MUSCAT LOVE
No, I didn’t miss the title that Tony and Tennille made famous. This is an appellation I though to be fitting for anyone who enjoys a glass of wine and knows the history of the Muscat family of grapes and flavours. Here it is 18x24” oil on canvas wrapped panel. It’s title is ‘Muscat Love.’ And it found a home as a Christmas present in December 2019. I really enjoyed creating the translucency as well as the out of focus background strokes.
I’M AN ARTIST FOR HIRE
I am an ARTIST FOR HIRE. Really! Most of my art pieces in recent years have been commissioned paintings, landscapes and portraits being the primary subjects. We can begin consultation via email (ronunruhgallery@gmail.com) and face to face if possible. Let’s talk about an art treasure. What can it be? What will it cost? When can it be completed? Illuminate a room, brighten someone’s life.
Two years ago I completed a 22x28” commissioned work for Mary as a gift for her husband, Mark. It was entitled ‘Mark’s Elk Trophy.’ I still consider it one of the pieces that gave me greatest satisfaction. Mark actually hunted in this pristine undisclosed location and spent many hours bringing his hunt home.
REMEMBERING MURRAY PHILLIPS
REMEMBERING MURRAY PHILLIPS
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| Murray, June 10/44 - Mar 1/2018 |
Murray's affirmation was what I needed. Murray walked through my home, room by room, pausing for a few minutes at each of my watercolours, oils and acrylics.
When he concluded his tour of my paintings he asked me, "So what do you want from me?" I told him I wanted his opinion about my art and whether it had merit. He said, "First, let me assure you that you are an artist." That alone made my day. It was 2008 and I was 66 years old. My life was changing. I had invited Murray to my home because I was concluding a forty-year career quite unrelated to painting. I was requesting advice from a successful artist who was a man of integrity.
As a youth my heart was set on an artistic career but at age 18, I set aside my application to Ontario College of Art when I felt strongly impressed to train for a career as a pastor. Through the years I continued painting as a hobbyist. In 2008, after four decades of local church and denominational leadership, I was retiring. Murray understood me. He had been in the ecclesiastical world. Murray's comments that day encouraged me to pick up my brushes again and begin a new chapter of creativity.
He told me, "You're a true watercolourist. I can see that. If you want to work in one of the other mediums, I recommend oils because they will best compliment your abilities."
I retired and was released to paint with a passion. I held my first solo art show in 2009 in my own home with four large rooms filled with paintings on easels and walls. Murray and Betty were among the patrons, and Murray purchased a watercolour called 'My Place.'.
This past Thursday at noon, March 1, 2018, Murray Earl Phillips passed away in Langley, British Columbia. He was born on June 10, 1944. He was diagnosed six months ago with a brain tumour. A Memorial Service will be held on Wednesday, March 7, 2:00 PM at White Rock Baptist Church.
This will be the longest post I’ve ever written, but it is worthwhile reading. Remember Murray.
MAKE IT SKIP DADDY
GOING NOWHERE
THE CHURCH IN THE HEART OF THE VINEYARDS
LATEST PAINTING … in process
Then one day more and the depth and distance is beginning to appear. It’s enjoyable to do this.
Ruggieri and Janin - artistes extraordinaire de Luberon
Today as we spent time with Anne Marie, we purchased one of their five art books, this one called 'Luberon, Le triangle d’Or.’
Bonnieux is several kilometres from Lourmarin up steeply curved and circuitous climbs, but we may go again to see how he is. They honour their country and the specific region so well by their impressionist work. I enjoy their paintings very much.
Christine had explained that we had been here 6 years earlier and visited this gallery, that I was an artist and that I liked their work. Anne Marie was so pleased.
She was so friendly and engaging with us and she said she would sign it for us and then she began to do a pen landscape sketch on the inside cover, at the bottom of which she signed her name and the date 29 Septembre 2015.
She told us that if we then went into the village to the other gallery, Philippe would also sign it.
Within minutes, someone came in to tell her that Philippe had fallen was hurt and had been taken to the hospital in Apt, and she was immediately visibly concerned. Our visit ended with our thanks to her and our expression of trust that her husband would be alright.
Then on Monday … we returned because Philippe communicated he could receive us. He was well, and had not been badly injured, and he was happy to visit with us.
In his gallery he signed our book and posed for photos with us.
If you look at their website and see paintings about which you want to inquire further, contact them here.
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| Philippe Janin signing a book for Christine and Ron Unruh |
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| Anne Marie Ruggieri and Ron |
by Ron Unruh
BARBARA BOLDT - PLACES OF HER HEART
I have just come from Barbara’s home and studio this
morning, catching up a bit with each other, and I picked up my copy of the
hardback version. It is a stunningly well designed book, very well written,
carefully rendered photos and stories, plus the bonus of Barbara’s life story
which deserved this beautifully archived treasury format. I want you to
consider buying this coffee table book, 'Places of Her Heart'. It's astounding,
like her.
While Barbara is the teller of her personal story,
K.Jane Watt, an award winning author sat with Barbara for many Mondays,
researched and wrote the material that surrounds a 200 colour reproductions
from Barbara's growing body of work.
Places of Her Heart, The Art and Life of Barbara
Boldt, by K. Jane Watt, is an inspiring story describing how a woman came our
of war ravaged Germany and KLV camps, immigrated to Canada, married and raised
a family, and was born as an artist in the midst of heartbreaking life circumstances
and has found beauty in nature which she invites us all to enjoy through her
paintings. General readers, students of Canadian immigration, women’s history,
Canadian art, art history, and the regional paintings of BC’s Gulf Islands and
the Fraser Valley will find this book of interest.
In our area you can find a copy at Wendel's Book Store in Fort Langley
and also at Birthplace of B.C. Gallery.
It can also purchased on Amazon,
or why not have Barbara sign one for
you at her gallery. It is available at the Langley Centennial Museum.
Barbara's Information: Address: 25340
84 Ave, Langley, BC V1M 3N2
Jane
Nicol has written a consummate review of the book and the
authors, and I use that here with gratitude to Janet, and for the sake of
encouraging readers to purchase this memorable keep sake. There is no point in seeking to say what
Janet has written so ably on her blog.
"Barbara Boldt, a Fraser Valley artist, aged 82, has been
painting British Columbia landscapes and portraits since the 1970s. Her biography
was shaped by K. Jane Watt, an accomplished historian, who visited her
regularly for coffee on Monday mornings. Their conversations turned to formal
interviews, resulting in a coffee table book offering a rare glimpse of a
German-Canadian’s life journey, accompanied by visually rich art work begun in
Boldt’s middle years. Watt also had access to Boldt’s family archives and
personal papers. Some of these treasured items, including drawings by the
artist’s 19th century ancestors, also find their way in these pages.
We learn of Boldt’s comfortable childhood in the 1930s in rural
Germany, on a patch of land named Stiegenhof, in the north Rhine-Westphalia
region. The advent of the Second World War and Boldt’s father’s enlistment in
the army are detailed. The war years, the bombings, the splitting up of
family—and miraculous reunion is also chronicled. “This remembrance of loss can
be multiplied millions of times over in the lives of others in wartime,” the
author observes. “There can be no going back, no return to what once existed.”
These memories will come to haunt and inform Boldt’s art.
In 1952, when Boldt was 22, her family immigrated to Canada.
Boldt eventually married and raised three children in Nelson, later moving to
Vancouver. Boldt first realized the magnitude of the German peoples’
culpability for the Jewish holocaust during her years in Nelson, having read an
article in Time magazine. She also acknowledged her nation’s collective shame
and the silences within her family.
After her children left home, Boldt began taking art lessons.
Art soon became a passion that her marriage could not sustain and in 1980 Boldt
divorced. “This period was both a time of letting go of the old and of leaping
in to the new,” the author observes. Boldt moved to Fort Langley area and began
to explore her ancestral roots, proud of the many artists in her family tree.
She reflected more deeply about her own past as well. As her art
education progressed, Boldt developed a preference for realism, using the
mediums of oils, pastels and watercolors. She also found working in her studio,
using photographs she has taken of a landscape or person, suited her better
than painting in the outdoors, on site. “Using a realistic style, I’d rather
discover than invent the pattern and design in nature which a casual observer
might fail to see,” she says. The author notes Boldt’s landscapes sometimes
have an abstract quality—“of stone shaped by wind and tide.”
This is particularly evident after Boldt takes on a younger
lover named Graydon. Her paintings flourish as she paints the mystery and
beauty of the Alberta “Badlands” and the caves of Gabriola Island—as well as
numerous portraits of Graydon. Among Boldt’s studies of stone is “Gaia”, a
Greek word meaning “Mother Earth.” Her oil paintings of a favored Gulf Island
site she calls “Gaia,” depict a rocky shoreline with honeycomb-like patterns
and has a sensual quality. “Her paintings illuminate a world that seems static
but catch a moment in time, a fleeting quality of light, a place on the cusp of
change,” the author observes.
Boldt’s numerous exhibits, include a Fort Langley show in the
1990s, entitled “True to my Heart.” The exhibit was built around “seeing her
life through the lens of her childhood self as it juxtaposed images of childhood
with new work” the author writes. “It was a compendium of special times and
visions that had made Barbara who she was as a woman, mother, friend and
artist.”
The economic difficulties of being an artist and a single, older
woman have been part of Boldt’s reality. Like many creative people, Boldt has
also faced, reluctantly, the many time-consuming tasks involved in marketing
her art. She has persisted, despite these challenges. Most difficult for Boldt
has been the tragic loss of two of her children, both in their middle years.
She confessed the pain will never pass, in a letter to a newspaper, where she
addressed her losses, but also affirmed the importance of moving on. “I am a
painter,” she wrote. “I like to paint the ever-rejuvenating miracle and beauty
of Nature, fully aware that what has grown also must die in time.”
In 2000 Boldt moved from the Fort Langley neighborhood to nearby
Glen Valley where she continues to teach art and holds open houses. Her art is
masterful, as the final pages of reproductions in the book prove, her
landscapes expansive and awe-inspiring. “The subject must be meaningful to me,”
she says. “To my experience, to my memory—and it must be working from
photographs that I have taken myself.” Included as well is a detailed appendix of
Boldt’s prolific art and an index.
In the ‘Afterward’, the author offers her own thoughtful
reflections about Boldt. The artist’s life stories are both “fiercely
individual and surprisingly universal,” Watt believes. Boldt’s art is a
reflection of the world around her, the author also contends, a “beauty that
comes from simply being over time.” Time spent among these pages of text and
images will surely lead the reader to agree.”
ALEX COLVILLE WAS CANADA’S PAINTER LAUREATE
Alex Colville was born on August 24, 1920, and died on July 16, 2013. Three years before his death at the age of 92, I wrote a piece about him out of deep respect for him as an artist and as a man with personal convictions. It was printed in the Montreal Review, placed there by a friend Tsoncho Tsonchev, on the editorial staff at the time.
PROUD OF ALEX COLVILLE
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Ron Unruh
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The author of this short tribute is Ron Unruh, a British Columbia artist. The Rocky Mountains rise within view of Ron's Cloverdale home studio which is minutes from the Pacific Ocean. His drive to White Rock and Crescent Beach waters takes him through agricultural land reserve with blueberry and raspberry fields, cranberry bogs, vineyards and flourishing wineries as well as hobby farms, secluded private estates and sprawling golf and country clubs. Ron Unruh enjoys painting scenes with a range of idyllic landscapes and fascinating people in celebration of his idyllic and productive environment in the lower mainland of British Columbia. He also takes pleasure in recording memorable scenes from his international travels, scenes which frequently evoke fond memories for other global tourists.
If you want to see RON UNRUH'S ONLINE GALLERY and to read his blog, please, click here | ||||
LOG SCULPTURE AT POINT ROBERTS
LOG SCULPTURE AT POINT ROBERTS
They lie a tangled twist of wood.
Drifted on placid Pacific currents
Then propelled by storming seas to this
deposit
high on the shore of Point Roberts.
Each log a wooden story
of escape from a jam, of erosion.
Rudderless they sailed
Once sodden bodies now cradled in the
sand, dry
And bleached they daily peek at Baker
Watch the sun rise, pass and set.
Once regal trees now sometimes rendered
yet again
On canvas to look like sculpture,
interlocked and complex.
Soft to touch, to climb and sit upon
They beckon the child, the artist, the
hiker,
Enjoy a natural work of art.
© Ron Unruh, July 2010
We cross the border to enter this tiny peninsula several times each year, walk the paths along the waterline, and often sit down among the whitened wood, warm to our bodies on a sunny day. The image is mine, my painting of Baker in the background with the beloved and beautiful logs in the foreground. My friend Barbara Boldt loves and paints the pacific rocky shorelines and I love the wood.
CLOVERDALE BLUEBERRY FESTIVAL 2008
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