Thursday, December 22, 2011

New Painting - The Ugly Duckling

On the 2nd of December until the 14th , I had my first solo show, "Woman Who Runs With The Wolves" at Start Gallery in Sackville New Brunswick. Start Gallery is the student run part of the larger Struts Gallery, and artist run centre. It was a very special night for me.

I have never been one much interested in aspiring to display my work in commercial run galleries. Partly due to the fact I was intimidated and not really confident. I have since demystified some of these issues and become more aware of the importance and necessity of artist run centres, where artists have an egalitarian and cooperative, supportive relationship, and the chances of power struggles and personality conflicts are lessened, if next to non-existent.

It is hard to put into words what this show meant to me. The fact that I returned to school at the age of 56 and am about to graduate this coming Spring made it all very poignant. I had a dear friend I've known since early adolescence attend, along with some other good friends that have been very supportive and encouraging to me these past three years and for this I am so very grateful, because it has made all the difference.

I have started my next group of paintings, the ongoing series, depicting my own images from Clarissa Pinkola's book," Women Who Run With The Wolves." This one is "The Ugly Duckling". It is a very relevant story I think, especially this time of year when we all want and need to feel a sense of belonging.



 "See to it now that you spend less time on what they didn't give you and more time on finding the people you belong to. You may not belong to your original family at all."
--"Women Who Run With the Wolves" by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

6 comments:

Judith Joseph said...

Beautiful painting! Is this egg tempera?

Unknown said...

Thank you so much Judith . Your comments mean a lot to me! Yes this is egg tempera. Catherine

Betsy Grant said...

Love your work, and the quote to go with it. Wonderful!

Unknown said...

Thank you for saying so Betsy. Your comments are greatly appreciated.

Wishing you and your's all the very best in the New Year.

Edgeworth Johnstone said...

I love the swan and the water around it. Really good painting.

Unknown said...

Thank you Edgeworth for visiting my blog and for your kind comments. It's great getting feed back positive or negative. The egg tempera is exciting stuff. I feel challenged by it which can be intimidating like making all art can be, but it's all in a good way.