Good morning friends; from my computer screen I raise my eyes to the window, beyond which lies a violet coloured fog. Slightly darker smudges signify Baker Island is still in place across Cramer Pass. Superimposed on this November certainty rise scenes from the summer as my fingers lie idle on the keys. And in my heart …gratitude. In this darker winter season, bright memories of all you brought to me provide warmth, and fuel the solitude necessary to the creation of the winter’s work - whether a book, a painting, a load of porcelain pottery or the more physical garden work, and house projects and repairs.
So thank you, my old friends, and new; thank you all you summer visitors who found SeaRose Studio; who visited and appreciated, who took away with you a small piece of my world, who took art lessons, who shared your interesting life and friends, who came to dinner or had us to dinner, or who helped out with the firewood and the garden. Thank you for coming and please…come again!
Life in the Broughton obeys its own seasonal agenda, which often is dominated by wildlife, a distinct highlight of our days. 2019 was notable for numerous black bear sightings. In previous years we had worried about the low number of bears, however this year the opposite prevailed. Black bears were frequently observed in our yard and the nearby bay, and reported by the neighbours as well. Of more import- grizzly bears were also seen all over. Bill Proctor reported three on Owl Island. These bears were somewhat short of salmon this year and walked and swam their way in search of food.  
Our hatchery society’s (Mainland Enhancement of Salmonid Species Society) salmon spawner assessment crew came upon a freshly killed black bear carcass in Viner River, surrounded by grizzly stomps. It is not uncommon for grizzlies to predate on black bears but I suspect it was the unavailability of the generally more easily attained bounty of salmon that made the kill necessary. Our stream walking crew felt small and vulnerable walking down the river counting the few salmon, and requested more support.  The bears have finally gone to their rest in caves and hollow logs, but they’ve not gone with full bellies this year.
We were lucky to have hard-working helpers to fill the woodshed once again. In September, Jonathan from Chile got to go to Embley Lagoon with our short-handed crew and saw a mother grizzly and three big juveniles. He graciously shared his photos with me for the painting I’ve long dreamed of doing, as he, unlike me, had not forgotten to replace the chip in his camera; exactly what I had done when a pod of orca passed by our home. The chip was in when another group went by last week and our October helper, Ben, got to see them. In the last eight years I’ve seen a lot of Biggs (Transients) but only one sighting of the fish-eating residents. This group of nine turned out to be the A42 group, with a distinctive dark curve into the white saddle patch.
(Regarding helping Al with the firewood and me in the garden and getting to have exciting wildlife viewing experiences, if you know anyone interested in helping for a couple weeks, please share my contact info!)
Early in the spring I was approached by a Montreal company, Le Galeriste, which issued me an invitation to upload my artwork and have it designed onto garments and pillows. After some thought (why not after all, one of my early ambitions was to be a fabric designer!) I selected some of my favourite paintings and was pleased with the results. I’ve since added a couple more designs which can all be seen here on the website. I love wearing my own and seeing others enjoying theirs, it’s a different kind of satisfaction! Contact me to order or with questions.
Our last, but for Christmas, social event was Billy’s Halloween fireworks. The smallest group ever - Billy, of course, Nikki V.S. and us, enjoyed a good dinner of fish and chips and Nikki’s garden salad and the most exciting and vigorous fireworks. Thanks Harvey Ash, who selects only the best for Billy!
My Hercules and I soldier on; it takes longer to do things, we need more help than we used to, but while we think about the future, we still live very much in our present. Someday, someone else will enjoy this beautiful place, it might be you!
Until next time, Yvonne

My dear friends, apologies to you all, or at least to those who may have wondered when I might show up here again! It’s been a while.

In any case my hope is always that you will enjoy my stories of life as a pioneer in the Broughton Archipelago. We might now be qualified as old-timers, having been here for more than thirty years.
The life of an artist, musician, photographer, actor is often far more occupied with the doing of those actions required of the occupation. Marketing is one of the most difficult things any of us are faced with doing. In these new times, the internet and how to use social media are replacing print ads and art storefronts and making life quite challenging for people like us.
Learning how to make the best use of these tools, or any use of them at all is not easy. Even finding folks you can trust to help you or guide you to learning useful technologies is a difficult task. However the brain likes to learn new things and, we are told, it keeps the brain healthy to be required to learn new things. I shall persevere. Thank you for being patient with my efforts.That said, I’ll move on to the news of everything!

The big deal this winter is that Billy’s boat shed collapsed on top of the ways. It just got too big a snow load and the thirty year-old building buckled under the weight of the frozen snow. We few remaining neighbours, about one-quarter as many people who helped build it in 1988, spent upwards of fifty person-hours helping Billy (does not include Billy’s hours) demolish the wreckage, salvage the good wood and burn up the remainder. Watch for my article in Pacific Yachting’s latest edition.
Billy and I have been continuing our monthly bird count, its eighteen years since we began this interesting work. Last month our guest Marisa (winter camp watch at Echo Bay and a lively female companion for me) spotted a juvenile eagle on the foreshore in the Burdwood Group, we paused to take a look and spotted half a dozen more; then the source of their interest, a dead seal. Times are tough for eagles, I often see them targeting water birds; subjecting them to aerial attack, causing them to repeatedly dive for up to twenty minutes. It must be exhausting for both birds.

In February I spent most of a month as the guest of Gordie and Marilyn Graham at Telegraph Cove, on a writing retreat. I’m almost finished the first draft of my novel set in Echo Bay and have four eager ‘readers’ chomping at the bit to tear it to pieces. No, no, of course they will actually make suggestions, comments and catch typos and storyline gaps. After working on this novel, I am impressed at the number of people who actually write and publish a novel and even more at the number of satisfying and well-written ones I get to enjoy. It is not an easy task!

I am feeling competent enough, about memoir writing anyway, to offer a writing workshop in Courtenay in May when I am at the Filberg Lodge for my show in Comox.

On the water, it has not been a big winter for whale sightings in Cramer Pass. Our wwoofer helper, Tjasa from Slovenia was present for the three most exciting events, first with a group of seven Biggs orca, or transients, then four days in a row we spotted the humpback named Black Pearl. A few days later we saw a smaller group of Biggs. I’ve noticed the increasing presence of sea otters as their populations expand around the north end of Vancouver Island and down into the mainland inlets. On the starfish front, I’ve seen a small but hopeful show of baby starfish and a report from a friend at Lagoon Cove of a number of sunflower stars, the large multi-legged ones which were so decimated by starfish wasting disease the last few years.

At SeaRose Studio, my garden, like many has been somewhat delayed with the chilly north winds. At least we didn’t have to endure the lengthy freeze-up of last year, but it does still seem like we are waiting and waiting for the sun. The art work goes on apace, in a month we will fire a big load of porcelain dinnerware, filling orders and providing new works for the summer visitors. My Hercules, Al Munro has been making very large bowls with a lichen glaze pattern of animal motifs, ravens and elephants. His work, along with my paintings is on display at Qualicum Gallery until mid-May.

The flower months are rolling at us and we welcome visitors, we’ll give you the grand tour of the kilns and the pottery and painting studios. Let me know if there is a painting I can do for you to commemorate your visit here in the Broughton or further down or upcoast, your photos or mine; or give me a call to set up some art lessons.
Check out the home page for details on upcoming shows and the memoir writing workshop.
And if you’d like to sign on to my mailist click here
Until we meet again, Yvonne

Hello dear family and friends, and folks I hope to know better in the not-too-distant future…time to sit down and focus, get at the blog, the wrap-up letter of the year.
My last blog kind of covered the early part of the year and then came summer. Eight weeks of bliss- sunshine, (until mid-August!) visitors (granddaughter Josie and old friends and new), taking on potting and painting challenges, fishing and whale watching, matching artworks with happy buyers and rejoicing in the cessation of post-surgery pain and my newly regained agility. Summer was good. The garden was fabulous although next year I will spend more time actually sitting in it. Many of the plants I chose from my Minter Gardens prize win settled in nicely and I tried to actually plan where and with which companions they might flourish.
I spent the entire month of October in Comox, at the home of my friend Liz where I hung a show of paintings at Whyte’s Framing and Gallery and offered three well-attended watercolour workshops. The best part was having visits from son Logan and his wife and two darling daughters…and thanksgiving weekend with my daughter. I was invited to be the guest at the Read Island Book Club and Sally Davies picked me up at Hoskyn Landing on the northeast side of Quadra Island for s short boat run to her home. Spent a lovely two days with her and husband author David Cox, and really enjoyed the women/book club members of Read Island. Two weeks later I took the ferry to Powell River where I was met by Margy Lutz  of Powell River Book Blog, and her husband Wayne, also authors! Margy treated me to an overnight at their floathouse on Powell Lake and a tour of the lake.
November I managed to just make it to Sointula Winterfest by hitching a ride with Billy the Thursday before the fair day (Saturday 19th) and was once again warmly welcomed by lovely friends. Organizer Carmen Burrows is the daughter of my late friend Linda Burrows, one of the originators of the Sointula Winterfestival and she did her usual amazing job of creating a joyous celebration of arts and crafts, music and comedy.
I haven’t even begun to share what Albert accomplished this year but the list is quite monumental. In addition to the items described in the previous blog, our boiler which heats the house finally gave up the ghost, it was just too corroded for any more repairs. My Hercules had just finished installing the new boiler wen the old inverter packed it in. In between times he built a beautiful brass-paned window for the bedroom, which faces towards the moon and will frame it (the moon) when full. Not to mention the acquisition and installation of washing machine, hot water tank and stove- it’s been one of those years. He hasn’t had a lot of time for the creative arts but did manage to make 120 of his beautiful glasses, and a cheeky raku Rooster, mostly for Nimmo Bay Resort.
We wish you a beautiful 2017 and as always invite you to SeaRose Studio for the pleasure of the art…seeing, touching, engaging in, and taking some home with you!
You are all welcome here.
As ever, Yvonne at SeaRose

It's been a long time coming but, hopefully worth the wait! First I think, O there is not much new news to share and then I start thinking about it and actually there is lots. As noted on the home page, I am most excited about the production of my new book, a colouring book of images from my life on the wild BC coast..and in re the knees, they are doing fine although there were some tough moments after we came home from doing a promotional tour for Tide Rips and Back Eddies...unable to walk very much I spent my time drawing, which activity, as you may know, is one of my very favorites...

...and while I was deep in the drawings my Hercules was busy building (and repairing) the homestead. Billy built us a new dock and Al laid the decking and then yarded a nice long fir pole up onto the deck in preparation for it to replace the saggy cedar we had under one side of the shore ramp. I thought this would be a seriously complex task but I should have known better. Billy came over one day and threw some planks, a come-along and a peavey on the dock and asked Al if he was ready to get the log under. There is only one answer to this question. The operation hardly took any time at all with the two of them working away dragging the log up into the space created by Al's removal of the old decking. Log goes up the middle, then gets rolled to the side and the old cedar log gets rolled out. Simple. New decking gets nailed down and (so far) one side of the railing and there it is, positively luxurious. Next job, repairing the boiler which had sprung some leaks in the wall of the water jacket. Al rigged up some cables and pulleys and laid it on it's back, worked the fantastically heavy welder/generator into position, then climbed u a ladder and welded new metal plates over the weak, thin and actively rotten spots on the front face of the boiler. Got her standing up and all fired up so we only went a week without heat. Luckily November was not too cold.

Work on the dock include building a frame to support our new solar panels and you can see them in the picture at the top. With so much May sunshine, the panels are charging like crazy and we no longer have to run the generator while we use the electric potter's wheel to throw.

And the most recent project, of all these wonderful projects the one which has been the biggest source of frustration, requiring an endless supply of patience.....is the new good set of stairs to the guest bedrooms on the top floor. The problem has been one of 'changing horses in mid-stream'. We had to scrap our plan for a circular stairwell and the top set has been low on the to-do list. We met a new friend last summer, Pete Piercey, and he is a renovations carpenter...he took a look at the stairs and said he could take them on, fitting them in to the space where it has been altered from the original floor plan. I love the stairs! Al will build railings etc....I guess after he fires the kiln....O and there are a couple windows to go in, too.

In between all these activities, just for a break, he (me, too)has been making pottery, mostly for Nimmo Bay Resort, and we are now in glazing mode, hoping to fire next week, in this gloriously magical weather.

The garden is extraordinarily lovely, I won a thousand dollar gift certificate last year from Brian Minter garden center and have been slowly spending it. Every purchase seems to require about ten person hours (mine) of garden reno, digging and weeding and transplanting etc. We had some great helpers in the garden, too, Vanessa and Frances both worked hard and generously on the woodpile and garden.

Look for a display of my paintings at Pierre's at Echo Bay this summer and drop by for a studio tour. I am building a mail list the 'proper' way so sign up for my mail list, go to the Contact page here on the website and submit your e-mail address. Looking forward to seeing all our old friends and acquaintances this summer and new one's, too.

Ciao for now, Yvonne

Good morning dear reader, after a long delay I sit in front of the screen, gathering my notes and thoughts to share from SeaRose Studio. Once again autumn embraces us and notable events are illuminated by the memories of summer sun, of which we had plenty this year. Summer visitors came and went bringing new friends and sharing their adventures. Neil Frazer of Hawaii and Salmon Coast Field Station returned thinner and browner but in one intact piece from a solo voyage out the long, long string of Aleutian Islands. Our granddaughter Josie stayed for ten precious days and we did those usual grandmother/granddaughter things…made raspberry jam, puttered in the garden, went fishing with Billy and to Echo Bay for talks about Humpback whales by Jackie Hildering and “stalking” by Nikki Van Schyndel. We traveled (in pajamas) with a pod of seven Biggs orca into Viner River estuary and watched the group feed on dolphins…maybe not so usual…
I was not able to spend as many Saturdays helping Billy out at his Museum and Gift Store due to the damage my knees have sustained over the years. August 31 I went for double knee joint replacement surgery at Campbell River Hospital. If you find you need surgery yourself ask for Doctor Deke Botsford, he’s the best! My sincere thanks to the surgeon, surgical staff, nursing and physio staff at Campbell River Hospital.  And heartfelt  thanks too, to Vicki and Jamie, Roger and Jane, Patricia and Brian, and to Helen, all of whom gave us a home away from home and tender loving care…I am so grateful to have such good, kind, generous friends. My thanks and love to my dear husband who was with me every step of the way, tended to my every need and barely left my side for the better part of two months.
Because I must sit around and rest, ice and heal, I have no excuse to further procrastinate on this update….
So - locally, we are devastated to note the complete disappearance of the sunflower stars and other starfish, due to starfish wasting syndrome. As well the anemones that once bloomed like exotic flowers on the chains and float logs have disappeared. It is hard to know what other sea creatures are being affected, however there are reports of tiny baby starfish showing up here and there and we have ourselves seen a few sunflower stars way down deep (50 fathoms) which came up in a prawn trap. You can find out more about the extent of this problem at www.pacificrockyintertidal.org
I went with Bill Proctor and Megan Adams who is working on her doctoral thesis, to Deep Harbour in the midst of a westerly deluge and right underneath a thunder and lightning storm (the second in the space of a week, very atypical) –(and why in a rainstorm? Why would we let that stop us?). The rain passed as we drifted among hundreds of thousands of moon jellies near the shallow northern end of the harbor. So many questions come to mind…why are some of them neon violet or orange in hue and some not? Which are male and which female and how do they multiply? How long do they live? I found answers to these and other questions and some other interesting info at www.montereybayaquarium.org/animal-guide/invertebrates/moon-jelly
New topic, last June I was sitting in my studio happily painting and listening to gardening guru Brian Minter offer his advice to radio callers, caught his news about a garden contest. All you had to do was take a picture of your garden, send in your photo and tell Brian what your garden means to you. I’m thinking, I can do that….didn’t even know what the prize was but off I went at magic hour to shoot a few dreamy pictures and think “what does my garden meant to me”? Everywhere I looked the plants and flowers reminded me of someone I love or once loved, so that is what I wrote to Brian. Driving down the highway a couple weeks later, we were about Eve River when Brian was on again so I did not hear who had won until we got into cell service, where I had three emails congratulating me. For what?? Found out the prize was a generous ONE THOUSAND dollar gift certificate to spend at his Chilliwack Minter Garden Center. Thank you, Brian! You can find him at www.mintergardens.com
       I have made some purchases and still have several hundred dollars left to spend and plans to re-arrange the front of the garden below the studios…it will be dramatic.
      Bill and I will be touring our new book around for a week in November, thanks to Albert chauffeuring us, and more dear friends feeding and housing us. Once that is over Albert and I plan to stay home and …stay home! He is installing French doors, (which my son Logan found for us) one off the pool table room to the front deck and one off the bedroom. Three more windows to do and the doors and windows will (finally) be complete. We have met someone we hope will come and help us install the last set of “good” stairs, I am going to dig into my trunkful of fabric and sew some things before the moths ingest all the fabric.

Last word, yesterday we bottled the raspberry wine, I can hardly wait until my first taste of that summer wine…February….So that’s it for now…come by anytime, we love to welcome visitors to SeaRose Studio….and  if you read this and quote it back to me, I am offering a 20% Christmas sale discount on original painting purchases from this website, this could be your moment to acquire original Canadian art!! Chat ya soon, Y
 

At 2:00 am a couple of nights ago, I awoke suddenly to the sharp cracking sounds of gunshots. But as I lay listening in the dark, snug in my cosy bed with the night breeze stealing in the open door, I realized there was either gang warfare underway or…it slowly dawned on me, it’s a humpback whale. Whack, smack, crack, the sounds carry, sharp and loud, and I begin to count. I’m up to seventeen rapid cracks, when after a momentary pause; I hear the almost laughable bugling noise a humpback makes sometimes as it expels its breath. Maybe I am the only one that finds that squealing noise funny but I can’t help it. I smile in the dark at the certainty of my identification and briefly contemplate dressing and tootling out in my boat. A moot question as I have hurt my leg by falling on our dock and cannot walk without a cane at the present moment; low tide is impossible. In the end I count over fifty remarkable loud sharp cracks, too rapid to be breaches I surmise, likely tail whapping. At 7:00 am my eyes pop open as I hear again the unmistakeable breath of the whale and get up to watch it make its unhurried way down Cramer Pass.

I am still lying in my bed as I write this, thinking about how many people confess to bed being the place where they are best able to dredge and sift from all the words, the ones most precisely descriptive. Under the eaves of the front deck of our house, onto which our bedroom door opens, hangs a bird house Billy made, for violet-green swallows. All day their incessant cheeping has been constant background music to my every activity. I have snoozed, read, written; meditated on the pain in my knee and the cough in my lungs, and snoozed some more. The parent birds fly a continuous loop out high to load up on mosquitoes and other little bugs, then swoop down to the nest box to stuff the hungry bills of their offspring. The chicks barely pause chirping long enough to swallow before starting up again.

Wind sighs through the trees, a steady breathy hum; it’s a westerly wind pushing a soft repetitive splash up against the dock and further out in the pass I hear the red-throated loons calling plaintively..”Al, Al” or maybe it’s “ow, ow”, high pitched and sad sounding. When Nikki motors up to the dock I know it’s her boat without looking.

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat, the sound explodes from the back of the house when the cheeky sapsucker spots bugs, or just thinks it does, in between the cedar siding. A kingfisher drops from the fir tree over-hanging the water with its braying “I’m going in!” pre-dive shout. The clunking sound of rolling rocks on the low-tide foreshore draws me down the dock to get a better view of the bear I know is lunching on handsful of crabs.

Next door my neighbour fires up his chainsaw; the important work of fire-wood accumulation is underway. Further out across Cramer Pass, the mail plane banks and drops to come in with a roar, the sound escalates as the planes speed decreases.

Sound surrounds me here, information leaks out everywhere and it is mine to heed or not. Even the sudden cessation of noisy little chirpers amongst the flowers, gorging on seeds late in the summer is an informative moment. I look for the kestrel or merlin that has struck them dumb.

It isn’t only the sights of the our island world that bring us so much; information, great pleasure, healing of the spirit….a profound and acute sense of hearing is as great a gift and the one I offer my gratitude for, today.

Yvonne from SeaRose Studio

          





















Christmas Season ~ 2013



Hello all, greetings from Echo Bay, a week of silvery rain and
cloudbreaks after a week of solid freeze and sun. Weather is nothing if not
  interesting as we are so in it all the time. Rain overflows the gutters, fills
  up the speedboats tied at the dock, which may or may not have an automatic pump
  which may or may not get jammed. Running down the dock in the middle of the
  night to pump out your boat, or remembering to check on your neighbour’s boat
  because they are out for a while and you said you would and you would just
  shrivel up into a puddle if anything happened to their boat while you were
  looking after it..


…or when it freezes up here and the first thing you do is fill
up all the containers you keep tucked away in a cupboard for this very occasion,
  fill up the bathtub, then adjust the tap to the minimum flow possible which
will keep the water line from freezing up…but it freezes anyway and the
beautiful gratitude that fills you when the taps gurgle and the water flows and
you quickly have the first bath you’ve had in two weeks, wash your hair in the
steaming scented flow…and while you are in the bathtub a pod of Biggs
(Transient) orca come by and you can hear them blowing as you lie in the tub and
gaze up the hill at the trees swaying in the southeast wind, sipping on your
coffee and Baileys.


Well, you can see that gives life a little edge that just cannot
be found in an urban landscape…


We are a small and disparate crew this Christmas. Billy, and
next door neighbour Zephyr holding the fort, so to speak, at Salmon Coast
Research Station are our companions and Christmas cohorts. 
Gone are the days when thirty people would fill our house with laughter
and friendship. In many ways it is a lonely place in Echo Bay these days and we
are lucky to have each other, my engineering genius husband and I, and lucky
too, to have the internet to connect us to all the beautiful friends we have
made over the years. And also lucky to have meaningful work that keeps us
occupied and stimulated each day, and an amazing environment in which to breathe
deeply, explore and marvel at.


Our thanks to those I met at Billy’s Museum last summer who seek
to know the Broughton Archipelago and love it, also to the visitors to SeaRose
  Studio who brought their own spark to our world, who made us feel, with their
  appreciation of our art, that we don’t live in a social desert..it just flowers
  with the seasons…thanks for your friendship, Teri and Pat, Carl and Carol, Dale
  and Pat, Daphne and the boys and many others. Thanks as well to the bookstores,
  libraries, restaurants, Costco’s and churches of Vancouver Island communities
  who hosted me and my daughter Theda Phoenix in our promotional tour of my book
  and her CD in May; you all made us feel so welcome and
special.


Special thanks to my daughter Theda who takes time from her own
  demanding schedule to help me out with this website. Theda you have really
  supported me in this painful learning curve…


WWOOF Canada creates the opportunity for us to have helpful
  visitors from all around the world, who help fill the woodshed, transplant
  hydrangeas, weed the garden beds, gather seaweed and fallen maple leaves to
  cover them for the winter. Our thanks to all the ‘wwoofers’ who came to us this
  year, and to the ones who came and went over the last four years yet stayed in
  our hearts.


2014 looms ahead, full of potential, full of the joy and
optimism a new year symbolizes. As we work to better the planet in small ways,
to help our friends and neighbours, when we are able, to support those who are
troubled and /or in the front lines of important causes, and to fulfill our
individual human potential, we remind ourselves we are all one; as one cell of
the body is, to the body, one human being is, to the totality of humankind. Keep
hold of the big picture…..


Sincerely yours, Yvonne at
SeaRose

February the 14th, yes Valentine’s Day. I’m alone at a friend’s home while my exhibit of water-colors and acrylics on canvas, with artist Karen Martin Sampson is on at the Pearl Ellis Gallery in Comox, (1729 Comox Ave) until March 2. The phone links me to my husband, my daughter and son, the daughter of a friend, my auntie. I leave messages with my mother, a few friends, my granddaughter. Maybe someone will call back or text. I should have planned to spend the evening with people but it never occurred to me I might feel the need to do that. Who knew? But there are many things on my to-do list and now is a good time to do some of them. Feeling lonely can be assuaged by  ticking tasks off the list. 

 As many of you know, I have built a new website, one that I can manage myself. Of course this requires another steep learning curve and regular attention but relying on other people can be problematic and communications can breakdown without warning. Relying on one’s self means there is a lot of fumbling and apprehension to overcome, to accomplish what appears to come so naturally to others. I guess they just got
there sooner. Like my dear daughter who has helped me so much with the site.

 Somehow the idea of a blog strikes me as being somewhat like whispering, “Can you hear me?” in the midst of an enthusiastically yelling crowd. However I shall join my voice to the chorus and share about my world. 

At a time in my life when I feel I want to work not quite so hard, I find myself working harder than ever. I have the feeling of a wave lifting me that I want to catch and surf as long as it lasts. That wave is the excitement generated by the imminent arrival of a real tangible book that can be held in the hand, with pages that can be read and turned, references to  places that can be found on a map, pictures that reveal a past that is gone but of memories that shape the present. I still can’t tell you exactly when I will be touring
Vancouver Island promoting “Drawn to Sea” although I am pretty sure it will be the last two weeks of April and possibly into May. My publisher Vici Johnstone of Caitlin Press, her small staff and many other people are working flat out to pull it all together. I am thrilled to share that both Costco and Chapters have made substantial pre-orders of my book so you’ll see it on the shelves of the big chains as well as the independent book stores.

 Author Paula Wild is one of the people who really made a difference for me in my effort to make this book real. She, like me with small group art retreats, offers small group writers workshops, with an extraordinary attention to detail, and commitment to the process, and success, of the individuals who avail themselves of this type of educational experience. Many people take a lot of classes over the years, large group classes where a specific target is described by the instructor and the participants garner a bit of knowledge and an introduction to some new skills. But the small group class, one to four individuals, while usually costing more than the larger workshop or class, has the potential to take you on a greater leap of expertise in a shorter time. Paula, like me with painting and pottery, has the ability to see where you are at, what you have done and what you know about writing, comprehend what you are aiming for and prescribe precisely the actions and information that will connect the two.

 This is what she did for me and what, I hope, I do for painters seeking to develop their skills and reach for the previously unattainable. Your job, of course is to fill the prescription and undertake the actions. So thanks Paula, for mentoring me to the fruition of my book, this blog’s for you. 

And for you too, Josie girl. My granddaughter texted me back, she is about to read “The Dragonriders of Pern”, a book I loved when I was young, found in a second hand book store in Comox, and mailed to her. My mother returned my call and we had a nice chat, so my Valentine’s day ends with a lot of love from afar.

 I think about what a painting about love might look like. What is the color of love, the shape, the texture? If you show it on a two dimensional surface can anyone recognize it without a title? It sometimes seems as difficult to recognize real love in human relations as it might be to recognize it as an art piece.
 The next blog will be sooner than this one was. Promise. Y

Here are Theda Phoenix, me, and Karen Martin Sampson at the Artist Reception, in front of my painting "Xumdaspe". (Photo thanks to artist Lyndia Terre)