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Tag: nature

Bursting with colours and joy

Bursting with colours and joy

Artist Lauren Morris at the opening of her solo show, Dressed in Colour, at the Zack Gallery Jan. 25. (photo from Lauren Morris)

Dressed in Colour, Lauren Morris’s new solo exhibition at the Zack Gallery, perfectly reflects the artist’s relationship with the world. “Everything about me is colour,” she said in an interview with the Independent. “Colours bring this show together.”

This is Morris’s second solo show at the gallery, the first having been in 2015. She is known for her vivid flowers and colour-infused compositions.

“I always explore new colours, always learn, always take new photos. Living in Vancouver makes me want to paint even more colours,” she said.

Inspiration has not always come easily, though.

“About five years ago, I took a sabbatical. I didn’t paint for more than a year, didn’t know what to paint. I was stuck,” she said. “Before that period, I always used someone else’s vision as a starting point: photographs I found online, other artists’ pieces. But it stopped working for me. Then, I realized that it doesn’t matter what I paint. I began taking my own photographs. Now, I base everything I paint on my own experiences. I love nature, I enjoy flowers, and it all comes out in my art.”

Influenced by nature, Morris creates large canvases where colours, shapes and light intertwine into unique flowery abstractions, beautiful but never photographic or even realistic. Her flowers come from her imagination, with depth and texture adding meaning. “There is always something mystical in my paintings, something unknown,” she said. “A lot is going on in every picture, and the multiple layers create reflections.”

Morris paints with acrylics, but this medium, despite its growing popularity, has its quirks. “Acrylics dry fast, and they often become dull when dry,” she explained. “To brighten the images, I use varnish on top of acrylics. Varnish makes the magic come out. People even ask me if I paint in oils.”

photo - “Water Lilies” by Lauren Morris
“Water Lilies” by Lauren Morris.

Her flowers are larger than life. One can’t even see the overall image until one is at a distance from the work. “When I paint, I often stand back a lot,” Morris said of her creative process.

For her, a painting is never finished until it is no longer in her possession. “Yesterday, I saw something wrong in one painting in this show,” she said the day before the exhibit’s opening night. “Something bothered me, so I brought my paints and touched it up.”

Sometimes, she starts a painting with a preconceived image, but, like living things, her pieces frequently have a mind of their own. “My paintings often surprise me, and I always allow them to happen,” she said. “If I planned something else, but the image evolved somehow, I find it fascinating. If something doesn’t work, I fix it. I don’t have an anxiety. I don’t fear the canvas.”

Morris trusts her intuition, and it makes her paintings vibrant. It also makes her an excellent teacher. Lately, she has been teaching adult art workshops at the Designers Collective. “Most of my students are beginners,” she said. “They come to the workshop and they’re unsure. They think they can’t paint. I teach them not to be afraid. I bring art to people. I tell them: there are no mistakes in art. It’s not about technique. Art is a self-exploration. If you don’t like something you already painted, we’ll cover it up with something new. Maybe the old image will peek through, like a reflection of something different…. I try to make people believe in themselves. It’s almost a therapy class.”

She applies the same approach of playful exploration to her own work, fearlessly searching for beauty in her art. “I’m never bored when I paint. My art excites me. I get absorbed by my paintings,” she said happily.

Morris’s canvases seem to thrum with the strands of silent music, a quiet serenade of water lilies in a deep-green pond or a loud trumpeting from the white, extravagant bouquet exploding with elation.

“Before, I always listened to classical music when I painted, but, a few years ago, I stopped,” she said. “Now, I paint in silence. I still love music, but not when I paint. Maybe, it happened because there is so much noise around us, with the internet and the city life.” She doesn’t want the ambient noise of the urban sprawl to interfere with her paintings. “I want to create a mood,” she said. “I want to make people happy.”

Not surprisingly, people find delight in her paintings. In the past five years, she has been participating in the Eastside Culture Crawl, and sales – a challenge for any artist – have been encouraging. She has donated several of her paintings to various medical establishments around Vancouver, and her website also gets lots of traffic.

Her commissions have become almost a business, and she treats them as such. She starts practically every day with a few hours in her studio. “Each painting becomes a project to complete,” she said. “When clients come to me with a commission, my interior designer’s background kicks in. They have a vision of what they want: a size, a shape, a place on a wall in their home. I understand someone’s vision. It doesn’t make me feel constricted. If I’m able to get their vision right – the size, the colour scheme, the overall impression – I’m glad.”

Dressed in Colour is on display until Feb. 24. For more information about Morris and her work, visit lmdesignsstudio.com.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

Format ImagePosted on February 9, 2018February 7, 2018Author Olga LivshinCategories Visual ArtsTags Lauren Morris, nature, painting, Zack Gallery
Nature, adventure close up

Nature, adventure close up

If you’re coming for the natural splendours of Costa Rica, you won’t leave disappointed. (photos by Lauren Kramer)

This travel story comes with a caution: if you’re visiting Costa Rica for any reason other than its nature, don’t bother.

Don’t come for the food, which is easily forgettable. The most popular dishes are gallo pinto, which is rice and beans, and fried pork skins known as chicharrones. While local Costa Ricans love this food, if you’re not from here, you might well be mystified by its appeal.

Don’t come for the driving conditions either, as the winding back roads leading to the coastlines and volcanic regions inland can be perilous, with bathtub-sized potholes and no streetlights out of the city.

Costa RicaBut, if you’re coming for the natural splendours of this small Central American country, you won’t leave disappointed. A tropical jungle filled with lush palms, massive ferns, strangler fig trees and unexpected bursts of bright heliconia, it’s a scene straight out of a Tarzan movie, complete with howler monkeys swinging shyly from the drooping vines and sloths cradled sleepily in tree branches. A quarter of the country’s landmass is protected from development, and its verdant beauty is nothing short of spellbinding.

We were grateful to leave the dense bustle of San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital and a city unremarkable but for a handful of colonial-style architectural buildings easily seen from a bus on the way out of town. Our destination was the Pacuare River, two hours east, where we’d signed up for a whitewater river rafting adventure, one of the hallmark tourism experiences in Costa Rica. Over the course of two days, we’d travel 18 miles over Class 3 and 4 rapids, spending a night at an eco-lodge, where we’d be hushed to sleep by the thrum of rushing water.

The rafting was thrilling, with adrenaline-pumping rapids around every bend and, between them, a few serene, calmer stretches where we could hop overboard. With one hand on the raft, we’d drift gently in the soft current, watching the iridescent turquoise wings of blue morpho butterflies as they flitted across the river. By early afternoon, we reached the eco-lodge, a series of rustic treehouse-style rooms located on the river bluffs. Once we’d swapped wet clothes for dry, there were hikes we could venture on, but it was prudent to exercise caution, our guide Jonny warned us. “There are snakes around here and they get active this time of day,” he said. “Just a few days ago, I killed a very poisonous one outside the dining hall.”

Costa Rican eco-villageAs evening fell, we gathered at candlelit tables in the thatched dining hall for dinner with other travelers. The air was thick with moisture, the jungle was shrouded in misty clouds and a steady rain made the palm fronds glisten in the fading light. It felt magical spending a night on the riverbanks, surrounded by tropical jungle and just a two-hour hike from the Cabecar Indians, the closest isolated indigenous community. “We have an arrangement with them,” Jonny explained. “They allow us to stop along the river and prepare meals for our rafting guests, but if there’s any food left over, we leave it for them.”

I wanted to spend Shabbat in San Jose, which is why we headed back there on the dusty Costa Rican roads a few days later. We’d been invited to spend the night at the Hotel Presidente, an establishment owned by the Mikowski family, third-generation Jewish Costa Ricans.

“My great-grandfather left Poland in the 1930s and somehow ended up in Costa Rica, where he sold clothing door-to-door,” said Daniel Mikowski. Daniel’s late father, Jaime, was the architect behind Hotel Presidente’s expansion and, before his death in 1998, he designed another hotel three hours northeast. Tabacon, located on the slopes of the Arenal Volcano, started as a 30-room establishment with beautiful gardens and hot springs fed by the diversion of thermal water to the property. Today, the five-star, 100-room property is in high demand and known to be the best accommodation in the area.

As dusk approached, we made our way to the Centro Israelita Sionista de Costa Rica, a massive complex whose high security walls include administrative offices for various Jewish agencies, the Jewish museum and an impressively grand Orthodox Ashkenazi synagogue. I’d sent my passport and filled out a questionnaire months prior to arriving for Friday night services, but security was tight, passports were inspected and I was still questioned by an Israeli guard before being waved through. Later, at the Shabbat table of the gracious local Jewish family I’d been invited to join, I asked if there was any hostility towards Jews that might justify such high security. The adults at the table shrugged. They couldn’t remember any instances of antisemitism in Costa Rica, a democratic country that prides itself on its high literacy rate, its emphasis on conservation (25% of the land is protected and 11% is national parkland) and the fact that it has no army.

I’m used to daydreaming through rabbinical sermons and this time I had the perfect excuse: it was delivered in Spanish, so the possibility of comprehension was nonexistent. Still, I loved the familiarity of the Shabbat songs that washed over me during the service, and the warmth of community members who were happy to welcome visitors. After a week of barely mediocre restaurant meals, it was blissful to eat challah at a local table, where the menu included kosher tamales wrapped in banana leaves, a labour-intensive exercise but a culinary favourite.

Over the course of the evening, I heard of the kinds of issues that pester Jews the world over. The handsome medical student that drove me to dinner complained there weren’t enough Jewish girls in town. Others mentioned that the pews at the synagogue were full only on the High Holy Days, and that the Jewish day school was more secular than it needed to be.

Still, by all appearances, Costa Rica’s is a tight Jewish community and, though many of its young Jewish people head to the United States for their studies, Mikowski said most of his friends have chosen to stay in Costa Rica. At the Friday night table, I asked the young parents around me if, given the opportunity, they’d rather live elsewhere. One suggested Israel, but everyone else concurred they were happy staying put. Which makes perfect sense, when you think about it – according to the Happy Planet Index, Costa Rica is the happiest country on earth.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.

Format ImagePosted on March 31, 2017March 31, 2017Author Lauren KramerCategories TravelTags Costa Rica, nature

Nature knows no borders

Traveled thousands of miles

Inching my way

Between mothers, children, prayer books

Vying for space, so that I may touch

Your precious stones

Stones that have heard millions of tears

Stones that hold hope and anguish

Weeping and praying surround me

And I cannot hear my own sigh as I ask

Will you negotiate?

I plead

as I fold my scrap of paper

Tiptoeing upwards

to search for

a vacant space I ask

like so many before me

Can you make a miracle?

– Jerusalem 2013

Dawn has just broken. I’m walking along the beach, inhaling whiffs of sea spray. White Rock’s lights are fading in the distance, and ocean and skies are turning blue together against the backdrop of a glowing sunrise.

The hotel manager told me that if I rose early I would catch all of nature’s beauties. I’m not disappointed. Harbor seals are out fishing, birds of all shapes and sizes have begun their morning songs and skim the ocean for breakfast. A mother porpoise and her baby are playing, and fishing boats are gliding smoothly over the waves.

The only sounds are the whistling of crickets, high-pitched cries of seagulls and the rhythmic hiss of the surf. Once in a while, my laptop informs me of a new message but, fortunately, nature wins. I have the discipline to ignore it; nature wins.

This little corner of the world spells P-E-A-C-E.

The hotel has changed hands many times in the 30 years I’ve been coming here. Every visit has been different, with a purposeful or personal story.

Nature, though, is always consistent. Out in the natural world, I receive solace and my writer’s block dissolves, at least 99 percent of the time. This year, writing about peace feels like the one percent block. And an impossible task begs a purposeful visit.

The scenery is breathtaking, except for the tall unsightly steel object placed in the middle of water, a physical manifestation of the boundary between countries. I note that the boats are sailing to either side of the eyesore.

In the natural world, the skies and seas are open for birds and other creatures. No passports or border patrols needed. I am reminded of a 2012 BBC travel article, titled “Where birds know no borders.”

“Unrestricted movement between Israel and the Palestinian territories is not always possible for those on two feet,” the article reads. “But if you shift your gaze upwards, something entirely different comes into focus.”

A migration of a billion birds belonging to more than 540 species traverses through the skies each autumn and spring. Both governments have set up centres for avid birders who come from all over the world to see this spectacular sight.

Could this be a miracle, like the one I asked for last year at the Wall?

As I move my gaze away from the metal border structure and back to reality, I wonder if nature, prayer, music and dance can help us engage and connect with the world.

Can we create more connected global communities? Can we uncover commonalities that reduce conflicts? Can we build more peaceful nations? Miracles happen daily in nature. Look no further than the dove.

– Blaine, Wash., 2014

Jenny Wright is a writer, music therapist, children’s musician and recording artist.

Posted on December 12, 2014December 11, 2014Author Jenny WrightCategories OpinionTags nature, peace

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