I painted the background first by using a lot of sprayed water and different colours of thinned paint. Once that dried, I made the sky a pure indigo/cerulean blue in very thick paint to create a strong contrast. Then I painted stems, leaves, and circles, layering the colours to create contrast again. 

      Although made of only greens, blues, and purples, even in greyscale the contrast is obvious. Likely, this high contrast is the reason that this piece really pops on a wall. Personally, I love the high frequency, short wavelength colours together. So yes, this one was an easy choice to include on my list of favourites.

2.     Increases psychological wellbeing – Scroll down to look at my February blog titled ‘The Psychological Benefits of Art’. You'll see that there are 10 different psychological benefits of doing art. In no particular order, these benefits include: decreasing stress, increasing emotional wellbeing, improving self-awareness, enhancing cognitive functioning, boosting confidence, improving mental health, nurturing social connections, creating a state of mindfulness, improving resilience, and making us feel joy. Many of these benefits happen just from looking at art, and are therefore all worthy reasons for having art around you. 

3.     Investment – Just like my purchase of the Casson, some collectors buy art as an investment, hoping its value will increase over time. The added bonus is that you get to appreciate it while it appreciates (pun intended!). Although the art market is hard to predict, someone who knows what they’re doing can yield significant returns.

#3: Make time for art – This last one abides by the principle that yes, sometimes we feel inspired on the inside and this leads to creation on the outside. But the reverse is true too: Sometimes we create on the outside and this leads to feeling inspired on the inside. In other words, allowing yourself to play and learn every day can alone ignite that feeling of inspiration that will spawn other projects. And because of this, giving yourself that time every day should be as much of a priority as brushing your teeth. Although every time you do art you may not be creating a masterpiece, it’s all contributing to that fire in the pit of your stomach that drives you. Personally, I have many ongoing art projects, and this allows me to dedicate as much or as little time as I can every day.

         I hope some of my tricks can work for you, or you can find your own source of inspiration. Happy creating!

1.     Decreases stress

        When we’re stressed, our body’s natural coping strategy is to release cortisol, which helps energize us and prepare us for dealing with the stress. In small doses, this is fine. But if your cortisol levels stay high for extended periods, this is when it starts impacting your mental and physical health, and can contribute to anxiety, depression, as well as heart disease, cancer, and strokes.

        Research shows that even just 20 minutes a day of doing art can decrease cortisol levels – things like painting, doodling, colouring, or drawing. There’s something about the repetitive, rhythmic activity involved in doing art that helps calm our minds and bodies.

3.     Improves self-awareness

        When we stop and think about the meaning behind one of our art pieces, or the process we went through to create it, we’re really engaging in self-discovery. Creating art allows us to explore our inner thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, and this leads to a greater understanding of ourselves and what we’re all about.

4.     Enhances cognitive functioning

        Research shows that engaging with art stimulates creativity and fosters new ways of thinking. It can improve our memory, problem-solving skills, our ability to focus, and it can help slow cognitive decline in aging. This is best explained if we look at what art does in our brain.

        Engaging in art increases neuroplasticity, or our brain’s natural response to make new connections in those brain regions that are most heavily involved in what we’re learning and doing. And there are many brain areas involved when we’re doing art, and all these areas would be building new connections. Some particularly key brain regions involved in art include:

-        the prefrontal cortex, which is engaged in complex cognitive activities like decision making, planning, and impulse control.

-       the temporal lobes are heavily involved in art, since they process sensory input, are involved in object recognition, and help store and retrieve memories and knowledge.

-       the parietal lobes are important for knowing where things are in space, as well as abstract thinking and manipulating visual stimuli, like imagining a short cut or what the couch looks like from the other side.

9.     Improves resilience

        Art doesn’t always work out the first attempt. It’s a learning process, and we make mistakes. When this happens, we push through and fix it. We adapt and persevere as we’re creating, keeping what is working and redoing what isn’t, often on the fly. This is exactly what resilience is. Knowing that you might make a mistake and despite that, you’re still pushing forward.

High school art class was mandatory, and it turned me off the idea of formal art training. Although we got to try a lot of different techniques and mediums with Mrs. Ferguson, there were aspects of art class that were stifling and traumatic. For instance, I can remember having to produce art on demand, feeling pressured to be inspired and not having the tiniest spark in me, running out of time, panicking, and then being critiqued for my work by my peers in front of the class. There were many times in high school art class that I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole.

But I learned enough with Mrs. Ferguson that I could experiment on my own, and my art became very private after high school. It was something that I did for myself to relax and relieve stress. I certainly never thought of it as a career when it came time to decide what I was going to do with my life.

Instead, I decided to study business in university. I didn’t dig deep down, have some personal epiphany, and then realize my calling is business. Instead, I chose it because all my life my mother said that I was ‘just like my father’ (not a compliment coming from her), and he was a successful businessman. But I failed so miserably that I got kicked out of university after only a year.

The next month, my mother was diagnosed with a brain tumour and died four months later when I was 20. She only lived to be 43, and she worked so hard doing awful jobs in her short life to save money for my university. And the last she knew of me; I had blown it. I still carry this with me and wish I could give her that time back.

I knew how much she wanted me to go to university and it motivated me to fight my way back in – as a mature student on probation. But I studied psychology this time, something that I chose and enjoyed, and I aced it. It never dawned on me to study art, believing that other than becoming a ‘Mrs. Ferguson’, there was nowhere to go with a degree in art. I committed myself to psychology and earned scholarships all the way to the completion of my doctorate degree. Psychology led me to my husband of now 27 years, as we met in the first week of graduate school and have been together ever since.

I made my first painting in 1994 when visiting my future mother-in-law. We were strangers at the time, and she was so eager to share all her art equipment and to teach me whatever she knew. We drank, we laughed, we shared, and we painted. Just the two of us. From an image I had in my mind, I painted an oil of a large wooden ship coming almost straight toward the viewer against a setting sun sky. I can remember making colours of the wood in the waves, to capture the reflection, and shading the sails so they looked full. I already knew how to blend the colours exactly as I wanted them. 

2.     Take progress photos – as you work, take a photo of it periodically. If you are overworking your piece, this will help you learn to recognize the point when you should have stopped. Not only that, but sometimes looking at your art in a small photo can help you focus on the overall composition of the piece, rather than the small details.

3.     Evaluate it – objectively and thoroughly. Look at the overall composition of the piece as well as the smaller details and evaluate it for colour harmony and balance. Look at it close-up, from across the room, and by glancing at it quickly over your shoulder, noticing where your eyes travel in each case. Ask yourself specific questions about what you like and dislike about your piece.

4.     Rotate it – look at your work at all different orientations, including upside down, or even try looking at it in a mirror. Sometimes seeing it from a different perspective can make whatever problems you’re having with a piece much more obvious.

   A solid mass of dried paint disposed of in a well-managed landfill that collects and treats any runoff will minimize any environmental impact of our paint. 

 So, to keep Mother Nature happy, our goal is to turn any unused paint into a solid before throwing it in the garbage.

   To eliminate any environmental impact from the acrylic paint that we put on our palette, sometimes it is possible to skip the palette entirely and just put the paint directly on our work. If we use a palette, try to use only as much paint as needed. When we do have extra paint on our palette, we can make it last longer by misting it with some water and then covering it with clingwrap. We could also use that extra paint to practice some techniques on scrap paper, or we could just let it dry completely, peel it off, and put it in the garbage. Another idea is to use disposable palettes, or even freezer paper (shiny side up), and then just put the whole dried palette in the garbage.

   We also don’t want any of the paint from our brushes to go down the sink. A great solution is to start by emptying as much paint from the brush as possible onto a paper towel or rag. Some artists save old make-up cleaning cloths or barely touched napkins or paper towels for this very purpose. It helps to use a spray bottle to mist water directly onto the brush to wipe even more of the paint away. And save those paint-filled napkins for now – they can be used again in a later step. Once most of the paint is off the brush, we can use a series of rinsing buckets – the first gets the bulk of the paint that we didn’t wipe away, the second has some soapy water and we can gently massage the bristles, and the third is clean rinsing water.

   Lastly, our hands might have some paint on them, and although it’s tempting to just wash them in the sink, think again. We want to do the same thing again. Use paper towel and a spray bottle to get the bulk of the paint on our hands, or wear gloves. Wash our hands in a bucket and treat that water like your brush rinsing water. We want to make sure that when our hands reach the sink, there is no paint on them.