I finished up my tiny painting for The Pocket Show tonight & it felt incredibly good to dust off my paintbrushes. This summer has been filled with plenty of work, but it’s been either the locket-making, market sort or packaging orders/off to the post office kind. This is precisely why I enjoy signing up for group art shows. There’s often a theme & there’s always a deadline, which means I get to put painting at the top of my TO DO list. Hopefully one day my life will be structured in such a way that creating art always comes first. A lovely dream!

On to the show! The Pocket Show is a HUGE group of artists (close to 100) exhibiting some very tiny art – nothing larger than 4″ x 4″, to be precise. I have a bunch of ideas sketched out in my sketchbook (thank goodness! one does start to worry when it’s been a while…), but the small size restriction meant saving some of my ideas for larger canvases. Since I planned to work on a 4″ x 4″ wood block, I decided to go with a more illustrative style & really enjoyed drawing on the wood in detail. I will often do a vague sketch, but then go over all of the lines with paint, completely obscuring them. I’m quite pleased with the way my girl turned out & hope she’ll fit right in at the show.

Only Dates Men With Beards
graphite, acrylic on wood
4″ x 4″ x 1.5″

For more details or to RSVP for the show’s opening, check out the Facebook event page.

The Pocket Show
156 West Hastings (@ Cambie)

Opening night:
Sunday, September 5th ~ 7:00pm to midnight

Show runs until Sept 18th

I’m happy to report that all of my paintings have been hung by the theater with care. And yes, it did feel like Christmas for me to see 21 of my paintings displayed together. I’ve been looking at them for months now, but never all together like that and mostly unframed. It makes such a difference, especially with the bigger pieces.

Opening night of my show was on Friday, but if you missed it, the work will be displayed until the end of June. It’s kind of a strange space – the Plaskett Gallery is inside Massey Theatre, which puts on plays and performances and is in the same complex as a large high school. The night of my opening was a performance of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. So the gallery was very busy, then the show started – and everyone left! Well, except for me and my lovely supporters. A huge thank you to everyone who came out for my show. An even bigger thank you to the folks who bought me wine! hehe

Highlight of the evening – I was literally *just* remarking how stylish this older woman was in her peppy swing coat and high heels when I overheard her say (complete with dramatic hand gesture), “Well! I can tell you right now I wouldn’t want ANY of these!”

Bahahahaha! My jaw dropped & then I burst out laughing. She had no idea I was the artist & admittedly, she only looked at my Alice in Wonderland series, which are definitely more surreal & not everyone’s cup of tea. Still. So freaking funny.

Now that the show has opened, I figured I’d take the rest of the weekend off and finally get a chance to sleep in. Unfortunately, 9 a.m. instead found me hauling my butt to North Van so I could jury for a summer market. The good news is – I got in! The bad news is – the summer markets are coming up so quickly that I don’t see a day off coming anytime soon. Oh well! At least I can start working outside in the sunshine soon.

For a price list or information on purchasing one of my paintings, feel free to email me directly: acageybee@gmail.com

If you want to see more photos from the show, I uploaded a bunch to Flickr > here.

Finishing up a new painting tonight inspired by the book Where the Wild Things Are. I loved the book as a kid and wasn’t at all disappointed with the movie adaptation, unlike some other recent children’s books that have become blockbusters. Ahem, Mr. Burton, I’m looking at you.

While I thoroughly enjoyed painting those terrible yellow eyes, I did run into a bit of trouble while painting the edges of the canvas. I usually paint the edges a dark brown or whatever color works with the painting, so that you can hang it without necessarily needing a frame. Easy enough -except when you DROP the canvas on the floor. Face down, of course.

Fortunately it was *just* about dry, so I didn’t have a total mess on my hands, but I did spend a good long while picking dog hair out of
the monster’s fur. I was tempted to just leave it in there to add to the authenticity. Hehe

I’m a huge Alice in Wonderland fan & have been plotting a series of Alice paintings for years. There are so many fantastic scenes that would make amazing paintings that my biggest problem has been not knowing where to start. If I’m going to do Alice, I want to do justice to both Lewis Carroll’s story and the enchanting illustrations of John Tenniel. A tall order!

I got a new copy of the book a few months ago, an annotated collection with both Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass in one book, plus lots of odd little footnotes and interesting blurbs. Every few pages a new note goes into my sketchbook under painting ideas – walrus & the carpenter, caterpillar, drink me. I have pages and pages of sketches, but this month I finally started painting and I’m tickled with the results so far.

With the Tim Burton movie coming out in March, it was high time for me to get busy on my Alice paintings. I love Tim Burton and I’m so excited to see what he does with the story, but at the same time, I don’t want his version of Alice to influence my own paintings. Influence and inspiration are a tricky bunch.

We’re all influenced by other artists every single day. Even if you never set foot in a museum or gallery, art is everywhere. From movies and tv, to the graphic designers working on ad campaigns to the packaging you see at the grocery store – it’s unavoidable. And for the most part, that’s just fine. But with this…I don’t know. I’d almost like to do two sets of paintings – one pre-Burton and one post. Would make for an interesting experiment, no doubt!

Chances are I won’t have time for that little experiment though because I’ll be busy co-organizing a local Alice-themed art show (and tea party, of course). The details aren’t quite finalized yet, but I’m going to be putting a call out to artists very soon and my brain is bubbling over with ideas. I’ll need a costume too. Oh, this is going to be such fun!

Who’s your favorite Alice character?

It’s only the 7th of January and I’ve already broken my resolution to blog more, but at least it was for good reason – I caught the ferry on New Year’s Day and took off for a few days of rest and relaxation with my folks. They have a lovely cabin overlooking the ocean that blessedly has no TV. The downside is they also have no internet, but it was good to have a real break. It felt so good to have quiet, to beachcomb (though nothing much alive at this time of year…didn’t even see a crab), to spy on the seals hanging out on the rocks. Ahhhhh!

I came home with fully recharged batteries and promptly began to push the paint around. I’ve been thinking about painting a skunk ever since my encounter with one a few months ago, but hadn’t sketched his companion until a few days ago. Happily this little gal popped up in my sketchbook and eventually sprang to life on my canvas:

She hasn’t told me her name yet (nor the name of her odiferous pet), but I expect she will soon. She still needs a coat of varnish and a good scanning before she’ll land in the shop, but keep your eye out!