News — history

When visiting the Big Island of Hawaii one time, I made up a couple of small Travel Journals that featured the plants and palms of Hawaii…..just for fun. I want to see if I could do it. :-)  The fact of the matter is, you are ‘curating’ your life anyway – consciously or unconsciously! You make plans to visit places and meet people and to enjoy new settings, food and experiences. So why not be more intentional with those experiences as they unfold in your life?   Over the next while, lots of you will carry out plans to visit...

Painting on old paper, on ‘ephemera’, is something I’ve been doing for a few years now. From envelopes and old cheques to yellowed old letterhead, postcards, and waybills......it’s all fodder for my watercolour brushes.   This new series grew out of this long standing interest in old paper and the fact a friend was tossing some old navigation charts that were out of date. He knew I painted on ephemera and asked if I’d like to have them....I said ‘yes’. And the rest is history.   The series here follows my penchant for all things ephemera - and it takes...

The truth is, I’m not sure where this latest fishing bobber art obsession has come from. True, they’ve been part of my life since I was a kid. I remember tagging along with my Dad and some of his friends and our neighbours when they headed out to the Lakelse, Kitsumkalum, Skeena, or Copper Rivers in Northern British Columbia to fish for whatever salmon was on the run.   Dad’s tackle box had some of those bobbers and, even today, I can remember being drawn to how bright and colourful they were. I especially remember thinking that they had to...

Proof of Life – Your Travel Journal This isn’t going to be a regular blog.   This blog is going to try to convince you to actually DO something. This blog is a sales pitch to get you to think seriously about taking the step to start doing Travel Journals for yourself.   Whether you’re a hiker or paddler, a seasoned cruise ship person, or an adventure traveler, the act of doing a Travel Journal will give back to you in so many rich and unexpected ways. In the end, you will have a treasure - something few people have...

Recently, I got a phone call from a friend asking if we could meet to chat about a commission he would like me to think about. For a while now, I’ve been painting on old paper and he had some old paper that he wanted like to talk about.   This old paper stock I’ve been using is broadly called ‘ephemera’, and it includes everything from letterhead and maps, to accounting paper, envelopes and more. For the most part, this is bond paper and more often than not it takes watercolour well and doesn’t bleed through - unlike the shiny...