Splashing Through Life - Art by Patricia Henderson

 On May 1st, I decided to participate in a wonderful free 2 week art experience with a whole bunch of awesome artists teaching their techniques and ideas. It was called  Mastering Mixed Media Expo 2025 hosted by the awesome Tamara Laporte @ willowing.org . Even though there were over 35 sessions, I was only able to complete 3! Life certainly has a way of foiling your plans. But I really enjoyed the ones I did. While my art is normally representative and somewhat realistic, I enjoy experimenting with more abstract ideas in my sketchbook. Those were the sessions I was drawn to this time. The first session I watched was by Laura Horn . I forgot to write down the name of the lesson, but it included using watercolour, pencils, acrylic markers and other types of media making simple shapes and marks. It was very calming and meditative. Here's what I came up with: The next one I watched was called Layers of Light by the fun Jackie Bernardi. Here is a link to her YouTube channel . Jack...

Every month I get together with a wonderful friend and we play! We try out different art techniques and media and  get our creative juices flowing. Yesterday we got out two books by Mary Todd Beam, Celebrate Your Creative Self and The Creative Edge . I was lucky enough to go to one of her week long workshops at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Tennessee about 4 years ago. It was great to get out her books and try out some the excercises. It brought back some wonderful memories. Here are a couple of experiments that I tried yesterday: I Dreamt I was a Dragonfly 9" x 7" Acrylic on Mat Board Under the Mountain 14" X 9" on Mat Board

I've been working on a collage, but  I've been going back to the Clear Tar Gel when I need a break. These are great because you can do a lot of the Tar Gel designs ahead of time and then bring them out when you feel like playing! This is one I've been working on a little bit at a time, and I don't think I'm finished yet. I like where it is going so far. The camera has emphasized the darker purple parts a bit, but I kind of like the look so I may darken some more of those passages. I'll post again when it's finished and I have a better photo. Abstract Orange Floral 20" X 15" on Illustration Board

Sometimes when I'm stuck for what to do in my studio, I get out the Clear Tar Gel Medium. What is this stuff? Well on the container of the Golden Clear Tar Gel, it says it "Generates fine lines by dripping from a palette knife or other tool." Here is a little demo I did a couple years back that shows how you can use it. CLICK HERE FOR DEMO . One of these days, I'll learn how to set up a video demo, but for now you are stuck with photos! I have a few of these on the go right now. Here are two funky flowers! Each one is 20" X 7.0" on Peterboro Illustration Board. I used Fluid Acrylic paints. Yellow Flower                    Pink Flower And here are some closeups:

A good friend of mine introduced me to   Brusho®   Paint crystals the other day, and a group of us tried it out. It sure was fun experimenting with it and figuring out all the ways that it can be used! What is  Brusho®  you ask? Click on this link from  BrushoSecrets.com and it will tell you all about it. Basically it is powdered pigment crystals.  You can sprinkle it on dry paper and then spray with water, or sprinkle the dry powder on wet paper, or mix with water and paint like watercolour. Each method gives you a different effect. When the crystals react with water, they burst with colour and spread out in interesting patterns. Out of the several experiments there were only two that came out worth posting here. For the first one, I drew the shape of the flower and then painted it with plain water. I then sprinkled the water with  Brusho®.  I ended up with quite a wild Coneflower! I did add very small touches of watercolour when I got home. ...

Okay, it's not Valentine's day yet, but here is a little Valentine doodle I did today.   It's watercolour pencil, regular watercolor and ink. Teeny tiny 2.5 X 3.5" art card. Heart Doodle

Has it really been four months since I've posted anything? Time flies and life gets in the way of my creativity, but I've just completed my newest Mixed Media/Collage. I'm not sure why I seem to be attracted to Crows in my artwork, since lately they have been a real pest in our work parking lot. (Don't park under the tree!) Maybe it's because they seem to have real personalities and they just look kinda cool! Here is "Puzzled", 16" X 20" on canvas. This painting will eventually framed in a black "floater" frame.

I thought I had finished this piece 2 or 3 years ago. I had entered it into a show, but it was rejected. It's been hanging on the wall in my studio ever since, mocking me. I had just finished another piece ( Corny ), and I had all my collage materials spread out in front of me, so I started adding to it. I'm  much more happy with it now! And thanks to my good friend Lauren , it has a great title! I've already entered it in the show show where it was rejected before. I'm figuring there will be a different juror, so we'll see what happens! Here it is now: And how it was before: The Aftermath!

I've had a couple of weeks off from work and have been using some of that time to work on a new Paper Collage Painting to submit to the Desmond Juried Art Show and Exhibition. I thought I'd paint something we see around here A LOT. Corn. A lot of corn! I kind of like how this turned out. It's a bit more "abstracty" than some of my collages and was a lot of fun to do. Corny 24" X 12" Paper Collage on Canvas

We've all been waiting for signs of spring lately, and they have been few and far between. This was my mood when I created this piece starting in mid March and ending in early April. The only signs I had seen were the annual migration of the tundra swans, thousand of which flew over our house daily, creating a magnificent sight. On a smaller scale, a few hearty snowdrops popped up in a sunny spot beside our house. Welcome signs that warmer weather is on its way soon! 20"X 16" Mixed Media on gallery-wrapped canvas

A couple weeks ago, I attended a workshop at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatllinburg Tennessee. Our instructor was Mary Todd Beam . What an inspiration this lady is! In her 80's, she still gets excited over every brush stroke and surprise mingling of paint. Mary is a contemporary watermedia artist, and loves to share what she has learned over the years. We observed and practiced her techniques over the span of a week in the beautiful setting of Arrowmont. Mary even invited the class to her cabin in the woods where we got to see her gallery and many of her wonderful paintings. \ This is Mary doing a demonstration with her hubby Don looking on. These are a few paintings that I did that week. The ones that I like anyway! These two are "Strata", layers of different acrylic mediums and tissue paper. The two above are an experiment with clear tar gel medium. This one involves scraping paint across paper.  And this one is a Trash Pai...

While I was working on my Geese collage, I had an idea for another mixed media painting.  For this piece I experimented with using various types of paper adhered to the canvas and did a wash of watercolours to get a muted background. Then using paper, twigs, leaves, feathers and an acorn cap, I made the nest. The eggs are hand painted paper. This was the first stage. After looking at it for a few weeks, I decided it needed a bit of  "oomph". (this photo is not the best, it was taken in bright sunshine and I couldn't get rid of the shine.) Today I added more hand painted tissue and rice paper, and it has a bit more of the oomph that I was looking for. I might be finished. Or not. But probably! 

My newest collage painting "Our Daily Bread" and two others, "Frenemies" and "Marshland Morning" have been accepted into the 7th Annual Desmond Juried Art Show and Sale. Stop on by the Ridgetown Campus of the University of Guelph from July 22-August 2, 2012 and check them out! Our Daily Bread Frenemies Marshland Morning (formerly titled Elegant Ecosystem)

During the spring and fall, parts of our community are taken over by crows. They tend to gather in flocks of hundreds of thousands along the Thames river in Chatham, right by residential areas. Of course this has caused problems such as the birds getting into garbage and leaving nasty surprises on cars. Some people want to get rid of them by shooting them, others send in birds of prey to scare them away.The intelligent crows seem to figure out our tactics and steer clear. I decided on the name Frenemies for this piece. The crows must think of us as friends sometimes, since we provide them with tasty food such as garbage, and vast fields of corn. Yet we are their enemies and attempt to eradicate them. Many people think of the crows as our enemies when they dirty our cars, but they are our friends when they eat rodent pests, damage-causing beetles and road kill. They are also a wonderful sight flying en mass at sunrise to go about their day. This painting is also about "frenem...

Finished this on the weekend. It was my first architectural collage piece. Challenging, but worth it! Thanks Jennifer for asking me to do this for you! Hill House  Hand Painted and found papers on canvas

You've heard the expression, "She's no spring chicken!" Well this girl is! Okay, so maybe her comb isn't as grand as the Rooster next door, but she's got attitude and can tiptoe through the tulips with the best of them! This painting is 14" X 10" and consists of handpainted and found papers applied to gallery wrapped canvas. I discovered that I had almost no rusty brown or gold papers, so had fun making some with various textures. My friend Sue Galos and I spent a fun blizzardy afternoon a couple of years ago in the dollar store picking up things that we thought would make a good texture when pressed on wet painted paper. I made use of a lot of them! Maybe on another post I'll show you some if you'd like.

Okay, I've become obsessed with this technique already! A couple of days ago, I reorganized my studio and obtained a few more storage containers which act almost like a very large pallette. Now I have 3 large containers for the primary colours, red, yellow and blue and 3 for my secondary colour, orange, green and purple. I would really like more, for my warm and cool blues for example, but I'm afraid my room will be taken over by containers! I've started thinking ahead, and since I always enter the Desmond Juried art show at the Ridgetown Agricultural Collage each summer, I have already finished a piece that I might enter. The theme is always farm and rural living so I think this piece will fit in nicely! "Time to Wake Up!" 14 X 11" on gallery wrapped canvas I want to make a companion for this piece but I'm waiting for my canvas order to arrive. In the meantime I thought I'd do one on kind of a similar theme on a tiny 6 X 6" canvas. "Su...

Here's something that I did recently while playing at Sarnia Sue's and after watching a video of Pat Dew's. Hey that rhymes! Anyway, it was all about texture and composition. We went to the dollar store to buy things that would create texture. Not too sure if I succeeded with the composition! Anyway, I've decided to name this "Ariel".