I always look forward to the end of the year time. With few obligations over this quiet week, and me tucked up inside a cozy home, it’s the perfect time to reflect on my year of making art so that I can note all that I’ve achieved and celebrate the progress I’ve made in my art practice.

Ever since the completion of that project, I’ve wanted to revisit my encyclopaedic source material, saved for many years, and approach the subject matter in a different way and with a different artistic tool kit.

The time feels right to revisit these books of knowledge and use them for a 100 day project.

December is a contemplative month. As the cold weather settles in and the skies open up to blanket us in snow, I’m snug inside reflecting on the year soon to be over before I begin to dream about the new year and plan for things to come. It’s in this reflective state of mind that I write about my art year 2022.

I remember seeing Manet’s Déjeuner sur l'Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass) for the first time and crying. While I was familiar with this work through my art history studies, it wasn’t a particular favourite, but nonetheless I became emotional seeing it in person. Art can do this…it can make us feel things. That’s why we live with art.

When adding a title to a painting or a series of paintings, my goal is to add to the experience of viewing the work without giving it a literal explanation. I want to leave space in the naming for a viewer to bring their own interpretation to what they are seeing. This is why I often fix on a word or phrase that lends a little mystery to the work.

What I learned from this project, so early in my art education, was that making the work is what propels creativity.  Even when I felt at a loss for ideas, pushing ahead with doing the work generated information to help me. I was excited by the prospect of not knowing where the creative process would take me, nor could I have predicted beforehand the destination.

My word for the year is abundance. With every choice that I make with my art I want to have this word, abundance, informing my decisions. For me, abundance means to make more work, work that is finished or not, it doesn’t really matter. My word of the year also means that the work is larger to my previous work, both in volume and in scale.

I had an art teacher once that disdained painted edges on a painting. I’m not exactly sure why but I suspect it had something to do with the idea that whatever incidental paint or other material was left on the side of the panel or canvas was evidence of the process of making the painting.

While this is true, it just doesn’t work for me.