I've made my first online sale! I was contacted by a fellow from Colorado who stumbled on my website and liked "Beach at Carqueiranne". This is even before my special new website that Richard is in the process of creating. He has a very cool design for it.

I thought it was interesting how the Colorado fellow ended up on my website so am posting his email to me:

Thanks Janice:
That sounds fine-I will send payment via Paypal this afternoon. I have really enjoyed your accounts of travels in France, etc. You obviously have a  splendid joie de vivre! In looking at some of your earlier postings, I discovered how I happened onto your site. I recently had a yen for a good espresso, and got on ebay to see what was available in stovetop espresso makers. Someone in Australia had an "Atomic" for sale, and I was intrigued by the design (though not by the price which started at US$225). I went to google and punched in "atomic espresso", and it linked into your citation, among others. Amazing tools, aren't they, these computers and coffee makers?

Best wishes for the New Year!

Regards,
David

A few notable gifts under our Christmas tree this year...


Our new cat "Fluffy" (named after a long succession of cats in Jim's family who were mostly short haired...) on Fern's cosy blanket!


Richard gave us a DVD of his Filmography


And also some DVD's of a lesser light....


My usual stack of books from Jim...he always finds some great titles I'm not familiar with.


My gift to Jim...a professional chef jacket to encourage him to start cooking...he's had it on a number of times already. Don figures it should say "Sacre Bleu" not Cordon Bleu...!


We all got a laugh out of Don and Elaine's gift to Richard...boxer shorts from Google with "I'm feeling lucky" written all over them!

A few pix from Christmas 2003. It was really great to have the Soles clan and Jean to join us this year. Kate and Jean spoiled us with Nigella's sticky toffee pudding and Eric Akis' lemon tarts for dessert...also brought wonderful gingerbread and Starbuck's Christmas Blend coffee...yum...(Richard and I had some gingerbread for breakfast!) Thanks, Derek and Mary, for the wine (Tinhorn Creek Pinot Gris...perfect with turkey) and accessories...and of course, what would Christmas be without the famous crackers! I got the best joke...What would the US be called if everyone had red cars?..."A red carnation"...Dad got the best "surprise"..."a game of jacks" and Richard got the most practical one..."nail clippers"...(I think the cracker makers were in a practical mood this year). And of course, all our hats were equally silly!


Most of us except Mary's hiding and Richard's taking the picture.


Dad with his new professional chef jacket faking it at the stove.


Kate and Jean.


Richard helping in the kitchen.

I got two more commissions for floorcloths! One, something with frogs, and another with a beagle. I'm working on the frog one now...it's been really quite fun designing it. Pretty much ready for Christmas. I've decided not to send any Christmas cards anymore. I'm in email contact with pretty much everyone and also our friends can keep up to date with this blog.

Merry Christmas to everyone!

Great news...our very dear friend, Monique, is coming back to Victoria to live!
It will be great having her back...yipee!

I did this table of my painting "French Village" for my friend, Carole. I didn't post it before because I wanted it to be a surprise. It's been fun doing the furniture but it really is a tremendous amount of work and fiddling around and also very hard on my back so I won't be doing any more furniture. People scrounging the Oak Bay Dump Exchange area will have lots more to choose from!

I'm going to keep everything else I've done for myself since they are now "limited editions" except one small table I have in mind as a gift for a friend that I haven't given anything to yet. I will be doing one last thing, just the top of a beautiful old Victrola cabinet Don and Elaine are giving me that was Don's mother's. I'm thinking of something very special for this wonderful piece of furniture that will be my last piece of painted furniture...it is a perfect ending to what has been a lot of fun!

Got back yesterday from a fabulous couple of days up at Carole's cabin in Qualicum. Arrived to find black oystercatchers on their beach! Wow...none of us westcoasters and Gulf Island goers had ever seen them before. We had to look them up in a book. They are so attractive with their long orange beaks. They certainly seemed to be finding lots to eat along with hundreds of seagulls that were also hanging around until an eagle swooped in and chased everything away temporarily except the seals.
We had a super time painting, shopping, eating, drinking and baking. Qualicum and especially Ladysmith looked terrific with their Christmas decorations. We stopped on the way up and back at the Sunflower Cafe in Ladysmith and had the most yummy and imaginative soups...roasted red pepper pesto and carrot one day and chicken and hazlenuts the next. Thanks Fern and Carole...it was a great time!



Oystercatchers and seagulls on the beach




This is the "lonestone" in front after which the cabin is named




Beachfront with seagrass




Fern and Carole with our baking!

I got a commission to do a painting of something with sailboats by a fellow who has a new grandson. He wanted to give him something that would last. I thought this was such a charming idea (and it's my first commission!) that I thought I would throw in a second smaller painting that was similar so the grandfather would have a memento as well.


This is the one for the grandson.
The writing in the sand says "Je t'aime petit-fils"



This is the one for the grandfather.
The writing in the sand says "Je t'aime Grandpêre"

I'm posting pictures of some of the things I've been working on especially for the Oak Bay Studio Tour coming up this weekend. I've been really pleased with the canvas floorcloths...they've been great fun to do!

P.S. This is going to be my door prize for the show.



St. Tropez on lazy susan




CANVAS FLOORCLOTHS!

Walk on,
stamp your feet on,
muddy boots wiped on,
wet dogs shook on,
fluffy cats sat on (maybe...) art!

Canvas floorcloths are versatile small rugs that can be used in the kitchen, living room, dining room, bathroom etc. They are particularly useful in front of entrances to take that last bit of dirt off shoes and in front of sinks. Each mat is handpainted based on paintings I’ve done and each one will have variations on the original painting. Designs can be chosen from the art portfolios, cards, or bookmarks.

Mats are given six coats of high gloss varnish and a coat of clear paste wax. They are very durable and are meant to be walked over! They do not need to be washed as dirt can be wiped off with a damp cloth. The back is sprayed with a rubber coating to avoid slippage. This rubber backing can be scrubbed with soap and water if desired.



Rockfish on provençale tablecloth - floorcloth
* SOLD



Lavender and poppies - floorcloth




Cassis Harbour - floorcloth
* SOLD





Pines in the sky - floorcloth





Peace on Earth - floorcloth



And here are some wood pieces I finally got round to doing....



Watersports on skateboard * From the Oak Bay Dump exchange area




Hotel Splendid on table * From the Oak Bay Dump exchange area





Carqueiranne Harbour on lazy susan




Pines in the sky on tray




Cassis Harbour on towel rack




Wrought iron bell towers on table

Hello everyone. I'm posting the information sheet that I will have available for people who come by on the studio tour. This is particularly for my friends at long distance who can't come. I hope a little bit of the spirit of my contribution comes through.

Welcome to my ocean!

My basement art began with wanting to transform our ugly old oil tank and voila the”yellow submarine” was launched. Some children visiting from England provided the fish. Then my attention turned to our rusty old freezer...an ice block with penguins and polars bears seemed the perfect solution. Now everything in the basement looked rather dull (even though I did have my album covers from the ‘60’s on the walls) so I came up with the idea of making an “ocean” and having myself, friends, and family all contribute paintings. We had a ball doing it!

I moved on to the guest room and created a "room with a view" from our favourite hotel in the south of France. Then on to scenes from my favourite city in the world (Paris, of course) in my studio. In my kitchen I’ve tried to recreate a little bit of the spirit of Provence with my tiles, floorcloth, and paintings.

Much of the furniture is from the Oak Bay Dump Exchange area (my neighbour, Chris, finds many treasures there for me), thrift stores, and throw aways from friends. It’s really satisfying to take something ugly that no one wants anymore and tranform it.

How it all began...

Since I never got beyond stick figures in school, doing anything artistic wasn’t on my list of around a thousand things I might do after I retired from teaching. It's unfortunate so many of us turn off this pleasure of creating art so early in our lives when we think that/or told that other kids actually have a natural talent for this and we don't. My friend, Carole, got me involved in doing mosaic tiles and I found I enjoyed playing around with colour and design so took the plunge to do some Absolute Beginner courses. Alesha and Jessica at Island Blue were such encouraging teachers that I haven’t stopped since.

And now

It’s given me tremendous pleasure to give my creations to my friends and family. These same friends and family have been urging me for quite a while to sell my work so this Studio Tour is my first foray into the commercial. Mary, who is helping today, was particulary persistent. I have had such joy out of this unexpected tangent that I am thinking of writing a book to encourage others to explore their creativity. My working title is “Have a ball creating art without talent, training or effort!”

Thank you for coming and I hope you have enjoyed your dip in my ocean and your petit voyage en Provence. And above all, think of buying some paints and having fun!


Janice S.

A few things I'm selling.



Beach at Carqueiranne
9 x 12 acrylic on paper - Painted in Carqueiranne, France, 2002
$35



Mimosas
8 x 11 acrylic on paper - Painted in Carqueiranne, France, 2002
$35



Tuscan Hills
11 x 14 acrylic on paper - 2002
$75



Campaniles on box - $195



Carqueiranne Harbour on chair - $195

I finally gave into pressure from friends to start selling my work. I figured I got such tremendous pleasure out of giving things to friends, why take a chance on spoiling that. However, I sold my first painting today and it is quite a charge as my friends have been telling me it would be!

I've been accepted into the Oak Bay Studio Tour which takes place Dec 6 & 7 from noon - 4:30. Brochures with addresses will be available at all the houses on the tour so drop by my house and get one if you're interested in seeing some of the studios. I went to the one in the Spring and thought it was quite fun and interesting.

I've got most of the thiings I'm going to sell priced and displayed and friends are welcome to have a pre Tour look and possibility to buy.



Olympic View, Victoria
11 x 14 acrylic on paper, 2002

SOLD to my very dear friend, Monique!

Today we met our friends from England for lunch. We suggested we go to the Victoria Estate Winery since I had an excellent meal there in the summer and was very impressed with the whole set up. We had chosen all this wonderful food from the menu and were going to have the "wine flights" (a tasting of various wines). Would you believe they are having problems with their liquor licence and couldn't serve us wine...! Surrounded by wine and not a drop to drink. Of course our British friends were flabbergasted...only in B.C.! We ended up at the Rumrunner. I know a number of people who enjoy going out there so you might want to phone before going to see if they have the problem sorted out.

We did our first batch of smoked and candied salmon on the weekend. Really quite fun and easy to do. Thanks to Don and Elaine for getting us started!

This is a really neat monkey puzzle tree that is outside the MacLarin Building at UVic. Going to my Group of Seven in Western Canada class I noticed this tree and thought it would be a good idea to paint for my friend, Mary, who loves Monkey Puzzle trees...then I thought, why not paint the tree she planted, then why not do that and their first house and do it in the original colours...the evolution of a painting! Used my new digital camera for this and am very pleased with the results.



Monkey Puzzle tree at UVic

I did this painting for my friends, Derek and Mary. This is their first house in Victoria only the current owners had white stucco put on it and blue trim...sort of a Greece villa look. We all liked the original barn look so I made it that way in the painting. Also, Mary had planted the monkey puzzle tree and was wishing she had it back so now she does in a small way.

Fern, Carole and I had a great time making canvas floormats. Thanks to Carole for all her expertise in helping us with this project!



"Harbour in Cassis"
Canvas floormat 21" x 27"

What I've been reading:

"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" by Mark haddon. Told from the point of view of an autistic teenager. What an amazing book...excellent! I see it's on Bolen's best seller list at #1 this week.

"Elizabeth Costello" by J.M. Coetzee. I'm quite glad he won the Nobel prize for literature. He is always an interesting and intelligent writer. Not too sure how to respond to his latest...could be quite brilliant or just reworked previously written essays loosely put into novel form. Lots of intriguing ideas and somehow I was involved and interested with the "protagonist" who mainly goes round to various conferences and gives talks. The novel mainly consists of these talks.

Here's my latest painting overlooking Kits pool in Vancouver.



Kitsilano Pool, sulpher barge, English Bay slide

For those of you who are interested in languages and especially Spanish you might want to give this url a try to access live TV from Mexico.
http://dgtve.sep.gob.mx/tve/red_edusat/TVeducativa/en_linea.htm
Choose Channel 16 for the best Mexican tv channel.

For Destinos (all 52 programs of the Spanish language course) connect to Annenberg CPB. You will have to check a US state for address--no problem. Then you will get access to plenty of good PBS shows on demand.

For Spanish and other languages try this url:
http://wwitv.com/portal.htm

What I've been reading lately.

"Life of Pi" by Yann Martel. A pleasant surprise in that although it seems to be generally considered "magic realism" (which I don't like all that much) there was a very heavy concentration of realistic details. Fascinating really in that you are actually made to believe that a tiger, an orangutang, a zebra, and a hyena all ended up in a life-raft with Pi and he managed to keep alive through it all. Very much about the brute force of nature and how even man will do almost anything to keep alive.

"Marrying the Mistress" by Joanna Tollope. Excellent. Sounds like it's some trashy novel but quite the opposite. A wonderful portrayal of the mess and beauty of family life and relationships.

"A Place of Hiding" by Elizabeth George. Always gives you pretty good value in a mystery.

"Next of Kin" by Joanna Trollope. Not as polished as "Marrying the Mistress" but pretty good all the same.

You might want to take a look at this site
Arts and Letters Daily
It's a service by the Chronicle of Higher Education and points you to an amazing number of current articles of interest plus has links to news services, newspapers, magazines, etc. Worth a look.

Got my film pictures of the Horne family today. Brings back memories of a super afternoon!





The Horne family with Jim and Richard



The Horne artists at work

Aren't these sunflowers great? I was going to try to paint them but they died before I got around to it. A cousin I hadn't seen for years contacted me via email and we had a great visit and got into a search for trying to figure out various family mysteries...lots of fun and learned about naming traditions in Sweden. Makes one realize how all these bits and bobs of family history we pick up can get transformed and also that even official certificates and documentation are questionable given the times. We do make our own stories to explain events in the end...as Pi Patel would tell us.

What I've been reading lately:

"The Light of Day" by Graham Swift. Quite a compelling read...very suspense filled. Interesting development of a rather accidental relationship. Well done.

"The Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri. Short stories and an excellent chronicling of the immigrant experience. Author grew up in London & Rhode Island. I will be interested in reading her first novel which is due to be released very soon called "The Namesake".

"Original Minds: In conversation with CBC Radio" by Eleanor Wachtel. Very engaging conversations with people like Johathan Miller, Jane Goodall, Bernardo Bertolucci, Desmond Tutu, Gloria Steinem etc. Probably have to return the book before I get round to reading all of them.

Yesterday I heard Wachtel interviewing Nuala O'Faolain (interview took place in Victoria last Spring at the Manulife Writers Festival) and found her very funny and entertaining. Put a hold on her memoir called "Are You Somebody: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman". I think she catches the essence of this strange, desperate country very well.

Fern, Carole, and I are going to do canvas floor mats together. I've never done one but should be fun. I want to do something with sunflowers. I have quite a few pictures and also bought a bunch of sunflowers yesterday so these should give me some ideas.

Barb brought along her new English Cocker puppy today...isn't he a real sweetheart?



Chester at 10 weeks old

I haven't done too much with my sunflower pictures but I did do this stool that's been hanging around.


sunflower on stool

It's so great not being back at school this week. Golf yesterday, lunch out at the Victoria Estate Winery today. I made a celebratory paella for Jim since he has to work and it's one of his favourite foods.



Paella with men playing boules (napkins holder out of olive wood)

What I've been reading lately.

"The Murder Room" by P.D. James. Up to expectations. What a treat to get another book from her considering her age. She is so wonderful at creating atmosphere.

"Black Bird" by Michel Basilieres. Macabre and very funny story. Very critical of Quebec - I can understand why the author lives in Toronto now. Another one of these very good first novels - how do they do it? The pet crow character is wonderful especially the scene where she plucks out the eye of a very nasty man about to do her harm. The description of the crow swooping behind the ambulance, finding the man's hospital room and standing guard is wonderful. The man who now has one eye wakes up to looking through his remaining eye to see this crow pressing one eye against the hospital window. Only the crow's eye is visible as it is winter and the window is frosty. "A short cawing like laughter is often heard from the crow."

"The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown. A really fun to read mystery come thriller. Also makes some interesting comments about the validity of what we feel is historical fact. Very cleverly done.

My latest painting...an almost local scene!



Vancouver freighters

I finally got around to painting these chairs I bought at a garage sale quite a while ago.




Carqueiranne harbour


Bandol vinyards