Canoes

Heritage Lake in Saskatchewan, Canada. North East of Prince Albert.

 I was floating around on the internet one day and came across some paintings of canoes that were just fascinating to me.  I thought I had written the name of the artist down, I probably did, on a scrap of paper that immediately got lost in the pile on my office desk.  I couldn't find the name, but I remembered the art.  The pictures were so impressive that I couldn't get them out of my head and I kept looking for the artist.  I remembered it was a lady and she was Canadian but nothing else.

Serenity Camp at Heritage Lake were I hang out for a few days every summer with some amazing women.

I love the power of Google.  A few searches later I found her.  Veronica Funk is her name and the canoe painting was from a series she did called Sacred Vessels.  Im going to post a link to her web site and blog here so you can have a look at them if you like.    http://www.veronicafunk.com/

Like some of us do when we see art that we like, we try making it ourselves.  We study it and attempt to make something similar.

 The first time I tried drawing the canoe my friend told me it was a really strange way to draw a chicken!  I guess it did kind of look chickenish and we both had a good laugh when I told her what it was supposed to actually be. 

Here it is, in my journal. I guess the circle at the top made my friend think it was an eye. 

I tried again, a different canoe shape this time and this is what that looked like.

This time I painted on a piece of recycled cardboard.  I liked the odd shape of it and the little quote on the side were random lines that I cut out of an old paperback. 

It says "And there where water lapped at his fatigue he waded out into the water".  Nonsense words or a message about a friend's son who had committed suicide the week that I painted this?  I try not to think about those things to hard. 

Next came a bigger painting.  A canvas this time, I was getting braver I guess. 

 

I started adding layer after layer of paint and marks. Laid down some stencils and used lots of ink as well as acrylic paint. Then I drew the shape of the canoe and painted out the negative space with more layers of acrylics.  I hand carved feather, leaf and bear paw stamps and added those to the pictures as well.  I love the little blue feathers painted on the bow. 

There are still a couple ideas floating around in my head so I think I will add a few more canoes to my fleet.