Janet Milne, a woman who was respected, admired and loved.

Janet, hard at work on thumbnails, Le Piannore, Tuscany, 2015

On Thursday January 25th, 2024, I received a shocking phonecall, that Janet Milne had died suddenly that morning. Everyone is in shock, as Janet was a model for me, of how to live a healthy meaningful life. I always admired her, and often thought I wanted to be just like her when I get older. 

the lighthouse at Pointe au Baril, soft pastel by Janet Milne

I met Janet many years ago (guessing 20 years?) when she phoned me, she had been referred to me as the pastel teacher in the Ottawa area. I was teaching a workshop that week, and Janet showed up in no time, with works in progress. Like many of my students, she was in disarray, because something was wrong with her drawing, and she couldn't figure out what it was. The painting, in pastel was of her granddaughter. It was easy for me to help her with the proportions, and voila, the piece was much better quickly. Janet was thrilled. 

A winner, on location, soft pastel.

The next day, Janet showed up at the workshop, and thrust a bottle of wine in my hand. She said "You're the best art teacher I've ever had". And thus began, the long friendship, bolstered by many life drawing workshops, every pastel class I ever taught, plein air, and her loyalty in coming on as many of my painting trips as she could muster. There was a nucleus, and small group of very loyal students who took many classes with me. When I left the Ottawa area to take care of aging parents, Barb Dickson took the flag, and kept the group going, with weekly plein air excursions that I am proud to say still go on to this day. Thanks Barb. Janet was an integral part of this ongoing group. To this day they paint, hike and snowshoe together and I'm sure Janet will be very much missed by everyone in this group. 

appreciating nature

There are so many things I really appreciated about Janet: First and foremost Janet was loving and kind.  To us, yes, but always talking of her family as well.  She was just into people, and seeing the best in everyone. 

2nd, for me, she was such a great supporter and encouraged ever project I took on, coming to as many workshops as she could manage, but also expressing her satisfaction with various courses and how much she was learning. Thirdly, Janet was generous in every way possible. The thrusting of wine bottles into my hand was a regular occurence, and she was up for so many adventures. I visited her at her cottage, in Florida, when her and Glen lived there in the winters, and she came out for so many plein air days, and anything I tried to put on. Thank you Janet, for your support. It meant everything. 

Janet was also into philosophy of every kind and loved debating art issues, but also politics, science and any subject. She was a person who could think for herself, and had many opinions on every topic under the sun. But an informed opinion, and intelligent opinion. She loved the interaction of human minds coming together in any kind of debate. I can't say I always agreed with her, but respected her right to voice her opinion. It made our freindship more genuine. 

Mostly I just loved Janet for being such a great, caring, generous person. I will continue to admire her and appreciate her place in my life for many days to come. 

Thankyou for your life, Janet!  

Pics of our travels together:

Peru

 

Portugal

Georgian Bay

Tucany and the Amalfi Coast

Visiting a winery, with a great view for painting

Outdoor pizza oven at LePiannore

Angus teaching us how to make Risotto. It was SO delicious!

Sienna

The ruins at Herculaneum.

On to Spain,...

Our reward for walking up this mountain, with a castle and a view!

Janet hard at word using her Vaultz box. 

A hint of the beautiful mediterranean water colours. 

Mallorca, Spain

There are literally thousands of photos of our travels. Thank you Janet, for being who you are, we love you. 

Pura Vida at Casa Zen

Casa Zen, St. Teresa, Costa Rica. This piece is almost square, 19" X 19.5", soft pastel. 

Started in Nov. 2023 and finished in January 2024

INSPIRATION: While on a trip to Costa Rica several years ago, we stayed at Casa Zen, in ST. Teresa. This place was almost right on the beach, and it offered yoga classes daily. When I went up to the 2nd floor to see the yoga studio, this is the scene that met me. Lot of light, in the direction of the beach, and this lovely patterning created by nature in the form of Palm fronds. 

Here I am, about to begin my demonstration at Gallery 203 in Old Montreal, at the opening weekend of Pixel Pastel, a national pastel show, last November. 

I decided to work on this piece for my demonstration, because I have been known as a soft pastel instructor for some time, working in straight on impressionism. I do love that method, but had been wanting to delve into new creative pursuits. So, about 3 or 4 years ago, I started experimenting with new methods that I thought were more in keeping with my true sense of creativity and curiosity. Since then, I've been painting a lot of things with pattern, a ton of colour, and layers of subject matter. I'm abandonning old techniques and not knowing exactly what will happen next. It's making the work so exciting to create. 

Here, you can still see the underpainting showing through. I wanted the underpainting to be somewhat electric and tropical. I intended on letting the undeprainting show through in some places, as the scene is backlit with full on sunshine. However, I was also aware of the patterning of nature, in terms of the palm leaves, and also wanted to express the repeat nature of the long leaves, the fullness and richness of them, and their colours. So it's a give and take of rich coloured leaves and the light behind, that is illuminating. 

 

Here I am with Myles Johnson, president of the Pastel Society of Eastern Canada (and whom I found out grew up in the Ottawa area!) One thing about my new direction in executing paintings, is it is more time consuming, and perhaps not a good choice for a time restrainted demonstration. I only got so far on the painting, and have been working on it off and on ever since at home. Myles and everyone at PSEC were marvellous. The space was full of light and the work exhibited was top-notch. 

At this paint, lots left to do. Working hard to soft, it's time to get out the softies and start really intensifying and enriching the established colours. I am not working dark to light, but rather palm leaves, then railing, back and forth.

Covering up more of the underpainting, you can see the palms slowly gain more presence.

At this point, I'm starting to add in other colours on the palms, of the same value, like purples and reds. 

Not happy with the light on the deck surface, I corrected my drawing there, putting in more detail, more accuracy. Also considering a consistent sense of light, on the railings, edge of floor, and an illuminated intense sense of the stained glass discs. 

I wanted to lighten the value of the floor, and have the darker area vary in value, left to right., adding to a consistent sense of light in the whole piece.

My goal as an artist these days is to create work that has a unique voice, but also work in which I love every step of the process. I cna saythat between the Peacocks series, Avalon, and Mother, and now this piece, I am well on my way of achieving that goal. 

This piece is framed white a light neutral matt and a ligth coloured wood frame, available for $899.00. If you are interested in this piece, please contact me at marg.ferraro@gmail.com

 

"Mother" 25" X 34" framed, pastel

This original pastel painting will be on exhibit at the Pastel Artists of Canada National Exhibition, being held at the Neilsen Park Creative Center, in Etobicoke, opening May 30-June 17nth, 2023

What does this Title mean?

In April of 2022, I was visiting my daughter, who lives in London England. It's her determination to show me a very good time whenever I visit. On this day, we were visiting an outdoor market near her house. This table, full to the brim with the effort of handmade bowls was a lot to take in, and believe me, I left SO MUCH out! 

Yes, I was taken by the abundance of these unique beauty bowls, each one different and created by hand, which lead me to think of a Buddhist meditation called "mother of us all". It begins with the contemplation of how manymothers we have had throughout history, given re-incarnation. You don't have to believe in re-incarnation to contemplate this philosophy. We think of the effort of a mother, all the kindness shown to countless beings. We think of kindness in general and the happiness generated through kindness. One way of seeing the infiniteness of kindness is to look at any inanimate object. I see a box of breakfast cereal in my view from where I am writing this. But it could be a loaf of bread, a chair, anything. We think of the origin of the material for this object, and how a farner had to grow acrops with great care and watering in order to reap the crop.  Then, the crop has to be collected and taken to a refining station where the crop is refined into something edible. Every step of the way, more people are involved in this collaborate effort. The the crop goes to a plant where it is transformed into cereal. There are graphic artists who design the box it goes into, marketing people who decide how and where it si to be sold, salespeople going dorr to door,a nd it isn't even on the shelf yet! By analyzing anything in out existence, you can see that we are all dependent on the kindness and efforts of others to creat coutless useful things we need to live. 

As fas as these bowls go, they are not only serviceable and beautiful, but one could argue of the person who extracts the clay from the ground, the many people it takes to create the many glazes represented, as well as the great effort to create something unique and beautiful in every single piece.  Like flowers, no two are alike, they are all a miracle, totally unique.

The image of so many handmade and handpainted bowls suggest the abundance we all live by, whether or not we are concious of it.   

My underpainting was a melange of a warm brick red and a cool green. Over top of that, I drew my bowls in charcoal. At this point, I'd just like to point out, I do not trace, nor have I ever traced my images, ever. I have a love of drawing, and have great satisfaction from knowing I can draw this, freehand. I also feel that your drawing, each mark you make is a direct reflection of each person and their character, your soul.  When you trace a projected image, you refelct a technical tool, not you. It was quite a challenge to draw this, as many of the bowls were on a pedestal, and they were all on slightly different slants. Quite the challenge!

 

Because I'm not after hyper-realism, I on-purpose made concious decisions about how much detail would go into each bowl. The bowls were all hand painted, each one was different, and they were very elaborate. If I included the same amount of detail that was in the photo, I would never have been able to finish this piece. 

What really slowed down the process, was taking the time to stand back, and consider having a similar amount of detail in each bowl. A lot of comptemplation time went into this aspect of the piece. 

I started each bowl with a blended background, that reflected the perspective, and angle of each one. As mentioned before, they were all sitting on various rings, making them all on different angles. So this affected the perspective of each bowl. 

Then I painstakingly observed the decoration on each bowl, decided how much of it I would include, and worked one bowl at a time in this way. Every time I felt a bit of impatience coming on, I walked away. The secret for me, was to set very small goals each day. In this way, I actually couldn't wait to get at it again, which affected the execution of the piece, for sure. Each bowl became it's own meditation. 

Once the main decoration was on each bowl, I spent a huge amount of time, standing back, seeing the painting as a whole, and tweaking lots of final details. 

 

I could have continued to work on this, blending,  and more and more tweaking. One thing that made it easier to come to a conclusion, was reminding myself that I didn't want it to look like a photo. I want viewers to see the texture, to see my hand, in every stroke. 

I was quite happy with the finished product. What inspired me in the first place was the feeling of abundance and fullness, as I felt when I first saw this table full of bowls. I accomplished my goal. 

Thank you for reading.     

 

 

 

Breaking it down to value and design,...then colour

In my online Open Studio recently, I've been re-inforcing the importance of the thumbnail, where detailed images are simplified into the language of value: dark, medium, and light. Yes, drawing could be involved, but I think using the edge of your medium (graphite, charcoal or pastel stick), and creating more of a block-in, is the way into seeing pattern, and the overall concept of light in your image.  Spending 5 minutes on a thumbnail pays off in seeing it's potential as a composition quickly. 

I chose this winter landscape, because this time of year, we are all seeing design through snow, trees and the light and shadow created. Many of my students are working on winter scenes. So last week, I did this thumbnail. 

Canadian winter landscape thumbnail. Dark, medium, and light.

The thumbnail, in charcoal. I love the softtexture of charcoal that has had a finger run through it. Soft! Then I chose a warm coloured medium value paper, and a medium value cool coloured paper. I'm working 2 of them at once.

Here I chose a pallete to start with, so I'm not using too many colours at once. I applies them closely to eahc other, on the coloured surface I'm going to work on, so I can see the relationships between the colours, and how the paper plays an active part in the colour reaction.

The drawing to begin. I love working on this colour, it's very rich and makes all the other colours rich in contrast. 

Here's my cool coloured paper, with the limited pallette I chose for it. Sorry, forgot to take a picture of just the drawing. 

Cool Version

This is what I did in the demo: It's important to get the values eastblished as quickly as possible, with a light layer of pastel everywhere. The sooner you get the image happening, dark, medium and light, the betterm using less tooth, leaving lots left as the painting develops. 

                                                                        

Without spending too much time on the drawing, I did spend more time with the values, creating subtle value shanges in the shadow area, and experimenting with intense and tinted hues. Serene and still mood. 

The warm version. Has a very differnt effect. It seems like the sun is warm and trying to infiltrate, giving a more positive uplifting mood.