a newbie blew the whistle. Anyhow, I am interested in using a mixture of eggs, oils, and natural pigments that I would mix in glass jars all by myself. No more need to buy things in throw-away tubes, no more throw-away glass with resin hardened to the inside of it.

I had my first urge to go Herbal in my painting a couple of years back. While perusing all the little bottles of “stuff” that one could add to their paints at a major art-supply store, I saw a bottle of “Oil of Spike Lavender”. In with the toxic paint mediums was one of my all-time favorite scents/tastes/herbs. Lavender… oooh! So I bought it, thinking that it would add a lovely working-smell to my paints. It does, it did. However, I finally did read the small print (come to think of it, it’s all small print on this little tiny bottle) and what? What? It contains a petroleum product, and they actually say to not breathe the fumes. I will use Oil of Lavender in my works, in the future… just it will be a more pure extract!

Lavender... can't you just smell this???

A part of my rationale for change is based on health, outside of environmental concerns. I know I’d need to be careful about loose pigments, and I would buy a respirator. If I succumbed to buying loose pigment from the loose-pigment place, Kama, then I would most certainly do this. I would stop using cadmium and cobalt, no question about THAT one.

What changes will happen within my work? Only time will tell. Time will always be an internal and eternal aspect of painting, and especially of oil painting. Like many changes, this should be pretty exciting and a challenge.

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