CherylAnnHillsArtist

People who share your values are part of your tribe. As a creative, these people are your true audience. I read Seth Godin, Brene Brown, Simon Sinek and Malcolm Gladwell and their wisdom has certainly helped me to streamline my thinking and therefore my actions in my art business. In thinking about my true values I came across an article by Brene Brown It lists human values and prompts the reader to choose only two, just two that we hold as most important. I’d first selected authenticity and integrity, but then after researching those found that if one has integrity its not possible to be so, without authenticity. So now I have Integrity and Courage as my most important core values. Are you surprised that Creativity isn’t on my list of two? Well, it is because creativity requires courage, lots of it. So, its there, its just contextual. I believe all humans have equal value – with equal rights regardless of culture, language, gender, age, income or whatever other “category” human...

Nobody starts making art because they think it will be a great way to earn a living. Many start creating as young children. Being a Gen-Xer, traditional gifts I received as a child were colouring books and crayons, pencil crayons and sometimes watercolour paints. Once we started school we were often introduced to other materials, glue, scissors, construction paper, and finger painting.   Some of us embraced the opportunity to express ourselves and were deeply invested in our artwork even at a young age. For me, it was a means of expressing my feelings. I was (still am) painfully shy. Very unsure of my place in the world. My time spent painting and listening to my favourite albums in my room growing up were happy times for me. I was lucky to find joy in an activity at such an early age. And even though my life’s journey was not a straight path I am equally fortunate to have found my way back to that early joy now as an adult. As a child, I’d never considered that my artwork co...

  Often when we do something, we have an expectation of what the outcome will be. Go to bed so you’ll be energized in the morning. Eat food so you’ll no longer be hungry. See the new Star Wars movie so you’ll be entertained. And on and on. Sometimes our preconceived expectations are met. Other times they are not. And depending on the sort of person you are, disappointments can be devastating or easily brushed off. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle of this scale. We are taught as children that our actions always have an outcome; sometimes good and sometimes bad. But few of us were ever taught to focus on the process, the steps leading to the outcome. We are sometimes told it doesn’t matter how, as long as we get the expected results. This kind of thinking leads us to only consider the beginning and the end. Both of those states are short lived and do not represent the effort, thought and emotions experienced during the process between the beginning and the end. It can a...

The laws of nature are always at work whether we are aware or not. Even our daily lives can be affected by it. These transitional seasons Autumn and Spring are often busy times filled with completing things from the previous season and starting new things for up-coming seasons. At the end of September, I exhaled; my art show season had finished and I could look forward to new projects in the studio, time spent in thought and losing myself in the creative process. I created some breathing room but as nature abhors a vacuum that space was quickly filled with plans and ideas for new events. Then of course I needed to set aside time to create the plan(s), gather the materials and execute the ideas. I’m super happy with the progress of my plein air painters’ group . This season I’ve seen the best participation since I began the group in 2019. Members are happy and active, and the work produced has been amazing. So, encouraged by this wonderful growth I decided to plan a year end show an...

It was mid October 2022 when I went up to my favourite place to spend a weekend taking in the fall colour and exploring the corridor between Sudbury and Sault Ste Marie. On this visit I went a bit further west of the Soo to Batchewana Bay, located on the north east shore of Lake Superior, the largest freshwater lake in the world. I'd read many descriptions of the north shore by notable Canadian authors and seen first hand many paintings of its moods. Sometimes it's almost better if we have no prior knowledge of a new experience, place, person before arriving as this keeps expectations at bay. I'd already visited Lake Superior Provincial Park in 2018, specifically the petroglyph trail. I was alone on that trail in the early light of the day. A peculiar staircase formed by rocks led down into a quiet earthen glen of large mossy rocks and trees with clumps of lichen floating down from branches like soft feathers. I actually expected to have a fairy appear in front of me, aligh...

 I wanted to write this fresh from my trip to Whitefish Falls in Ontario Canada. I booked my cabin early in winter and did some initial planning and research to prepare myself for the week away in Northern Ontario. Little did I know that this trip would result in a feeling of finding my place both in the world at large and within myself. There are other ways to get to Whitefish Falls, my choice was to drive up and along a route that borders Georgian Bay and Lake Huron. Once out of the rat-race that is the cities of Hamilton, the GTA and Toronto weaving through the 6 lane 400 series highways you come upon views that likely you’d only seen previously in paintings. Pushing past the popular area of Muskoka’s you can visibly notice the landscape change as you drive further and further north. When people talk about the Muskoka area and how much they love it, I will often comment “keep driving”. I too used to feel that area was the best it can be. Now I know, keep driving. (of course...