October 23, 2025
I can’t believe it has been a month since I posted last! After the busy times leading up to the Elgin County Studio Tour, I have taken a few moments to catch my breath. I welcomed about 100 people to Art Studio Happy Cat, located in my house. And had the most lovely conversations with many of them. If you were a visitor to the tour: thank you so much for your interest in my art. It was a wonderful experience!
During the tour, I had 2 challenges running. And half of the visitors engaged with them. The first challenge invited people to count the number of tulips in this painting, inspired by the Dutch tulip fields (no photography and coming back the next day…).
The exact number of tulips (whole and partials) according to my own count was… 371! Two people were extremely close and both were notified. The runner-up won a set of my art cards, the other is to pick an art print of one of my paintings. Thanks to all for participating!
Creative challenge
The other challenge appealed on the creative mind of visitors. The center piece in the challenge was this unfinished painting of a building with many windows.
When I painted this, I was originally planning to put people in the windows. A version of this building actually exists in the city of Amersfoort, in The Netherlands, and it is a school. I made many photographs of it some years go and I had prepared to use the students and teachers who were present on that specific day as source of inspiration. Some were just sleeping in front of their computers, others had what looked to me like a mentoring session and yet others were studying hard, staring at their monitors. There was even a full classroom in what I painted as a large blue window. But when I got to the above stage of the painting, that suddenly felt like a boring idea. So I asked Studio Tour visitors to give me some inspiration…
Great ideas!
I got some great ideas! I am still thinking them over and it may be a while before the painting is finished. The main thing that stood out at this challenge was the number of people who wanted me to include children of visually different ethnicities, reaching out to each other. Then there were cat lovers like myself, who suggested I put different breeds of cats in the windows. Someone else figured I should not do anything with the windows, but put a mural on the walls instead. Intriguing idea! There were also several suggestions about the painting depicting loneliness by just painting one single person in one of the windows.
As you can tell, there is no lack of creativity here and when I make up my mind about this painting, I will let you know and will contact the person whose idea appealed to me most! Thanks to all who participated!
Fall break
I am on the verge of a short fall break. Those who follow my blog know that my mom was diagnosed with dementia last year, and that I went back to The Netherlands, my country of origin, for 3 months this past winter. Recently, she had a small stroke, so I am now visiting her in a temporary home. Temporary, because there are waiting lists at her preferred home. There is a special place, where seniors who need special care can go to wait for the waiting lists to open up.
My mom will not be able to return to her own house and independent living unfortunately has come to an end. She is an otherwise super-fit 90-year old (or should I say: 90-years young?), and although Alzheimer’s is eating away at her cognitive abilities, she is still ‘with it’ enough to feel regret about her current situation. Understandable, as the stroke forced her to leave her beloved house without warning or preparation. Alzheimer’s already sucks, the stroke made it even worse.
I will go and visit her for a couple of weeks, and I know from the earlier experience that not much painting will get done. So, I would be thankful if you could send my mom some prayers, or else: keep you fingers crossed for my family, in the hope that the universe will still have some happy years for her in store!
New work in progress
To keep you going during my absence, here is a new piece that I am still working on. It is centered around figure painting (live or otherwise), but what’s new is that this combining abstract colour and patterns with figurative ones. I have been trying to hone my abstract and colour-combining skills for quite a long time, and I am finally feeling that it is now going somewhere. I am also now back to doing live figure drawing, which is always a lot of fun. And a good skill to maintain. At the Studio Tour exhibit, I had a table dedicated to sketching. It may look like a small thing to do, but I am a firm believer that good sketching lies at the basis of many a great art work. I consider this new work a relaxing playground for experimenting. It may still change a lot in future, but in the meantime: let me know what you think! I hope you enjoy it!
