Featured today is our fourth place award winner Fiona Evans

 

 

 As long as I can remember I have drawn & painted and always wanted to be an artist.  I had a career as a graphic artist in downtown ad agencies that I loved but after having my first child, realized the hours were not compatible.  I still did a bit of  freelance work, but began to paint more seriously in order to do something creative while home with children.  I taught some childrens' art classes for the Town of Richmond Hill in the past and now teach out of my home studio.

The best part of being a member of BWS is all the great people I've met and painted with. 

Painting day!

Come Paint In Petra's beautiful Garden in King Ontario on  Friday, June 1, anytime between 9am and 5pm. A Lovely Day in the Country for Plein Air Painters and Garden Lovers or those who just wish to take reference photos for future paintings.

Edit: Due to weather the date has been changed to Wednesday May 30th

We will e mail directions to all members. Any new members who wish to join in our painting day who do not receive directions please e mail bayviewwatercolour@gmail.com

Please feel free to bring a picnic lunch; Tea and coffee will be provided. The property is on well water, so  no cadmium paints please.

As well as this beautiful front garden there is also  a rock garden, Oriental garden, frog pond, and half acre pond.

 Looking forward to seeing you there

Thank You

As President of Bayview Watercolour I have seen so many shows curated and hung. Our members and guests often have no idea of the amount of planning, organizing and work that the Show Committee must do. With this in mind I especially want to thank Ona, Marion and Lizbeth for their tireless efforts in making Luminosity 2012 such an incredible success!!!!!

On behalf of us all,Thank You

Shirley Scoble

Our second place award winner KyoungReal Youn

My name is KyoungReal Youn.
Call me "Kay".

I was born in Seoul, South Korea. I have enjoyed  drawing since I was little and painting always is on my mind. My paintings are based on a faithful sketch, because I find the texture and feeling of the objects or subjects  while sketching.Through my paintings I try to explain a change of light and darkness and to express this kind of value(the overall harmony, order and small reversal) 

 
  I feel very much interested in watercolor because there  are a variety of representation techniques. I am now trying new technique (in a grey grisaille technique). I don't know this result will be good or bad, but I am sure I will have a lot of fun.

Marion MacDonald

Our Sixth Featured Bayview Artist is Marion MacDonald, winner of the Phyllis Forrest Memorial Floral Award.

I was born in Aberdeen, Scotland and moved to Canada in my early teens.  During my early elementary education in Scotland, I was always a botanist at heart and was encouraged to express my interest in plant life in watercolour.  After coming to Canada, in order to earn money while in school, I did floral arranging for parties and holidays.  This also provided access to plant material year round which I could sketch and study.

 I earned my Bachelor of Arts degree from York University while raising my family of five.  During this time I worked in business, floral design, visual merchandising, and taught visual and floral art courses. After my family was educated, with encouragement from my husband Paul and my children, I returned to art.  I started painting seriously ten years ago and work mainly in watercolour and acrylic.   I helped establish and develop the Art Program for the Thornhill Seniors Club.  I also developed Art Programs for preschool children to ignite and fire the innate desire we all have to paint and draw.  I have been an active member of the Bayview Watercolour Society for the past six years, and the Toronto Watercolour Society for two. 

Early botanical education left a passion to depict plant life in fervent detail which has evolved to also allow loose abstract representations of plants amidst rocks, earth and water.   I try to evoke emotion in my work and often depict the interaction of people with the elements.  My work is in private collections in Canada, United States and Britain.

The purpose of my art is to inspire hope and find life and light in the shadows...
 But first you must Believe                              Marion

      

Our fifth Feature Artist Shirley Scoble

Our Feature Artist for today is Shirley Scoble, the winner of the Ken MacFarlane Watercolour Award

Telling a story, whether written, drawn or painted was a gift my mother and I

joyously shared from my early childhood. Creating an alternate reality or drawing attention to the beauty of the present one has always been my passion. Surrounded from birth by artists, writers and free thinkers, creativity was deeply and permanently ingrained in me.

I learned very early the magic of transporting myself and others from the worst winter storm to a sunny summer garden. A haven where regal iris reign and heavy headed peonies nod in the afternoon sun. That special spot, where scarlet poppies dance in the summer breezes.

Capturing visions of sparkling lakes or rugged landscapes, the medium that best

expressed my bliss was watercolour. Discovering it in my late twenties I have seldom looked back. An occasional acrylic escapes my brush but my true love is

this amazing medium. It is equally as expressive as I am; one minute it is delicate and fragile , the next shocking in it's vibrancy or depth of hue. As wild as nature and not so easily tamed, it has a mind of it's own, which, once mastered provides innumerable opportunities for unique expression.

Blessedly mesmerizing it has kept me enthralled in good times and bad. An

escape and solace ever at hand.

One of the most incredible aspects of my art career has been the ability to share it through teaching. Guided by many excellent instructors I am so grateful to watch others discover abilities they did not know they possessed. Seeing my students grow and develop to levels of skill they could not have imagined is intensely rewarding.

Shirley

Our fourth Feature artist Steven Wolk

Steven was awarded the Studio Six Acrylic Award. Thank you Steven for writing to us:

 As an acrylic artist the pouring of the paint, the freedom of no straight lines and getting messy is appealing to me. The thick acrylic paints talk to me and somehow jumps out of the canvas.

I also love the watery flow of watercolour and plan to create some paintings this year in this medium too

 When I create art I've got to get excited… laugh, cry, get angry, to produce what comes out of my SOUL. I can see it in the people’s faces and I must talk... I can't help it

 I really think within the last 2 years my emotions have helped me to create some of my best works of art which I want to share with everyone. It is how I feel truly,

 Steven

Our Third Featured Artist Betty Wong

Hello  Bayview Friends and readers of this blog,

 

I love to draw ever since I was a child and had always admired children who could afford painting lessons. As soon as I started working, I took painting classes and did mostly Chinese paintings in my early years. That prepared me for watercolour which I took up since the mid 1990s, and a few years ago, acrylic as well. Now, I paint mostly on my own, trying to establish a personal style. I have also been taking workshops from time to time to enhance my skills.

I am always enticed by sceneries with water especially when it dances in reflections and exemplifies life, either in the form of ripples, currents, waves or waterfalls. 

 My piece at the Luminosity Show, “Living water”, which won an Honorable Mention features one of the many rushing streams in Jiujiakou, a World Heritage site in Szechuan, China. I found this scenery very inspirational. It is filled with energy, with the movement of the water and the lonely hut standing amid gushing water – all too reminiscent of life’s challenges. What better medium to paint than watercolour I thought. I used masking fluid sparingly for some bushes, leaving the white of the paper for the flowing stream, with final touch ups of titanium white to show splashes. I was careful not to over paint the trees in the background so the focus remains with the hut and water, but spruced up the colours of fall.

Betty

Our second May Featured Artist Pat Duke

Today its our Third Place Winner Pat Duke's turn to be Featured. Congratulations for being one of our May Featured Artists of the Month Pat. I will now pass this blog post onto her

 

Hello my Bayview Friends and readers of this blog

 

After teaching for 30 years, I retired BC (that is before computers!)  I  began to practise and then taught Calligraphy.  I wanted to add colour to my lettering, so studied Watercolour with David McEown.

To further inform my art, I  studied for B. F/A (Hons) degree at York University, graduating just before my 70th birthday.

My oil painting  Young Flute Player, after Judith Leyster, 1635 was part of a 6 weeks summer, 4th year Studio Course.  We could choose any work of art prior to 1700.  The Professor asked for "fabulous fakes", i.e. size as, materials as the original.   Fifteen students in the class were all working in different styles and time period.  Interestingly, when I researched the life and times of this Dutch artist for my essay, I learned that she and I have the same-July 28th birth date. 

 

 

Born 1609 in Haarlem, Holland, Judith Leyster was the only woman accepted into the same Haarlem Guild as Frans Hals.  After her marriage in 1636 to her studio partner  Molenaer, and five children later, little is known of her art.  Only since the rise of Feminist movement has her oeuvre received the recognition it truly deserves.

 

I celebrated my 75th year with a solo showing of 175 works of Paintings and Calligraphy, at the Skylight Gallery of Aurora Town Hall.

Artist of the month with a difference!

Firstly I would like to let you all know that I will be painting at Boynton House from 10am until 4pm tomorrow for the 'Doors Open' event. Feel free to come and watch or chat with me about painting in watercolour.

For those of you that were not at the meeting last night I would also like to let you know that my painting 'Baby on Board' has won the John Singer Sargent Award at the Transparent Watercolor Society of America Exhibition. This is a big award and a huge honor. As you can imagine I am very excited :)

Lastly I expect you are all wondering where our artist of the month is. Well, for this month I thought we should celebrate our own fabulous artists and provide an opportunity to showcase our Luminosity award winners. So over the next month I will be asking each award winner to write a small piece about themselves that I can post here on our blog. If you were an award winner please e mail me.

So here is mine :)

I started painting in watercolour seriously in 2008. I had painted a couple of paintings before as a child but had mostly worked in pen and ink. 

I  had a passion for art though for as long as I can remember. When I was small I would go with my mum to drama festivals. She would give me pencils and a sketch pad to keep me amused. I would get lost in a colourful imaginative world where a simple scribble could become a tree, a few shapes a friendly giant and a triangle a mountain far on the eastern horizon. My mum would tell me three objects and I would use them to create a story in my mind and then illustrate it on the paper.

Things didn’t always go to plan though. Once, when I was about three years old I was with my mum in a very old Victorian theatre with a sloped floor. I dropped my pencils in the middle of a very serious and tragic scene on stage. The pencils rattled noisily on the wooden floor all the way from the back of the theatre where I was sat, to the front of the stage. As they rolled clattered and everyone bent their heads to see what the noise was. It looked like an inverted Mexican wave :)

I guess I was destined to be noticed as an artist! Having a career, getting married and raising a family and then moving to Canada though took up my life but I always knew deep down that something was missing. For me, art is a way to communicate so much that is so hard to put into words… a way to see beyond the outer appearances of the things and people around us and into the soul of the subject whether that be a person, animal, or landscape.

 My experience working in Special Education helped me to develop a strong understanding of how feelings, emotion and knowledge can be communicated visually.  I draw on this when creating art, whatever the subject matter, painting in essence, the emotions of life. I use transparent watercolour to build shape, form and create atmosphere. 

Colour palette is very important to me in helping to create this ‘soul’ in a painting. I enjoy the subtleties of glazing to build shape and form and develop the colours I feel best convey the atmosphere I am after.

I am having an amazing year so far and a lot of my local success is due to BWS so thank you all for your friendship and support and for all the opportunities this society has provided me and the doors it has opened for me too. 

BWS is the Best!

Ona

Luminosity 2012!

Hope you enjoy our virtual tour of the 'Luminosity 2012 Exhibition'. Click on the arrows in the bottom right hand corner to see the exhibition full screen. It was a wonderful week with over 700 visitors through the doors and several sales. Thank you to our Juror Birgit O'Connor and to everyone that helped me make this exhibition possible.

 If you are interested in purchasing any painting please contact Bayview Watercolour Society and we will forward your information to the artist.

Ona

Luminosity 2012 People's Choice Award results

Congratulations Ona!!

Your painting "Interes-Ted" received most ballots from the amazing number of visitors to the McKay Gallery during our "Luminosity 2012" show.  We gathered almost 700 ballot slips thanks to the enthusiasm of our show sitters who enjoyed the interaction with art enthusiasts as they visited the gallery.

The winning ballot drawn was from a young Unionville university student.  She was delighted as she received her prize today.

Lizbeth

HGTV celebrities visit Luminosity 2012

Yes, Colin and Justin of  HGTV "Colin and Justin's home heist" designer fame dropped in to the McKay Gallery yesterday afternoon.  They were visiting Unionville for the first time and were very impressed with our exhibition and the high quality of the art pieces, asking about our group and the lovely old historic house itself.
They graciously agreed to having this picture taken.

Lizbeth