Ajax Ontario Archives - Page 3 of 14

May 1, 2021October 15, 2024

The virtual arts market takes off

Artfest virtual arts market is open!

It is a local Greater Toronto Area event, and, therefore, a fantastic opportunity for local artists, artisans and writers to show off their creations. In normal years, we would head out to the Esplanade park in Pickering and see in person what artists have created, what musicians and writers would like us to hear, but this year the event is virtual again.

The virtual arts market website gives a brief introduction about each participant, and one can follow a link if they are interested. I hope they are! My personal website is extensive, however, the theme I am using does not support good Home pages, therefore, my Blog page and this new article will have to do that.

Watercolor painting, purple pansy watercolor

My art can be attributed to a few main categories.

By medium and technique:

drawings,

pen and watercolor art on watercolor paper,

pure watercolor paintings on paper,

acrylic paintings on canvas and

highly textured acrylic paintings on canvas.

By subject of painting:

floral and floral still life,

still life,

seasons,

buildings, barns and perspective,

landscapes and trees,

small birds.

Please, see collections by painting subject here:

Art collections

All pages from which I sell art include all subjects, but I rather specified the medium I have applied. I have created a separate page for

Watercolor paintings: Shop watercolor paintings

Acrylic paintings (page will be updated with more paintings): Shop acrylic paintings

and a page which offers art related to current season or which suits the current trends: Shop special offers

Watercolor painting, spring, nature, arts market

While all nature subjects appeal to me, I have always paid special attention to seasons, therefore, I can certainly say that I have plenty of spring, summer, fall and winter paintings.

Finally, my website has excellent search option and if you type a name which best describes the subject in the Search box, all posts which include this entry will come up.

Available acrylic paintings

As you will notice, all available paintings are originals. I think it’s best to allow companies which specialize in making prints to allow doing that. The smallest acrylic paintings are 12 x 12 in or 30.5 x 30.5 cm. Many are 20 x 16 in or 51 x 41 cm, 18 x 24 in or 46 x 51 cm, as well as 20 x 24 in or 51 x 61 cm. I haven’t published the largest acrylic paintings yet.

I always paint around the edge; therefore, painting can be displayed without a frame. Painting continues around the sides of canvas and looks great.

Rocks of gold, acrylic painting by Inese Poga

Available watercolors

Available watercolors are also only originals painted on watercolor paper, frequently, heavy and very firm Arches, Saunders-Waterford paper or bright white archival quality paper in case of pen and watercolor art. On sale pages displayed watercolor paintings are sold without a frame or mat. The framed watercolors are available in person only, many of them have glass and I cannot take any new photos, and they have beautiful oak wood frames, therefore, I wouldn’t be able to ship them anywhere. The smaller size framed watercolors are in 11 x 14 in or 28 x 36 cm standard frames with mats and one can also purchase them in person from studio, but not from website.

How to purchase available art

If you like a painting, just click on View product label and continue as directed. For purpose of this particular local event, you can pick up the painting practically any day between 11 am and 8 pm. I’m located in Ajax, almost downtown.

To ask any questions and to find out more, please, use this page:

Contact artist Inese Poga

I will be happy to assist. My website does not process any payments; therefore, you are submitting your info to Shopify or PayPal and they process the payment. Paintings are sold without tax and prices are in Canadian dollars. If you pick up your painting, that’s the final price. I can exchange any painting to a similar one, but I won’t take it back once it has been in possession of somebody.

Thank you kindly for reading and I hope you like some painting so much, you’d love to own it!

April 23, 2021August 3, 2024

Life as art, creation as lifestyle, part 2

Good life comes from good things

I have drawn and painted numerous flowers so far not only in pen lines and watercolor, transparent watercolor, but also in acrylic, and less known are my pastel paintings just because I don’t have any photos of them. Among them are roses, magnolias, orchids, daffodils, tulips, lilies, calla lilies, daisies, peonies, pansies, poppies, sunflowers, lilac, trillium, wildflowers, forest flowers and flower fields. I probably forgot to mention some. Flowers are convenient for painting since they are always around. Something is always available and that suits me and my personalized realism. Being in the middle of so much beauty, real and painted, feels extremely good.

My opportunity

As I explained in Part 1, my background is very different from Canada-born artists. I am purely expressing my personal vision about the subject because nothing stands between me and my idea which I am putting on canvas or paper, not even a photo, and no devices are involved. I could say it’s the purest form of creation, going from what you see to what you create. I love most turning white paper and blank canvas into something where you can walk in or are able to almost touch the drawn or painted subject.

Pink geranium, floral watercolor painting

Technique versus idea and emotional aspect

While it’s possible to get carried away by the technical side of painting or drawing, I’d love to remind that there’s also a concept, an idea and a hidden meaning within such art. The concept isn’t the subject itself, it’s what it can tell the viewer and how deep emotional impact it can make. That’s my opportunity to stand out. Drawing for me is pure pleasure because I don’t have to struggle with it, I usually do not need any eraser. Pencil dances on paper, the subject takes shape and it will definitely have more meaning than simply trying to be lifelike.

Summer pansies in purple, watercolor painting for sale

Complexity or simplicity of subject and display on the internet

I wrote in part 1 that the driving force for me is the subject, especially the challenging aspects of it, ability to create more complex and deeper paintings. I love complex paintings more. Also, it isn’t important whether my subject looks exactly like the real thing. I want the viewer to get my message, the idea behind the visible lines and colors. On the internet, you can only see a fairly small image of my art, often, the size does not reflect the actual size. On this blog, all vertical images look much larger than the horizontal ones, except the featured image must be horizontal. On Fine Art America print site, vertical paintings look much smaller than the horizontal ones and so on. Therefore, display doesn’t make a correct impression.

Still life with apples — Drawing based still life

Drawing as base for watercolor painting

Realistic watercolor painting most often uses drawing before paint application. We can avoid that and create everything with brush only, and I have done that, too. However, when it comes to complex still life, floral or landscape painting, it’s best to plan values and know where to use what. I transfer such drawing onto watercolor paper using extra light and hardly visible lines. Watercolor paper doesn’t like eraser, and strong pencil lines disturb the image, at least I like only transparency of watercolor paint to be visible. This all refers to watercolor done traditionally: leaving white of paper for white and layering different value colors where they belong.

Red apples, watercolor — As seen in my sister’s garden, purple apples

Solo shows and juried art shows

I started out very well in 2011 in Ontario with showing my large watercolors and fewer acrylic paintings in a gallery near Toronto Beaches. I couldn’t find this gallery on a map now, it has probably changed hands and has a different name. I also took part in art fairs, juried art shows, gave classes and workshops at my own gallery, everything was working really well. Recently, a few art students from back then shared their memories on Facebook and told how much they had learned in my art classes and how much they appreciated them. It was a different time. Being in a commercially zoned property definitely helped. Then health problems caused me to slow down between 2016 and 2019, plus, we had to move 2 times after 2018.

Moving an art studio

Moving just a house is difficult and stressful, but moving an entire large art studio with all kinds of art supplies, extra furniture, easels and numerous paintings of my own together with house, was a hassle. It’s inevitable that some art gets damaged, I had that happen even when moving art around to shows. It seems everything is packed up safely, but such move normally involves many people and not everyone of them knows how to handle a huge painting, for instance. That’s why I feel reluctant showing very large framed watercolors now. Glass sometimes breaks, it’s not only the high price for museum grade glass that worries me. Painting can get scratches, too, and the entire thing needs re-framing.

Fall landscape, watercolor by artist Inese Poga

My painting method and technique

When I paint in color, I definitely need daylight. Regardless how good the artificial light is, it causes changes in color. Therefore, some parts of painting require extra work, that can be a lot of extra work. With watercolor especially, there might be parts which I cannot undo. Whenever possible, I paint only by daylight. The usable portion of my current place isn’t that big, maybe spacious enough, but I could utilize easily double this size for an art studio. When there’s a lot of heating in winter, it’s very difficult to paint with acrylic paints. They dry on touch. For watercolor, it doesn’t matter because I can always make the paper wet again. Colors or shapes are not affected when re-wetting watercolor paper.

Beautiful sunflower painting, floral watercolor

Art is my full-time job

It is a huge risk to take on art as one’s entire lifestyle and full-time job. There are only a few fields where competition is as fierce as in art and teaching art. I had strong support when I engaged in art in Canada, but during the pandemic everything went downhill real fast. I don’t teach art as entertainment because my definition of learning is not the same as social drinking and using art as extra feature. I take painting seriously and I teach aspects I have discovered during many decades to those who want to master medium or observational drawing. That requires focus, interest in learning as a process, not only in a quick result. My students, who displayed the most willingness to learn, have become excellent artists.

Still life with nuts and berries — Very much drawing based pen and watercolor painting

I will share my acrylic painting creation process and my thoughts about teaching observations in Part 3.

Watercolor painting, peppers — Realistic painting of Bell peppers on white background

Also, please, have a look at my art collections: Art collections by Inese Poga

All online show pieces will be listed soon, currently acrylic art page is still getting done:

Special art offers

Original watercolor paintings for sale

More acrylic paintings will be added: Shop original acrylic paintings

Thanks for reading!

September 30, 2020October 17, 2024

New fall art, online art show and sale

Finding the right conditions to work

I’m very pleased I can finally publish my newest fall art. If you read my posts, you probably know, we have to go through a live-in renovation. It hasn’t been easy, in fact, I had to take a break from anything I was doing for a while because it just wasn’t possible. I can only work in silence and when there’s no direct presence of anybody. I normally do not answer phone and also do not talk while painting. I’m all consumed and taken away by the creative process. I paint in silence without any music, but I open the patio doors and listen to birds and other sounds of nature if the weather is good.

Strict preventive measures prevent public access

My show should have been on from October 1^st. After visiting the exhibition site, we decided not to go ahead with the real show. We have new restrictions in Ontario, and it basically comes to this: if hardly anybody is attending the exhibition site and they have to go through a strict procedure to be allowed on the premises, there’s no point in putting up a show. It is time-and effort-consuming process, and I just don’t see any value in exhibiting my art at this time.

Show and sale move online

The show will be all online. People, who reside in Ontario and can make an appointment to come to the studio, one person at a time, would be another option. I have numerous Thanksgiving pieces of art: from ecological prints to handmade unique cards, boxes and more. The ecological prints are created using nature materials like flowers and leaves and arranging them on thick watercolor paper. The process involves boiling and drying and then framing this art or using it in mixed media pieces.

Time-consuming creation process

My large paintings usually take up to month to finish, some – even longer, like 2-3 months. For medium size art, it’s approximately 2-3 weeks of work. I have never painted anything just in 1 sitting in acrylic. That is because of acrylic paint properties. Acrylic paint dries darker, much darker with some colors, therefore, I am glazing and adding new layers as I go. I want my art to be something impressive and something where one can literary feel like they are walking into the painting. I also take about 200 pictures of each painting, download, cut, resize them, then watermark and chose the most appropriate. That’s why I usually cannot post sooner than every 2 weeks at the best.

The birch valley

The birch valley is a large painting, its size is 81 x 66 cm or 32 x 28 inches. Here it is on the easel. On the monitor screen, a picture of another fall painting is visible.

Birch valley, textured, large acrylic painting. As always, I have painted around the edges and painting is ready to hang on the wall.

Fall in the hills

Fall in the hills is 61 x 51 cm or 24 x 20 inches in size. It is one of the most tranquil paintings I’ve ever created.

I suppose it would look great on any wall. It depicts excellent mood and I think my color choice supports that. The first layers on this canvas were put down in 2015. It’s amazing how long it took me to add the final touches and turn this art into something I wanted to.

Fall in the hills, fall art by Inese Poga

Fall in the hills, beautiful soft colors and good composition

New red barn

And finally, the “New red barn’ which we started painting during art classes exactly a year ago. Just recently, I decided to finish it up so that one more painting is completed. Students were rushing, but I decided to work out this painting properly by adding enough layers and some detail.

The new red barn, acrylic painting on canvas, 20 x 16 in or 50.5 x 40.5 cm

Beauty has no price

I assume, my paintings when sold from the studio are not expensive. I don’t think you know anybody who’d work for $25-$40 a day and add even materials. Compared to all abstract and animated, as well as very amateurish art out there, my paintings are very recognizable on this background since I use certain colors, paint certain subjects and have a distinctive personal style. The truth is that fewer and fewer people can draw or create somewhat realistic looking art nowadays, and that works for me and lets me stand out.

Updating website and tackling shipping

I will work towards making my sales pages better in the upcoming weeks. They need update big time; I just didn’t get to that yet. Unfortunately, shipping is always what Canada Post charges me. They give great deals to huge customers so that their clients get free shipping, but a single person business pays way above the global average and also about 40-50% more than in the US.

Only original art

I am only selling originals for now. The new fall art looks amazing. For prints, I can order them myself and then resell, but that’s a risky process. I trust sites which specialize in creating and framing prints, such as Fine Art America, for instance. They do good job and nobody could ever compete with options for frames, as well as prints on numerous materials including wood and metal.

Art prints and other artistic products:

Art collections by Inese Poga

August 20, 2020October 15, 2024

Find inspiration on the birch path

Birch path painting: no reference required

Birch path paintings did not have any reference. I’ve done many paintings without any references, just having some imagined concept and adding to it as I paint. Paintings with birches inspire many established artists and beginners, and birch path in early or late fall is such an inviting landscape since the viewer can walk into it. As you may know, I come originally from Latvia, and birch path and birch grove is a very characteristic view over there.

Simple composition

The composition is usually simple and leads to the focal point which might not always be very accentuated. However, some other of my paintings are just plainly depictions of colorful abstract leaves. My students always asked for birch path and birch tree paintings; therefore, I have many of them. I always paint along with students. After a while, when acrylic paint has reached its complete drying and settling moment, I’d evaluate the painting and add or remove some parts of it as required.

Original landscape paintings by Inese Poga

Stepwise approach

My process is usually simple, too. I start with application of texture by randomly creating leaf and grass patterns. After that, I prime and paint canvas. I don’t use any special acrylic primers any longer. I find that using acrylic paint which can be just leftover paint is much more beneficial to the final colors and impact. I use sometimes fairly dark grey, lighter grey, mix of burnt umber, burnt sienna and yellow ocher or cardboard color. These underpainting colors work the best with my art.

Original paintings by Inese Poga, birch paintings

Defining the landscape

The next step is pretty much blocking in large areas on which I follow up with sponge and fan brush. When the background is set, I paint in main tree trunks. Using fan brush, I apply more layers. Any of my paintings has numerous layers, as well as switches from cool to warm colors. Camera cannot capture that, and it is painful seeing that photo can never show the fine-tuned colors I’ve used. Camera tends adding too much blue, too much yellow or green while sometimes omitting red completely. These particular paintings contain no blue color, but it might look as if they do on photos.

Birch path 1, it has the most detail, 16 x 20 in or 41 x 51 cm, acrylic on canvas

Just as always, all edges are painted and painting continues beyond the front part, Birch path 2, 16 x 20 in or 41 x 51 cm

Achieving balance with finishing touches

My painting is finished when the flow of colors and lines is balanced and I am satisfied with the most part of a painting. Balance in my art means quite a lot, and I’m aiming for it intentionally. The birch path originals are certainly very impressive and abstract parts compliment the detailed areas. It’s such a pleasure to look at these paintings when they’re next to each other. They are similar, but also have distinctive features.

Birch forest landscape, acrylic painting

Steps of autumn, 16 x 20 in or 41 x 51 cm, acrylic painting on canvas. This has the strongest colors, at least in pictures and on my screen

Plenty of inspiration on birch path

I found my inspiration on the birch path and colors came to life. One can paint realistically imaginative landscape, or abstract trees from reality – it doesn’t matter what approach we use – to me personally, painting becomes art when it tells us something. I mean, it tells something without lengthy description. I hope you can feel the leaves under your feet, as well as more trees in the distance. Enjoy! Prints are available from Fine Art America site.

Art collections by Inese Poga

August 12, 2020October 16, 2024

The golden view of early fall

August is here, and it’s about time to create some fall landscape and treescape. The colors are not here yet, but they’ll be everywhere before we know. Just as I wrote before, I get tired of green and I need something completely different. This post shows my most recent acrylic painting ” Golden view of early fall” on lots of textures in the background, or underneath the multiple layers of paint.

I started creating very textured paintings many years ago. Before modeling paste was available, I used plaster and plaster cloth, then cured it and, thus, got amazing textures. It’s hard to say which one is easier to use. Plaster takes more layers of primer before paint application, but modeling paste sometimes dries too quick. Nowadays, textured art is common, but it wasn’t when I started creating it some 15 years ago.

I asked my husband to take a few pictures with me working on this painting in order to present the size of it. Everything I post just as a cropped image of painting alone doesn’t allow seeing it in space and with dimensions. For a textured art and in order textures were more or less visible on a photo, it is important to get some angled views.

Artist Inese Poga painting The Golden view of realy fall

Just adding more layers to Golden eternity painting. The perspective of iPhone is quite terrible, but one can see the size at least

Golden eternity painting on the easel. It took me about 3 weeks to get it painted going over layer by layer and so for many times.

Textures and color, close-up and I hope you can see how textures push through the paint layers

Autumn trees and creek, large acrylic painting of autumn trees on textured background

The “Golden eternity” is 81 x 66 cm or 32 x 28 inches in size.

Textured paintings are very special, especially when you can see them in person. Colors slightly change with different light conditions. I usually have to ask not to touch such paintings. Well, they draw attention of a viewer and it’s hard to resist not to trace the visible lines of textured trees and leaves.

Have a great August and fun enjoying nature! Nature is an endless source of the best things on our Earth.

Shop original acrylic paintings

Purchase art prints here:

Art collections by Inese Poga

Tag: Ajax Ontario

The virtual arts market takes off

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Life as art, creation as lifestyle, part 2

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New fall art, online art show and sale

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Find inspiration on the birch path

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The golden view of early fall

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