New Painting - BICYCLE AT THE BEACH

As we move into autumn, it is so much fun to paint a scene reminiscent of an idyllic summer. I painted a small watercolour study of this scene earlier and it has already sold. This time I enlarge the format to 16X20 inches on canvas using acrylic paint. The format permitted me to include the distant shoreline. With this painting I listened to some counsel that I have recently received from well known artist Peter Etril Snyder. Customarily I anticipate what I will put on a surface by sketching the scene, making a plan. Then of course it becomes a fill in the blanks exercise - kind of a glorified colouring book. I haven't wanted my paintings to look like that. Snyder calls this front loading and he encouraged me to move away from this tendency. Here I painted in the sky and sea with solid colours which I mixed to suit my warm summer light. I decided not to detail the water at all. Then I scrubbled in the grasses that would be behind the fence. I covered the water with a towel and then shook a brush wet with paint on the grasses to create the impressions of flowers. I proceeded to paint in a solid sand colour for my path to the beach. I then again covered water and grasses with a towel and did what this inferior photo does not show. I covered the sand with tiny multi coloured spots of sand and stone drops of paint that I made by tapping a wet brush above the canvas sand. I scribbled a couple of bicycles on paper, cut them out and tried them on the canvas for size to see which size would look best in the frame. Then I pencilled in the rear wheel where I wanted to position the bike and I began to paint a bicycle. It's the kind of rusty handled old bike I saw at the beaches on the north coast of France, Normandy and Guernsey. Once the bike was completed I painted in the fence posts, the dark shade colour first for the entire post and followed that with a light colour to give the impression of sunlit sides. The last thing to be painted were the shadows of posts on the uneven sand - shadows cast from the posts on the opposite side of the path. It's a simple painting but the actual piece is compelling and hangable. Colours are vibrant. The online photo does not do it justice. In one of my gallery frames, 2 1/2 inch espresso colour with a 2 1/2 inch white liner, it will be impressive. I like it.

The G10 Group of Artists

The G10 Group of Artists

I mentioned earlier the benefits of collegial arts activity and here is a group of artists, nineteen of them, who meet weekly as individual schedules permit. Their gatherings take place at the waterfront at Crescent Beach each Tuesday. During a three hour session the group does sketches of a hired model who does brief poses, some one to two minutes in length, others from five to ten minutes or longer. The value of these sessions for these artists is manifold but certainly it provides a regular invigorating atmosphere for developing or fine-tuning drawing skills. One can imagine how inspiring such meetings are to an artist’s creative imagination and motivation when in the company of friends and peers. This ritual exercise is followed by a lunch at the Beecher Street Café. Christine and I celebrated our forty-second anniversary at this quaint dining facility last Wednesday. Can you imagine the stimulating conversations over lunch when that many artists converge? The G10 holds occasional group shows.

I don’t know the names of the entire group of local artist but among them are Maryanne Kamphuis, Kim Pollard, Robert McMurray, Bette Laughy, Kathy Johnson, and Susan Falk. You can check their web links to their names.

Perhaps you can even write to one of them to inquire what is the derivation of the G10 nomenclature. I can’t – I am off to a Golf game.

Bernard Major

You should visit Bernie Major’s art website. He is a productive and admired painter living in Langley, B.C. As a retired pastor and given my fascination with things celestial and beyond through all these previous decades, I found his introductory quotation from Sir Winston Churchill of interest. Churchill, a hobbyist painter and a good one, wrote, “When I get to heaven I mean to spend a considerable portion of my first million years in painting, and so get to the bottom of the subject.”

Anyone who applies paint to a surface over an extended time appreciates that this discipline is a constant learning experience. Advisors frequently encourage artists to paint every day. The gain comes from doing it more than by reading about it. A million years with brush in hand might make a few of us good at this. Bernie is good at it already.

Bernie’s interesting personal story includes service with the British military and the London Metropolitan Police Force as well as the Scotland Yard detective branch. After emigrating to Canada in 1969 he opened a private investigation company from which he retired in 1999. He then devoted himself to his painting. While he enjoyed watercolour, he transitioned to oils and thus emerged a distinctive colourful and textured recognizable style. Bernie is an active member of the Federation of Canadian Artists with numerous juried competitions to his credit. He also belongs to the G10 Group of Artists, who meet every week for life drawing sessions at Crescent Beach.

Take a look at Bernie’s enjoyable work.

GPS Application

Back to Churchill’s comment. I have certainly explored biblical data to answer the question of what we will do in heaven. Some information comes from the apostle John who envisioned three heavenly activities in Revelation 22:1-5. They are serving, seeing and reigning. That has some appeal. The service will be for God and we may as C. S. Lewis suggests, govern a distant star, or do you think as Churchill surmised, we may paint God a picture. We will have all the equipment and skill equal to the task. As to seeing, we will see God and in seeing him we will be like him. Finally we reign together with God over the majesty of a universe outside of time and without parameters.

Let's keep painting. Johann Sebastian Bach wrote every composition to the glory of God. I should be able to paint my work to his glory too.

The painting image is copyright of the painter and not to be downloaded without permission of the artist.