CherylAnnHillsArtist

 Does social media have a reset button? Maybe a factory reset?? I unwittingly participated in a self-experiment this week; I spent way way too much time consuming content on social media. My profile is found on just three, Insta, FB and YT. The bird one I see as being a bit to confrontational for my tastes, at least that’s my impression so I'm not on there. Oh yeah and the clock one, I use that one too. Speaking of impressions; does anyone really know what that means? After 7 days of scrolling, swiping, streaming and clicking over 5hrs a day on social I’ve noticed a few things.   A lot of people speak really really fast. Sometimes being selective about the words you use, slowing down and expressing personal emotion are more effective at telling a story. Or maybe its just me. I like things simple. Right?   I hate sales, selling and having someone sell or be salesy to me. Yuck. Its just icky to me. Could be just me feels this way. IDK   The social accounts I am m...

  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...

Bet you thought I forgot? I kinda did… here’s what happened: So, about a week ago I took a drive around on a nice Sunday afternoon to see what’s what. On the way back up the expressway hill I heard a pop and then my car got really loud!!! I called the garage the next morning to make sure they had booked enough time for my oil change next week because now I needed some exhaust work. So, for a week I decided not to drive it much to avoid doing any more damage, plus the weird stares from people on the street. Did you know that when you can’t have something or do something that had always been available to you, now suddenly your insane brain decides that thing you can’t have and is exactly what it wants?   I wonder if humans are the only species that think like this.   So, all last week I kept thinking, “gee if I could just go to…oh wait right I can’t”. I caught myself daydreaming about going to a waterfall one evening to do a painting. Oh yeah, right…the car! I had made lis...

Its somewhat a tradition in spring to go through the stuff you’ve accumulated and make decisions on what to keep and what to sell, giveaway or discard. As I’ve become older there is often less things I need to discard because I’ve taken more care in what I choose to include in my stuff. Curating your own stuff is an interesting journey sometimes. Each thing may or may not have some sort of significance, a particular memory attached to it. Stuff that has no emotion attached to it is easy to discard. Stuff that has happy memories even if the thing is no longer useful might be more difficult to include in your spring yard sale.  But its just stuff. And in the end, none of it will be coming with us. An internal spring cleaning is also important for us to do occasionally. Sometimes we carry around ideas, beliefs, thoughts that once may have been true but now are no longer true nor useful. When we continue to carry around these untrue beliefs they will often bog us down from moving forwa...

Failure. It’s a word we’ve been conditioned to dislike. It makes us uncomfortable. For some it can be the source of sleepless nights and hours of therapy. Yet, failure is the doorway to progress. If we never fail we cannot grow, move forward, improve, and eventually excel. It’s a big topic. And it tends to draw mostly negative connotations but as noted, without failure there are no successes. Ask every single successful person if they’ve ever failed at something. The answer is always YES. Its not the failure that will hold us back, its how we respond to failing. Let’s read that again: Its not the failure that will hold us back, its our response to the failure. That’s the really hard part. Our natural response is to hide the failure. Cover it up. Put it into the back of the closet. If it’s a terrible meal you made, you throw it out. And tell no one! Those of us who are creators are told “only put your best work out into the world, never show your failures”. That’s terrible advice....

It’s a big subject to ponder, expectations. What does it really mean to have expectations? Often it’s a preconceived notion that we imagine may come true. And as we know, when it comes to imagination there are endless possibilities. And too often our default is either to expect the worst or the best (less frequently). Seldom do we consider a neutral outcome, one that neither changes our world nor creates a ripple effect on the world beyond our own. Yet, if you follow a certain doctrine, every action does indeed cause a ripple effect regardless of whether or not we believe it. You only need to look at nature to see how one seemingly insignificant action can cause a ripple effect in an environment. For example, cutting down that old oak tree in the small forest behind the shed will affect the neighbouring trees, the plants that grow below it and the animals that once used the tree for shelter and food. Expectations tend to keep us from moving forward. We place a carrot somewhere in the...

This may be hard to hear for some however many people feel art has no value because they believe it does not contribute to the well being of society. There’s a misunderstanding that art and artists are somehow separate from the rest of society and only available to the privileged and wealthy. “ One huge reason art is not valued is because it is not accessible. It is treated not as a part of life, but as a non-essential feature of life, reserved for the few, but not for everyone. Art can and should be for everyone. By not valuing artists, we devalue art. Art encompasses both maker and object. ” This misnomer has created a societal culture that believes art is not important nor part of daily life and therefore can be forgotten and pushed aside with reduced budgets and limited resources when finances are stretched in an institution such as in schools and by governments and corporations. The pandemic and the resulting actions by governments have only further demonstrated their beliefs ...

 The early morning sun of a new day lights gently upon the shoulder of the slumbering artist as she awakens from her peaceful sleep with a smile and a heart full of gratitude and joy. Happy birds flutter in through the open door with cheerful chirps and begin to select her wardrobe carrying a gayly patterned dress to her. She smiles warmly and spins around with glee! “Thank you, sweet birds of the forest!”, she exclaims. As she twirls and prances around her room and towards her brightly lit sparkly clean art studio she wonders how she ever could be so lucky…………………. vinyl scratch……………. I don’t know about you, but this artist has not yet had the forest animals smile and dance around the room with her. A typical day for me begins usually at 5am with my alarm sounding and quickly followed by two more alarms with four soft feet and deep purrs nudging me awake so they can enjoy their First breakfast quickly followed by a snack of dental crunchies. This spring, I’ve made the commit...

Its Sunday morning and I’m scrolling thru my social media feed looking at work from fellow artists and a question pops up in my brain; “is my work art or a product and which one do I want to produce?” Its an interesting debate with many opinions on all fronts. I think what really sparked this debate in my brain right now is the rejection letter for a competition I entered. The jury comments were related to poor drawing and color use skills. Interesting considering my intension for my work is not to replicate the object before me in a realistic representational manner but instead to express a feeling and show the effect of light in nature. So, my work will not display the high realism drawing and life-like color but instead express abstract ideas of nature. So, here’s the thing: should an artist follow current trends and constantly be changing their approach to suit a buyer’s market? Or should an artist follow their heart and produce work that expresses in their terms and through thei...

Great! Now I have your attention!! Remember the old commercials with the cool sing-along jingles and the terrifyingly large cartoon characters that would tell you why that thing was sooooo GRRRRReat!!!? Sadly, that type of marketing is gone. We’ve oversold ourselves and now no one wants to listen to anyone who asks us to buy this or buy that. Every second of every day is filled with sales pitches and marketing gimmicks. And we’re really good at scrolling past… Recently I read on social media someone’s post talking about the new generations (30 and under) and how they buy everything from Amazon, and no one can compete. I feel that’s only partially true. While price and accessibility have always been important to consumers; more often, we are looking for products that are made local, are socially or environmentally responsible and provide the best quality product for a fair price. I’m a Gen X and these things are important to me too as a consumer. There will always be those who sho...

When I think of things that define an artist the willingness to try is one characteristic that is prevalent. Willingness, as defined by the Oxford dictionary is: “ the quality of being happy and ready to do something ”. And try is defined as: “to make an attempt or effort to do or get something”. So basically, artists are often happy and ready to make an attempt or effort to do or get something. I see so many artists who are willing to try their craft, create a work and sometimes even share that work with others. But often those same artists are uneasy about sending that same artwork into a gallery call, or an art competition or even applying for a spot at a market to sell their work. Let’s pause here for a minute: Why do I feel its important to share your art? Simply because art is often an expression of joy, or sorrow, or whatever it is that the artist is feeling. (this is the same for dancers, musicians, writers etc) AND when you share your feelings/emotions you can...

Love what you do. Sounds contrite, like some bumper sticker on the car in front of you that you stare at mindlessly during 5pm rush hour traffic on the 403 highways system in Ontario. But really, it’s an important 4 words that many of us ignore for most and sometimes all of our lives. are we happy? As we sit in the midst of the Covid pandemic considering our lives, what we’ve done, what we’re doing and what we want to do; perhaps some of our thoughts should consider; For many of us happiness is actually very simple. A few good friends, the basic necessities of life and doing work that we feel is meaningful and that we love to do. After being forced to self-isolate over the past several months these things should be fairly clear to us. Yet many of us will slide back into our previous unsatisfying lives when this is all over because we cannot nor will not see the alternatives we can build for ourselves. It doesn’t have to be that way. Artists can fall into the same tra...

First; I hope this blog finds you well, and if not; I wish you a speedy recovery. Our Prime Minister speaks of us living in an unprecedented time .   That’s a statement that could be exciting or terrifying. What we do as a species right now will forever be examined by future generations. I’ve been trying my best to remain non-judgemental as things unfold. We are human. We will make mistakes. Everyone experiences stress and cataclysmic events in different ways. This often depends on our past life experiences and how we process strong emotions. Some will lash out, some will hide in fear, some will reach out to help others, and some will pretend nothing has changed. I was struggling with my creative process prior to the Covid-19 outbreak. Now I feel all creative energy drained from me. The damn weather has been cloudy and moody for the past week now too; which really doesn’t help. Being stuck inside isn’t a huge big deal for me. I prefer my own company on most days...

What I’ve learned over the past 18 months, and a few things I already knew… Hard work, determination and never giving up : Three things I preached to my daughters and had to accept and hold to over the years especially the last decade. 5 years ago I was in the hospital for 16 days because I once again failed to take care of myself, my mind, my soul, my needs, my life’s path. I put myself last, as is my pattern that I learned early in childhood and have carried through. My brain works different than many and I can struggle with situations that are very clear to others. I know how I “need to think and react” yet decades of feeling and reacting the “wrong way” have created a deep groove that is difficult to navigate through and above. Not one to believe in limitations or disabilities I’ve found my own way to manage my feelings and while it may not be the “right way” it works for me if I let it. I have been told many times there are no coincidences . Each experience I’ve had over...

Since deciding to take this particular path and dedicate most of my energy to my art I have discovered and experienced a lot of varying opinions and ideas about art, artists and the “art world”. Some of these ideas I feel are outdated and old world while some are truly forward thinking and applicable to current societal applications. Let’s look at some outdated ideas first.   You can NEVER earn a livable income as an artist creating art. I was told this from the very beginning by very well meaning family members. Of course, I was a child and believed it so I chose to pursue graphic design as a career because there were more opportunities to earn a reliable income. While there are many graphic design opportunities these days it was not the case when I first started in the industry. Even so, there is never a guarantee in ANY industry that there will be a job opening available at all times. Many college and university graduates can attest to this.   Art is for th...