Artworks 2025

Artworks -2025

I've just started copying over all of the important dates in my brand new Moleskine daily planner/notebook, so it must be just about New Year's Day.  Time for a yearly update to this blog, too.  

The year started busily enough as I held my first ever solo art show/sale at the Cole Harbour branch of the Halifax Public Library through January and February.  The show was in a generous section of the library where there was room to hang about thirty-five pieces of art.  Lots of friends and new acquaintances dropped by and some pieces went off to homes as far away as British Columbia on the far end of the country.  Most of the pieces shown there appeared in last year's blog so I won't repeat them here.

As Christmas  season is just ending, here's this year's Christmas card.  I used this piece, Last Loop Before Supper, the original of which had I donated to the Canadian Mental Health Asociation for their annual Mosaic for Mental Health. They also published it as a card as well as selling the original in their show/sale.  It's the little lake across the street from our house.

Why not see the other pieces I donated to the Mosaic for Mental Health this year?  This one I titled Service Stations. It's St Peter's Church, here in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.  The gas station in the foreground has just been demolished to erect an eight-storey apartment building(!) so I had to preserve this view.  This pic was one of only sixteen works in the show of twelve hundred pieces which were chosen for their online auction.  A feather in my cap I was thrilled to get.

Here's a familiar face to any royal watchers.  Charlotte Goes Hiking is based on a photo of the young princess taken by her mother Kate Middleton, The Princess of Wales, no less.  While visiting the Mosaic for Mental Health I met the man who had bought this piece and was moved by his kind comments and his affection for the image.

...and here's my fourth and final piece from the Mosaic show for this year.  I used a photo I found on a free-use website, "Unsplash".  A very handy resource for artists.  I'm sorry to say I can't recall the name of the photographer who posted it there and, as I found it simply by searching for Night Shoppers, that's how I titled it.

Here's (are?) a couple of related pictures now.  At least the "sitters" are related.  The young ladies, CJ of the beautiful dark hair and FJ, her fair-haired sister are talented Cape Breton-style fiddlers, step dancers and Gaelic language students.  I'm proud to say they were Gaelic song students of mine when they we pre-schoolers!  The woman with CJ is LM, their grandmother.  

        

Our local art group, Dartmouth Visual Arts Society, hosted a show/sale in June of this year.  Each member was allowed to enter one medium-sized work and a small, 6"x6" piece.  So I entered this little 6x6 Sighin' for the Times.  I had painted this image before of a local Dartmouth eatery but, like the gas station above, it fell to the wrecking ball this year, so it HAD to be celebrated again with a new (improved!) painting.

As luck would have it, it sold on the first night of the show, so I had to get cracking with something to replace it.  So, I painted this little Dartmouth-themed picture of one of our harbour ferries and her secret admirer, R2D2, of Star Wars fame.  Title: Dart-broken. So lame!!

It seemed like a good week for Dartmouth pictures so I hustled home and painted this crazy one.  Let's see if you can figure out The Secret Code.

I was more than amazed when that one sold on its first day in the show and I was told to "get something up there" or lose my spot in the show.  I've had good luck doing pix of "my sweetheart", Taylor Swift.  She won't acknowledge me in public, but such is the price of fame. 😎  My other secret love is the "girl" in Vermeer's Girl with Pearl Earring, so I created this mash-up complete with Kansas City Chiefs jewellery, title: She's Got a Point There.  

'Can't remember the reason for the name, but the show closed and she did find a new home.

OK, who's up for a good laugh? AI ! AI! AI!  Artificial Intelligence warning!  I noticed a website where you can upload a picture and have it turned into a painting of any style you choose.  So I uploaded my painting on the left, and asked that it be re-worked in an impressionist style: Voici!

   

Enough of that foolishness!

Here's another fun project on which I whiled away an afternoon.  Walking on beautiful Martinique Beach here in Nova Scotia I spotted a tiny stone that reminded me of a cliff, Cape Blomidon, in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley.  So grabed a few acrylic "paint pens" and this materialised...

Here's something closer to home.  Our old backyard neighbours asked me to paint something showing their son, CB, who mostly grew up in OUR yard, playing with our kids.  All of them are now in their forties!  So I dragooned a couple of ten-year old neighbour kids to pose as if they were playing baseball as our own kids did.  Then I reworked their images to make them look like the ten year olds of thirty years ago.  Here's the result and a little 6X6 of our constant visitor back in the 1980s.  I gave it to his parents to remind them what he really looked like.

 

Our local amateur dramatic society, The Dartmouth Players, staged Agatha Christie's venerable chestnut, The Mousetrap this September and a few of us staged an art show for the "lobby" upstairs.  Given the title I mused "What would sell to this crowd?" and thought "Something related to the title might find a home among the cast" and it did!  Title: Agatha's at it Again! Cha-ching!

Yes, that's Dame Agatha peeking out from behind the trap.

People in the Gaelic-speaking community are often skewered by my paint brush, sometimes repeatedly!  Here are MB (third pic) of her, HS, EH (Fourth pic plus many sketches) and SS.

The first three of these are active in Gaelic music and language revival here in Nova Scotia.  The fourth, SS, is a stepdancer in Scotlad who studied with two of our Nova Scotia dancers.  She now teaches at venues all over Europe and supports the local Féis (Gaelic festival) in Rosshire, Scotland.

Here's MB on the left and HS on the right.

    

Now here are EH on the left and and SS on the right.

More Artificial Intelligence !!! One of my sisters had a "significant" birthday a while ago and I painted this one of a few of my siblings and a Newfoundland cousin standing in front of the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa, where we lived at the time.  

I may have posted this one (Canadian Gothic, thanks to Grant Wood for his suggested title) before, but as we say in Gaelic "Cha mhiste sgeul dà uair a dh' innseadh".  "A story is not ruined by telling it twice."  

I'm the little one in the back row, about 1963. So I tried the AI website trick on this one, too.  Again, the result was hilarious.  Check out my full ten-year-old beard and the one on my cousin Patricia! 

A little break here for a personal reflection.  Here's the late Terry McCluskey, my old Physics instructor from college days.  He passed away a few years ago but this year I painted him relaxing at his daughter's home out on the Mira River in Cape Breton.  He and I shared many a song over the years and his home was always a spot where Coast Guard Officer Cadets could find a warm welcome, generous tutoring and a cold home brew.  His dear wife Mary Lou earned her spot on high, putting up with all of us, and rejoined him this year.  

Monty Python fans..."now for something completely different."  

The Celtic Colours International Festival in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia is a wonderful, annual ten-day event in mid-October beginning on the ORIGINAL CANADIAN!! Thanksgiving holiday, which another country has co-opted, mythologised and moved a month later.  😇

During the festival time this year, the parish where my wife grew up, St Margaret of Scotland, another story of international cultural intrigue, celebrated its 200th anniversary.  So I painted this little 6X6 as a treat for their organist.  Title: Celtic Catholics of course, but everyone gets a warm Cape Breton welcome there and anywhere on the island.  

So friends, there's a sampling of what was on my easel this year.  I hope you enjoyed your visit here.  Blessings on all for the coming new year.  - Joe