Dreams of Past - the making and selling of a painting

Dreams of Past was the feminine response to Old Man, another painting I had completed a year previous to this one. I grew up sharing my summers on the prairies with grandparents – hot days – slow days, but always great for creating a vivid imagination or just to soak up the landscapes of my mind.

Dreams of Past - SOLD!

I had such a great time creating Old Man, rich with imagination and purging of some familial stories. I needed to create another, this time, a memorial to a wonderful, funny, strong but tiny – Sophie Timm. She was the daughter of a farmer and then a wife to farmer and entrepreneur. This meant that she had to work that much harder to juggle all the must do’s on the farm, in the home with three kids plus a family business.

The best things about Sophie was her humor and I never knew her to be in a bad mood; these combined with a resilient spirit made her one amazing lady. I wanted to immortalize her resiliency, her playfulness, and her lifetime that spanned nearly a century.

I recounted her favourite things, a yellow rose, a chickadee, and a Ferris wheel (she visited Disneyland in her retirement). I included the stories. The stooked wheat, that even the biggest, tallest, toughest neighbor couldn’t stook as fast as Sophie (barely 5 foot and never bigger than a thimble). The images are of Sophie (and her sisters). At a young age she managed that heavy team of horses, hauling grain or livestock to the nearest auction or town.

I imagined a big blue sky, and a stretching field of wheat, banked by a row of evergreens. The trees never made it to the composition; instead I used a row of barns and buildings from her era to be the stand in’s for the trees. In fact, the barn is a photograph of one my grandfather’s.

Old Man, Mixed Media Collage 36" x36"

When I build these types of collage/paintings, I start with the framework and I allow my mind to improvise and collect images to satisfy the creative impulses.  I used paint, paper, and photographs in semi unconventional ways. For example, I started with paint for sky and land. I added pieces of paper to form mounds to look like stooks and straw in the field. I added different acrylic mediums to add texture to the clouds and land. I used photographs and transferred them into clear gel medium to transfer their ink permanently into the canvas.  Lastly, I cut pieces of a magazine (Canada’s finest, the Walrus), and built a whimsical Ferris wheel.