A Serendipitous Encounter

There are a lot of things that can be said about social media with a heavy portion of the equation being negative. There is a bright side, for me at least.

It’s a long story with many levels of twists. It started literally over a decade ago but IRL. An artist who’s work spoke to me so much that I’ve blogged about it twice here at Sunday Sunshine and Burly What. I now have 5 of her paintings in the two back porches.

Anyway she’s connected to the art world here in our small city. Through her I saw another local artist who’s work looked like it fit inside my soul. But that story comes later.

This summer we drove to New Denver, B.C. to deliver the first of the two “commissioned” Wall hangings I did for my cousins. My cousin and his wife were wonderful hosts and we walked andbiked around their small lakeside town. We also went boating and beach walking and jumping off the dock. It was an awesome couple of days.

There were also a couple of things on that weekend and so we attended an artist’s opening night. Her mom lives a couple doors down from my cousin and the artist lives the next block over. He gave us the background of her art career and to say we were blown away would be an understatement.  Here is a link to the Sab Curtis art show. We did not go home empty-handed. Her mountain sunrise just made us feel like first run of the day “oh sunrise” while at the top with fresh snow and no tracks.

The size, we thought, might work for above our bed. It’s been an empty spot for quite some time. Now the first piece fell into place. But we needed one of the same size to balance out.

Back to the Nicki Ault story and the plus side of social media. I have followed along, via Instagram, on her career. Then I started following along on Sab Curtis’s page. And then I noticed the same name coming up on both posts – that of Jodi Miller. So I went to investigate and fell in love. Well not with her but for sure her work. Turns out she’s a rural Sask girl at heart and has come home to paint. And paint she does. The colours of the picture we picked seemed perfect but there was no trail like in one of her other ones. No worries she said and created it.

It’s super interesting to note that both Sab and Jodi, on their professional lives, were engineers. Both, fairly abruptly, changed paths. One due to an injury and one due to retirement (although not in the traditional sense). Both now paint full time and have teem age children. Both have vision and can “see” it just like my engineer can see things.

Their works are now on the wall. Prairie view on my side and mountain top on his side. The size works. The colours blend and yet pop. They make me very very happy and extremely grateful that social media has a good side.

As an interesting aside Little Man C was getting his jammies on last evening and noted the pictures on the wall. “Nan, that’s a pretty sunset. And look it’s Fernie” he says all excitably. I too thought that the prairie one was a sunset but there are a titch too many stars to be sunset.

So I think perhaps I might just need a true sunset one! There is an on line show this weekend called the Square Foot Show. All paintings are 12 x 12 and all the same price. It grew out of an in person show and pivoted with Covid. It features established and emerging artists (all 3 of the aforementioned artists are participating)and perhaps my Christmas present will originate from here!

It has taken eons to do the post as I was waiting for sunshine on the walls for the photos. Then had to stick it all in Canva. Then I got lost inside a murder mystery boom for 23 hours and 17 mins. Then it was birthday weekend and World Cup fever. Finally today while a storm rages outside and I ride my bike inside I finished up the post. I guess the plus side is I got that cute picture of Colton and his little statement on record.

Bernie

Ps all 3 artists are prairie girls even though Sab lives in British Columbia and Jodi lived a lot of places when she was with the Canadian military. They have all been invited to come paint plein air out here and capture what I am blessed enough to see everyday.