One Month to Art Show Opening

Wendie Donabie ♦ April 2, 2014 ♦ 4 Comments

Firmly Rooted – Guardian of the Forest, Watercolour & Ink, 9×11.5 inches – copyright Wendie Donabie 2013

One month tomorrow, on Saturday, May 3, Janice Feist and I open our 2-woman art show at Chapel Gallery in Bracebridge. Firmly Rooted examines where we’ve come from and where we are now in our lives and creative journeys as artists. Our shared love of trees and nature, passion for painting and desire to connect with childhood roots drew Janice Feist and I together and resulted in this show concept. We hope the work inspires viewers to examine their own roots, their connections to nature, to each other and to all life.

I’ve always felt an affinity with nature, not as a camper, but rather as one who spent hours hiking and playing in the woods as a child and later in my life as an adult. I grew up without any siblings but I always had one close friend. We would play in the tree covered drumlins of Hastings County that surrounded the village of Batawa, picking wildflowers and catching polliwogs in the local creek. I loved the sounds of the forest – the leaves rustling in the wind, the scampering of small squirrels and chipmunks around the forest floor and the chorus of birdsong.

I’m attracted to all trees but especially those character trees with unique bark configurations, trunk shapes and root systems. Like humans, I see them as unique individuals, each with a personality of its own. I’m not sure when I developed my love of trees but perhaps it began when my father rescued an ancient oak on our property. It stood outside my bedroom window, like a stalwart guardian throughout my childhood. Its branches yielded abundant harvests of acorns attracting flocks of blue jays and one summer an oriole built its hammock-like nest in the oak’s branches.

Firmly Rooted – Enchanted #3, Oil on Canvas, 10 x 8 inches, Copyright Wendie Donabie 2014

A show like this requires a lot of planning, soul-searching and nose-to-the-grindstone work. For the past few months we’ve both struggled to select images to convey our message and experience. Then came the actual creative time at the easel applying brush and paint to paper and canvas. We’ve produced a body of work in acrylic, oil, ink and watercolour that we believe expresses our intention for the show. Paintings range in size from 8 x 10 inches to 36 x 48 inches.

As the show approaches, we continue to create new work and will select what we feel best represents our theme and our current development as artists. Future posts will share more show details.

Please visit www.wendiedonabie.com to see more work.

Copyright Wendie Donabie 2014