Spring Forth

April 2025

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It’s that time to celebrate new growth, new beginnings and brighter, longer days.

I love the bright, fresh, green colour that bursts forth everywhere. I love the new leaf buds, blades of grass, blossoms, forsythia yellow, purple crocus, snowdrops, and hellebores.

Each day, I love how the sun rises higher in the sky throwing fatter, shorter shadows of trees and branches. Thick, heavy, dark storm cells clear to reveal glorious blue patches of clear sky… with all this symphony of colour I’m inspired to paint... but still carving(and burning) like a fiend!

I find I am always enamoured with large trees, especially the largest: one being San Jo Smiley’s giant Sitka spruce located on Vancouver Island. I have been challenged with the carving project of this specimen so I decided to take a sketch inspiration and burn a wood panel replica instead(see below) - so satisfied with the outcome that I made a second one(also below).

I am hopeful that four wood-block panels of trees will be juried and available at our Port Moody gift shop, where often my fans and followers discover my current carvings.

On the horizon are cottonwood bark and basswood projects of rabbits, two owls, an observatory, a cabin and trees. I’ve cut a large branch away from a tangle of roots after drying it out for over a year so that I can mount the birds; a large, three-foot piece that will rise from a flared wooden base.

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In a recent magical, mystical breath-work session with Vela Movement I went from identifying with the swaying branches of trees to being the solid stand of the trunk. My fascination with treed paths, trails and flourishing forests continues with obsession and made itself known. I walk, breathe and create among them. When bark is my medium it forever calls to be the story of the tree. Architecture rises from the shapes of the wood veins and often woodland creatures appear. It is a continual world of discovery as long as my hands can manage the tools and ideas can spring forth through the talking wood… I am a carver celebrating my eighth year still mastering this art. I hope you are enjoying it as much as I am.

To top it off, we were able to view the Blood Moon on March 14th; colourful in the shadow of Earth during the lunar eclipse, surrounded by a starlit canopy after playing hide and seek with the passing clouds.

March 14th "Blood Moon" seen through dark clouds and mystical forests of BC's backwoods.

As always, thank you for your continued support and happy carving!

"Knives Out."

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Photo courtesy: @sanzyuyon

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