New Website Launched!

Well, it's been wild and wooly getting my new website up! Brenda Thebeau Abstracts is up and running, just click on the button on my toolbar to the left.

The course I've been taking with Leslie Saeta, has been very helpful, there's a lot to learn.  WebInArts is just what I needed to discover what some of my next steps should be.  Old hat to many of you, but what a learning curve for me!

Working on some smaller pieces this week which I really enjoyed, not sure that these will be the final embellishments that I'll use but I like how this little version of "Ignited" turned out.

Do you know if you had told me that my life would be altered so much when I began painting I never would have believed you!  The artistic process is an amazing thing that brings with it inner transformations that, well, you just might not come up with in your wildest dreams.  I know I sure didn't!

Here's a nugget from Life, Paint & Passion by M. Cassou

"To discover that you can paint without special talent is a great revelation. An endless stream runs through you, enough to paint for lifetimes.  Talent is universal. You can dip into that source to your heart's content.  Everyone is good at what comes to them spontaneously."

Heart's Music

This is a custom piece I made for a young couple who just got married, I filled it with elements that would speak to their heart, it's called, Heart's Music.  It has its own story to tell, beginning with the phrase that came to me as I thought about this young couple. 'Love is the music of the heart.' 'Love is the heart's music.'

The abstract impression of a tree, the might oak, running up the side of the canvas branching out blending with the various symbols I chose.

The Celtic Knot (framing the Cross) is symbolic of the Oak tree's root system and is meant to remind us that beneath our surface we have divine inner resources to hold us steady and give us wisdom and strength through out life.  The Celtic Trinity Symbol (top left) represents Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It also represents, Past, Present and Future.  Who we are today, the relationships we build are the sum of those elements.

The compass conveys that 'Love should always be our 'True North' I wrote the phrases, "Love is the music of the heart and Love is the heart's music" repeatedly and wove it into the band going across the canvass along with music notes, painted, crackled and flooded with copper gold ink.  I love how it turned out!

Tumbling from the branches are clocks to serve as a reminder that time is fleeting and to savour the moments and the date of this young couples wedding floating across the canvass.

Along the bottom I used the words taken from 1 Corinthians 13:7 and typed them repeatedly representing the root system of the oak tree.  "Love, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never fails."

Like I said, this piece has a story to tell :-)

I managed to overcome the recent speed bump that had me slowed to a crawl and got the first layer of paint down on that big canvas. Now to figure out what comes next!

Flat Surfaces Pitfall

If you could see my loft studio right now, you'd wonder what blew through here!  Every available flat surface has stuff strung all over it!  Canvases drying, canvases partly finished, those finished and awaiting being safely packed away until the art fair or shipping, and mixed-media painting supplies everywhere.  I know what I'll be doing in the next little while.

It's funny, my husband and I joke about his problem with flat surfaces, if it's flat he will set something down on it then wonder where he left it :-)  Here I am with every flat surface obscured by art related stuff.  Not enough hours, and in my case not enough health to keep it cleared, until today I just can't create in the chaos anymore.  That's another interesting thing about we humans. Some of us need things very clean in order to feel right in our own skin, not me by the way.  Others require a little more lived in and then there are those that can thrive when everything is out and in sight around them.  Quirks, you got to love them, it's what makes life interesting.

Read this at random in a book I'm thinking of reading, (bought it second hand)


"...a deep, inner yearning to express themselves, plus persistence!  Without persistence, they could never have overcome their inhibitions, their doubts and fears, long enough to permit their true inner selves to function...a matter of patient, quiet, firm, dogged work.  Please believe me when I say that your success depends not so much upon technical training, as upon your personal growth, your adaption to the learning process and your ability to let yourself go!" The Creative Way To Paint by David Friend

Having trouble getting a photo that shows the colours accurately but this gives you an idea.  6 more little pieces to add to my mountain theme, plus a larger mixed-media piece and more being prepped but not shown.

Hope you are having a great weekend!

A Little Series

I do believe this might be my first successful series, I start out thinking I'll do more along a certain theme but the next one just doesn't seem to happen.  Go figure.  They are also the smallest thing I've ever painted.

These are a series of backgrounds done on watercolour paper, always love doing these because I just have at it with lush colour, various spray and texturing techniques.  While these dry, I lay out some wax-paper and rip up random pieces of tissue paper that I lay on the wax paper then out comes my watercolour and acrylic inks and my water bottle sprayer.  It's always a delight to see how the colours bloom and blend and bleed.  When everything is dry I can then take the painted tissue paper and begin to weave them onto my background paper creating the loose effect of mountain ranges in this case.  The most challenging part for me is to then get them cut and glued onto my canvases!  Straight lines and careful matches will always challenge me :-)

Today I start the painting process on a couple of mixed-media pieces that I have prepped this week.

Happy Canada Day celebrations to my fellow Canucks! 

A Little Foiling

Took time out from practicing my brush strokes on the door casings and painted this small abstract.  I had prepped it last week and finally got around to working some paint onto the foiled surface.  I'm down to the finish and find it helps to snap a picture or two as it gives me a better perspective on it overall.

"To create from intuition, you need to free yourself from the demands and expectations of product. These pressures strangle your potential to create and prevent true enjoyment and passion. Inside you lives the worst judge and the most tyrannical ideas of what you should do and how your finished product should look. The amount of freedom you experience is always a function of how much permission you give yourself."   Michele Cassou, Point Zero

Gone a Little Pollock In The Studio

Okay I confess to having gone off the grid on this one.  The trouble began when I went to the studio with a plan in mind.  You'd think I'd know by now that plans seldom work out for me, not in the studio.  Of course you know that artist/teacher Michele Cassou would have something to say about it...

"To create you do not need to come up with a plan, but rather take away all plans to give natural originality, style, and wisdom a chance to manifest from intuition."  Point Zero

There came a point when what I had planned and was trying to make happen on the canvas was dead in the water, a wash of it!  Out came the squeegee, brayer, brushes, inks and one mass of clogged up paint.  (That's a whole other story, a brand of paint I'm going to have to give up on, it just keeps drying up in the tip of the bottle leading to endless stabbing with a needle to clear it again and again, sheesh)

It was crazy fun! There was paint splattered all over me, glasses, cloths anything exposed including the floor.  I kept thinking what on earth would my mother think of the mess I was making.  I grinned like a maniac and kept splatting and spraying.

So I have one wild background to work from, at this point I'm not making any plans as to what comes next!  Instead I'm asking myself what this painting is expressing, something Cassou encourages artist to do, ask questions.

"With questions, you can dig into your creative potential as far as you want. The questions gently knock at the door of your inspiration, or bang on it, or blast it open, or anything in between so that your heart and soul can be engaged." Point Zero by Michele Cassou

My creative door got blasted, how about yours?

Stirring The Paint

#29 "Interference"  Acrylics on canvas

It's been a good week so far, sold two new paintings helping to keep me in paint supplies!  This is the newest completed piece.  Just a nice size 24 x 24" on Gallery Wrap Canvas.

A few more thoughts from another David DuChemin ebook, Vision Is Better
"So what do you do when the thing that sustains you begins to tire you? What do you do when the shelves are bare? Restock the shelves...I think the way we do that is a little counter-intuitive: we shoot more, write more (paint more) we go back to the well and fill it with the same bucket we use for drawing water in the first place.  We get intentional about the process and stop worrying about the product.  We stir the paint. We take more risks. We work more not less...you take the time to do more personal projects and create something for you and not your clients.  It is not just as important that you feed your own creative soul before you feed your market, it is more important...What do you do to stir the paint? Where do you go to fill your well?"

Without realizing it these last several pieces have been all about well filling for me.  Doing things that stimulate and entice me to risk new things.  It's been great.  Hope all of you are finding your own ways to 'stir the paint' this week!

Just Begin-Then Finish!

'Affinity' 20x24" Mixed-Media on Gallery Wrap Canvas-SOLD

My sister Kellie shared some things David DuChemin said in his e-book, "Vision Is Better 2"  They are hard hitting truths worth sharing.

"How great your idea is means almost nothing without the will to carry it out."

"The trap lies in thinking that coming up with the ideas is where the value is.  It isn't.  The value lies in your ability to execute."

"We sometimes get paralyzed by too many options.  A million ideas and we're stuck because we can't pick one.  Stop it.  Pick one.  Move forward.

Because picking the "wrong one" and getting it done puts you in motion and is better than doing nothing at all  Just begin."

"Don't let your piles of notes and your great sounding ideas lull you into thinking you're making progress.  You make progress when you begin."

"Most of us don't need more inspiration.  We need to begin acting on the inspiration we've already been given."

Added a few more rings to the centre of this piece along with some collage elements before calling it done.  I think it improved the overall look of the design. Hope so because I now have it listed in my Art Gallery page and facebook! (NOTE: Affinity sold shortly after I posted it on FB. Yeah!)

NOTE: Now that I figured out that changing the format for my comments box allows me to reply to individuals comments I am doing just that.  If you've left me comments in the last couple of posts know that I am appreciative and have responded to your willingness to share :-)

Oddly Stuck

I feel stuck!  A new year is suppose to be about fresh starts, renewed energy and determination.  Blogs and articles abound on tips, hints, motivations of how to get yourself going in 2012.  But I'm afraid I've hit the skids instead, and of course when that happens you start looking for reasons why, because hey we all want to at least 'feel' productive :-)

It doesn't help that my body has been going through an intense time of flare ups, the pain is acute, sleep is brief. (that's why I'm writing this at 3:30 in the morning)  There are a number of artist friends out there who suffer from various chronic conditions, like fibromyalgia, arthritis, back/neck pain and others. Living with chronic pain is a challenge to our artist endeavours, and I wonder how others handle these intense times when everything seems to slow with the pain?

The desire to create bubbles away inside you, but you have little energy or directive to begin and I'm trying to be okay with that for now.  This battle is fought and won in the mind and spirit so I focus on keeping them strong until my body begins to quite down.

These are not new pieces, but when bringing them home from Bistro 610 (formerly called Fusion) this is how I choose to put them on the wall and was quite struck by how they 'go' together without having been painted to do so.  In fact it was a potential client who brought my attention to how well they complement each other.  Which now has me considering doing a series of individual pieces that will co-ordinate with each other.  I know not a new concept to most of you, but this is my third year of painting and something I've not consciously done to date :-)  Something to let percolate.

"The creative spirit demands persistence."  Shaun McNiff

Exhibition & Meet the Artist

It's been a time of first for me in the past week.  My first exhibition  and my first 'Meet the Artist' at Fusion Cafe & Bistro.  The pieces I had on display have all sold!  Can you say, happily surprised!  I got to meet some of the people who are purchasing my work and it's a humbling experience but a brilliantly happy one at the same time.  I enjoyed hearing their responses to the piece(s) they had chosen, art really has a voice all it's own. It speaks first to me as I work with it's elements to bring it to life on the canvas, then it speaks to the individual who's eye it captures.  Maybe that's why I don't find it hard to part with the pieces once I've finished the process.  For me, the power has always been in the process, the act of creating, feeling my way along as it teaches me things about myself, about persistence, about what it means to complete.     So I'm in my studio this week, creating some new pieces to add to the display.

Oh and I got to meet Doug Dickinson the journalist for the Bugle, wonderful to put a face to the name and thank him in person for making me sound good in print! I appreciate everyone who came out and stopped to chat, thank you.

I have to tell you, having all these firsts take place at Fusion has been the greatest gift for me. Tracie has been wonderfully encouraging and helpful, she has created an amazing gathering place.  

My sisters, daughter and I had the best time during the 'Meet the Artist' enjoying the delectable Brunch Buffet, well they did, I was too nervous to eat much but did enjoy another one of Fusion's incredible cheese cakes. Yum!  Even had my son drop in with his wife Lori, who has become quite the PR person for my art and of course my two Grand-daughters.  Loved it, when the youngest, Lyvia asked me, "Nanny are you an artist?"  I looked at her and grinned and said, 'you know what, I think I might be!' We both had a good chuckle.

Looks like the fist layers of texture are dried so I'm out of here!

Repeats-NOT!

As usual my pictures aren't very good, but I wanted to at least give you an idea of how this painting turned out.  Once again, I've learned some lesson about myself and my art from working on this piece.  It was an attempt to create a design similar to a piece I did a few years ago that others have liked a lot, including my husband who won't part with it :-)

So, what did I learn?  That I don't do repeats well, in fact I won't attempt to duplicate a design again.  I guess when I've gotten it out and down on canvas once, it just doesn't work for me to try and revisit it again.  Colour palettes, similar tools, techniques are fine for me to work in over and over, but the layout and design of a piece, well this is my second attempt at revisiting a basic design and both times it left me hanging and uninspired by the end results.  I guess there is a lot more of me and a spark of inspiration that goes into my art than I realized!

So onwards and upwards!

Free Play Frenzy

Well 'snap!' it's been a battle, kind of like the one Odd Chick posted about in her own art endeavors .  I had almost given up on my latest collage canvas. I guess that's what comes of changing out the key piece to the collage putting my colour choices at odds with the new focal point.  Last night in one wild frenzy of 'Free Play' I smeared the canvas with Transparent Burnt Umber & T. Raw Umber. Using only my hands I worked it into the areas I needed covered and skimmed over other areas including portions of the photo.  It was glorious!  The wild abandon part when you don't give a rip if it works or not because you've come to the end of yourself anyway and the fear of 'ruining' something is long gone.

I was alone in the house but if you could have heard me when I saw what was emerging from the canvas as opposed to what I had been producing, you'd have though I was a mad woman.  Maybe I am when it comes to my art.

It was a living moment straight out of 'Free Play!'
"In school, in the workplace, in learning an art or sport, we are taught to fear, hide, or avoid mistakes.  But mistakes are of incalculable value to us.  There is first the value of mistakes as the raw material of learning.  If we don't make mistakes we are unlikely to make anything at all."  Free Play by Stephen Nachmanovitch


As you can see I've been continuing to read Free Play, and as with any book there are portions that speak louder to me than others.  So I take what I need and let the rest go, the gems of insight I hang onto.

My sister Kel and I have been having another one of our discussions, she has some wonderful insights into the whole value issue many of us face. I'm hoping she will flesh it out and write in more depth on the subject for her blog.

"You know, I think that may be the difference between us and other successful artists out there who are actually selling more of their stuff.  We come at it from our own viewpoint with all of its insecurities and attempts at humility, instead of looking at it from THEIR point of view, where sticking a few flowers in the ground, or splashing some paint on a canvas is seen as a hugely creative output that they could never hope to accomplish on their own, or something that will grace their walls with colour and mystery that just cannot be found in any department store.  We underestimate the value that people put on these things, and what they are willing to pay to experience it.  (We also come at it from OUR financial viewpoint, which does not allow for any luxuries like that!)"  Kellie Graham personal email to me :)


As you can see the gel is still drying on the canvas and I've more work to do, but at least now I want to continue working with it and that's a good thing. Now if I only had some skills with photography, I'd be able to take better pictures of the canvas :-)   Hope all of you are having your moments of Free Play this week.