Spring edition, moving art studio

Moving art studio

My art studio is moving again, indeed, it has happened so many times during the recent years. I’ve moved three times since 2018 and now I have to do that again. While it sounds quite simple, it actually isn’t. The toughest part is finding a place and qualify for it. That requires mountains of paperwork, numerous hours of printing, scanning, signing, sending documents and so forth. That is the reason I hardly looked at the internet, any social media or blog sites. There wasn’t enough time in a day to cope with all that, and nothing was left for painting, unfortunately.

I did try to catch up with the artistic side, I sure did. However, that mostly resulted in wasted paint and a bit of frustration. As soon as I squeezed out acrylic paint and got in the mood for painting, the phone rang or I received a message, we have to go: to see a place, to meet somebody, to do whatever, and there was no other way around it. As you know, acrylic paint dries very fast, and even when preserving some in a tight container, it doesn’t work quite well as the fresh one.

I’m really hooked on the moment when nature awakes. The most fantastic view for me can be a tiny sprout breaking through the soil and greeting the sunshine. The first wild flowers are such a welcome sight! Strength to overcome the freeze and courage to break through impossible obstacles: that is what grasses and wild flowers have. I cannot resist, I return to wildflowers in spring settings every year.

One of my most favorite color combinations involves earthy tones, many shades of green as in sprouts, young leaves and grasses, blue patches of sky, as well as bright white, blue and pink of the wildflowers. According to such palette, I paint some knew dreamscape which I most often have seen only in imagination or which is stored in my memory chambers.

My art studio in this big house had to be adjusted and the actual painting space was sparse. As you might know from my previous posts, I usually paint only by daylight. There have been times when I have to add evenings, but I try to avoid painting at night when artificial light is required. It could be my eyesight which dictates that, but I am very sure that for true color match we need the daylight.

So, the art studio is on the move again, and I have started to pack up a few things. Very large and small paintings will be moved first, as well as part of my countless brushes and art supplies. I would love to sell a few more paintings, but I don’t have much time for advertising at the moment. We will be moving 9 large rooms into 5 rooms, only one of which is large. My art studio is going to be arranged there, in the largest room. Daylight will be much better in the new place, however. It’s an older building with large windows, lots of character and huge backyard. That is such a luxury nowadays!

My best guess is everything will be ready around April 15, and that’s when I can start with my own paintings and art classes. Until then, – I go through moving troubles, packing and unpackaging, sorting, cleaning and being busy with all kinds of things which are not necessarily art related. There will be moment when we won’t have internet yet, and when I am all set up, I will come up with my newest discoveries in painting. You can still scroll through my blog which documents all art studio moves, gives lots of advice for new and established artists and offers excellent quality art at great prices. Stay well! I’d love to hear from you!

Special art offers

Original watercolor paintings for sale

Shop original acrylic paintings

Art gifts and art prints on FAA:

Art collections by Inese Poga

The virtual arts market takes off

Acrylic paintings, nature

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.

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

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.

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!

Relocating art gallery, selling art and restructuring website

acrylic painting, art gallery

Moving my art gallery and showrooms

My art gallery is on the move: paintings are traveling to Ajax soon. There are numerous paintings, endless sheets of drawings, sketches, frames, framed and unframed paintings of all sizes.. Due to that, I am offering nice deals on my art at the moment. While I can give discounts to art that is purchased online, the expensive Canadian shipping services make it difficult. The winners are definitely art lovers and art collectors who can come to the gallery in person before the moving date. That is the end of July or close to it. I would like to have a well-organized move. You could help me move, you certainly could by purchasing some art.

Selling my art: getting people to see it

Due to oversupply which is based on art print sales, it is very tricky to make people aware that this is original art and you can touch and feel the brushstrokes and textures. You can feel the energy literally floating around the place. Original art of good quality actually sells quite well, especially in person, especially when price point is intentionally made very attractive. When people get to see it, many love my art and are very willing to spend their money for something that beautiful. My problem has always been to get people in here. The location is fine; however, it is a corner lot. Parking becomes confusing, and there is practically no foot traffic.

Good original art sells

I sold 5 paintings before the surgery. Well, way too less to make this gallery move lighter, but it’s still great. I work passionately and methodically completing a painting. I have paintings which took me more than a year to bring to a condition which I was satisfied with. Watercolors can take up to 3 or 4 weeks, full sheet watercolors. I have been painting mostly large and medium size art. If I could, I would only paint large and very large art because that gives me so much more freedom. I am naturally interested in large-scale paintings. Even when I started out as a kid, my drawings and paintings were large. In average, every acrylic painting has taken me between 2 weeks and a month, and for watercolors that would be 2-3 weeks.

Value and uniqueness

Lucky artists who get remunerated for their input in creation of art! Taking into account the numerous hours which go into my paintings, the selling price is a tiny fraction of the art value. Watercolors are very difficult to repeat, if at all possible, therefore, each painting is genuinely unique. Acrylic is a very slow medium. It takes layers and layers to take the painting where I want it to go. I will not sell sketches and drawings, I will use them on the learning page of my website which is getting developed.

Website’s facelift and new learning page

I intend to restructure and reorganize completely my website; however, it will have to wait for a while with all the intense packing and unpacking. Sooner or later, there will be videos available too, but the current hectic situation does not allow for that. That is the future: presentations, traceable drawings, video suggestions, and I will link this with a Facebook community page where everybody who wants to try the particular subject will be able to post their creations and ask questions.  Live classes will also take place at the new location; however, the number of participants will be limited.

I will still have plants and garden

Plants will come with me, and I have a great deal of them. I intend to dig out my herbs and peonies, irises and similar, the small lilac I planted last year and even lily of the valley. This place is a very amazing one: I have numerous plant species all around. I will really miss some of them, especially apple tree.

Enjoy the gallery, share blog link or pictures if you can

These are the recent images of my art gallery. A few walls and a few displays are visible. These are mostly acrylic paintings, watercolors did not make into this photo session. It feels a bit sad because I had a great art gallery here. It is not easy to find buildings which suit this purpose. Well, just keep in touch! Much more to come!

My iPhone takes quite dark pictures, although, I have adjusted settings. The light was not perfect, as well. I find that iPhone tries to totally dramatize any picture, so regarding a painting, it becomes very sharp and it lacks the value balance which is present in my real art. While I’m not 100% happy with these pictures, I would love you to still enjoy them. I believe it is an excellent gallery. Well, my art will be displayed online for the most part in the future, but I will arrange a showroom.

More art Originals

Copyright notice: Copyrights of displayed paintings, drawings, images of work in progress and images of finished paintings belong to artist Inese Poga. The use of painting and drawing images is prohibited if I have not issued a written permission.

Art products and art prints:

Art collections by Inese Poga

Christmas Show and Sale: Art, Crafts, Gifts

Christmas gifts, beautiful gift boxes

It’s Christmas show time again, and we are having our annual Christmas sale. It is richer and more interesting than ever before. I have no doubt, everyone can find something great, whether it’s a Christmas decoration, nice, hearty, one of a kind gift, painting, card or gift certificate. Gift certificates for classes and workshops are available every day, not only during the sale.

You can enjoy and possibly purchase more than 200 paintings and crafted gift items.

All Christmas show decorations and gifts are crafted in the gallery and range in style from traditional to modern and trendy, both, regarding the color scheme and design. We have used mostly nature materials: fir and pine cones, apple-tree and maple branches, spruce tree branches and also some paints, glitter, tissue paper and interesting containers. You should definitely check out the one of a kind gift boxes, note books, diaries and photo albums.

We are offering only original paintings and art, including three-dimensional acrylic nature paintings in subtle and soothing colors.

Variety of Christmas cards can be ordered from the Fine Art America site: Inese Poga’s art collections

Please have a look at some gifts and decorations for sale.

Traditional Christmas colors

Crafted Christmas show gift boxes

Gold and red

Red and green: tissue paper roses and glitter on branches

Christmas gift box, very elegant and delicate, matches the Christmas decoration very well.

Celebrating the light and warmth with beautiful things in beautiful settings: fun and pleasure!

Festive and uplifting, sparkle and shine: Christmas settings

I hope you enjoyed the decorating ideas!

Fall Art Festival at Camp Samac: Friday

Fall art festival, Camp Samac

I always plan ahead, but I often find myself balancing on knife-edge to meet all deadlines and to make all things happen. Generally speaking, I cannot avoid some rush with whatever I’m trying to do. Getting ready for art shows always involves some frantic adding of last brush strokes to earlier created paintings, a sudden new painting idea just the night before the show; and, yes, that’s me typing the art sales sheets and printing labels just half an hour before I leave to set up the show. This time, Fall Art Festival at Camp Samac.

Setting up show space

This is such a happy moment when the provided space is set up. It seems like nothing to it, and I really have to wonder, how could it take so incredibly much time and efforts? I decided to paint mostly trees this year, and when I stopped by, I found out that 3 paintings were already sold. Great news.

Sold tree paintings

Why trees? I find them extremely human, having so much of character which people are often lacking. I don’t think there can be ever painted too many trees or flowers, these silent guards of our living space.

Lovely white birch and maples

Birches are stubbornly maintaining their white coats regardless of seasons. It’s not surprising they have found reflection in so many poems, paintings and stories. How to stay white is the lesson they teach. We can respect maples for knowing how to lose their beauty in such a gracious and marvelous way, there are no regrets, just sadness for rapidly disappearing magnificence.

Maple road, sold

This maple road painting was done in my rich acrylic texture technique. Paintings of this type change colors as the surrounding light does, and depending on the viewing angle, foliage feels almost touchable at some moments. This painting was also sold straight after I put it out. These paintings exist only as single originals since no prints or similar reproductions can be made, and that’s what I like about them.