Its been a lot of years that I have been painting watercolours, going on 35 now. I clearly remember doing the first one, I looked at the palette and then asked the teacher if I was supposed to add water to the paint? Over 4000 paintings later and it is still just as fun and challenging as it was back then. I am working on the catalogue update, the last one was in late March, since then there are a few hundred more paintings to tally. The number of paintings never mattered to me, and it still doesn't despite the incessant cataloguing that I started during the pandemic when we all had more time on our hands. I do have a sense of progress though, over the past three years. Around 2017 I pulled all the paintings I had out and put them on the kitchen table and had a feeling of uncertainty about what to do next. It seemed as if my skills had reached a plateau. In retrospect what was holding me back was a number of things. My palette was inefficient and my mixing strategy tended to produce a lot of greyish results. I wasn't blogging actively which meant there was little to no interaction with my audience. And I was underestimating the quality of the landscapes in and around Montreal. With the knowledge I obtained during the pandemic by reading MacEvoy's Handprint.com and other sources, and a renewed sense of optimism and engagement, things really did pick up regarding my side career as a visual artist. We will see how things go, each year I tend to evaluate where things are with the art and what kind of goals I might have. In the meantime its just a matter of enjoying the ride.
Working Count, watercolour 9 x 12" watercolour paper November 2023 (No. 3636b)
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