"The work happens in the margins. It always has. I've stopped apologizing for that." What Shift Work Does to a Creative Practice I work three days, three nights, and six days off. Except getting that six off is never a guarantee. Add in travel and football and time turns into my most valuable asset. On paper this schedule should be terrible for a creative artistic practice. And in some ways it is. There's no consistent rhythm or flow. I have no reliable window of when I will

"I am making the work she didn't get to see me make." My Mother's Paintings My mother was a painter. Margaret Morisette. Impressionistic landscapes, oil on canvas, the kind of work that had an elegance to the brushwork that I didn't fully understand when I was a child sitting beside her watching. Looking back now, with painter's eyes, I can see she was classically trained. The way she handled light. The economy of her marks. Nobody self-teaches that kind of control. There was

"Paris isn't Paris because of the city. It's the people you find inside it." What Paris Actually Feels Like I hated Paris the first time. I want to be honest about that because the mythology around Paris is so thick that admitting you hated it feels almost like a character flaw. But I did. It was overwhelming and loud and I couldn't speak much french and everyone seemed to already know where they were going and I did not. What changed it for me was the people. Paris isn't Par

"If I hadn't put my heart out there despite every reasonable objection, I would never have found that garden." The Budapest Garden He stood me up again in Budapest. I won't get into the details because they don't really matter and also because he reads these occasionally and I'd like to keep him humble. What matters is I was alone in Budapest with a free afternoon I hadn't planned for. The normal thing to do would have been to go back to the apartment and sulk or go on a rant

"People at the Fort McMurray art market call me the fruit lady. I've made peace with it." Why I Paint Fruit People at the Fort McMurray art market call me the fruit lady. I smile every time I say that. I didn't set out to be the fruit lady. It happened gradually, an orange here, some grapes there, a bowl of cherries that turned into a series. At some point the pattern became undeniable and now it's just part of who I am as a painter. The fruit lady. I actually quite enjoy it.

I think the hardest part about being a self taught artist is knowing what you don't know you don't know. (yes I know a double negative 😬😂)