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.

My intention was a simple one: To make yellow paintings. While a single colour painting has its appeal too, for me that just isn’t enough.  I needed other colours to play with yellow, while letting yellow shine in all her glory.  

As the year draws to a close, it’s once again time to take stock of my art practice.

It’s all too easy to forget what’s been accomplished over the course of a year if I don’t set aside time for this reflective exercise. So with the help of the notes that I’ve made along the way, I look back on my art year of 2024.

Lately I’ve been thinking about how, as an artist, I see my work entirely differently than everyone else looking at one of my paintings.  Love it or hate it or have no reaction at all, the final resolved painting is all that is available for anyone else to see.  

I’m the only one to have seen a painting from beginning to end and all of the states in between: The good the bad and the messy middle versions.

Do you choose a word of the year: A word or an idea to hold in your mind to return to when you feel the need to focus your attention? Or perhaps an aspirational word fits better. Or maybe a word that will guide you as an artist?

My green slipper orchid pays me a visit in December, like an old friend, just in time for the holiday season. It’s a signpost for this season. December is also the time of year that I turn my focus inwards, look back on the art year that was and begin to think about the year to come.

“Assemblage” is posted in my studio to remind me this is my intention. I am a process driven artist.  Conceptual concerns hold little interest for me in my art practice at the moment.  Making something from nothing and finding beauty in the combination of materials is what interests me. 

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.

Making art is often, at least for me, a solitary pursuit. I retreat into my studio with my thoughts, and rely on my own intuition and actions to create something from the materials at hand. But nothing compares to meeting people, including other artists, and talking about art and the joys and the challenges of the art making process. This too is an important part of the journey.

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.

Knowing when a painting is finished is a question that I’ve been thinking about for some time, especially since my current interest is in expressing myself through making abstract imagery.

After the first few passes on a painting, it’s simple enough to know that it isn’t finished because, well it's only the beginning. Then as more marks and materials accumulate on the surface of the painting, it's a much more difficult question.

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.

Aside from the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, the shopping and celebrating, December seems to bring with it the need to look back on the waning year, to reflect on what has been, before looking toward the new year to come. So it’s with this spirit that I write about my art year in 2021.

In Canada, Thanksgiving arrives in October. The second Monday of the month to be exact. It is the day we celebrate the harvest and the changing colours and give thanks for all that we have. The traditional celebratory meal for this holiday is turkey with all of the fixings: potatoes, dressing, cranberry sauce and gravy . When I was a very young girl I made a turkey for Thanksgiving using a potato.