Creative Fire

What feeds your creativity?

Is it talking to other artists? Looking at images on Instagram or Pinterest? Visiting art shows, galleries, and museums? Courses? Do you actively search out new ideas or let them come to you? 

I expect you do all of these things. I know I do. I would add teaching. Working with students, finding ways to make art interesting, exciting, and fun has added all kinds of new techniques, materials, and ways of seeing to my practice.  Teaching has been my biggest teacher.

These days a lot of that happens in my studio, behind a camera and computer, in my online courses, and in my stimulating discussions in my Facebook Group Artwork Artplay.

As I write this, Artwork Artplay has 1700 members. It’s an open group which shares a passion for art making and a curiosity about the experiences and wisdom of other artists. Recently, I did a facebook live on making small work and invited members of the group to make their own small work into postcards for penpals to send to each other. Postcards whizzed around the planet: a botanical study from Australia landed in a postbox in London; a seascape from Vancouver Island was opened at a kitchen table in Spain...Enjoy this video of some of the postcards.

Enjoy this video of some of the postcards.

post card by Peggy Depue

Because I am often inspired by other artists, I decided this year to do a series of interviews. This has become my series “Artists at Large” on my YouTube channel. I loved having the chance to sit down and chat with artists, to look at their images, and find out what drives their work. I have done six so far and look forward to more. Let me know if there is an artist that inspires you, that you think should be part of this series.

There are some great art podcasts out there. One of my favourites is Margret Petrie’s Authentic Obsessions, whose site statement begins Living a creative life can be complicated and beautiful and terrifying and messy. But you are not alone. I started this podcast because I needed to hear what drives artists to show up and keep doing the work despite the fears and failures and obstacles.

I enjoyed having a wide-ranging discussion with her last winter.

But as rich as my studio painting and teaching life is, perhaps like many of you, I was itching to travel again. I live on a small island and though we have an excellent art gallery in my local town, Nanaimo town, I don’t get to big galleries and museums much. That happens mostly when I travel.

Travel always feeds my art fires. Especially in Europe, where so much of our painting traditions are rooted. This spring I spent 6 weeks in France — a place that I have developed deep ties to over the last ten years. Before covid I taught workshops there with the Toronto artist Kelley Aitken. We will return next year to Espedaillac, our favourite village in southwest France.

This visit I wandered happily through galleries and museums and saw the work of many of the artists we associate with the European tradition. I often find that it is the obscure works of known artists or the lesser known artists that I am most drawn to. 

I visited the Granet museum in Aix en Provence. The museum bearing the name of the 19th c painter is hung with many of his huge heroic paintings depicting mythological and historical scenes. But I loved more the small value sketches done on location in Italy, in pen and wash

A show of Raoul Dufy reminded me to find the joy in colour and line.

Here’s my quick Dufy sketch.

One of the joys of travel for me is capturing moments in my journal. I never do as much drawing as I think I will and the drawings often fall short of my ambitions, but these images are my favourite souvenirs.

This summer I’m looking forward to teaching Keeping a Visual Journal! I’ll be teaching a full four day workshop at the Gibsons School of Art. Can’t wait to work with real live students again. 

If you want to start your own journal this summer, have a look at Precious Moments —Keeping an Illustrated Journal a self-paced course for $50. The course, available on my website includes 6 videos and supporting PDF’s on everything from how to build your own accordion journal, drawing nature with pen and ink and washes, simple ink landscape, watercolour skies, gelli printing and collage, quick figure drawing, and telling a story in your journal.

Those of you on Vancouver Island might find the Sooke Fine Arts Show July 22-August 1, feeds your creative fires. From their website: Returning to a live format for its 36th anniversary, the Sooke Fine Arts Show provides the opportunity for the finest artists from Vancouver Island and BC’s coastal islands to showcase and sell their work.

My large coastal landscape, “Summer Storm, Salish Sea” will be hanging in the show.