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“Carried,” the piece for October, was painted in April 2020, in the throes of the first lockdown when everyone was reeling from all the sudden changes. I wanted to paint something hopeful.

I don’t know about you, but to me September always feels like the beginning of the last portion of a year. As the weather turns cooler and the sun sets earlier, I am reminded that autumn is on its way. The painting for this month reflects that shift in seasons.

The painting for this month is special because it was the very first painting I did after deciding that I would give art a go in 2020. Little did I know what would unfold after I created this.

July is a special month in our family, with multiple birthdays, including our younger daughter’s and my oldest niece’s who were born 6 days apart. The painting for this month is a piece that I did for my niece as a birthday gift last year. It is also the piece that received the most positive comments from the people who got my calendar, much to my surprise.

The painting featured for this month is rather special. It is the first panel of a three-part painting (known as a triptych in art lingo). I’m excited to tell you the story behind it!

“Space to Be” was one of my favourite paintings from 2020; partly because of the image, and partly because the creation of it was a joyful process. Since May is my birthday month, I decided to choose it as the painting for this month.

I’ve been looking forward to sharing the backstory to the painting for this month. This painting was the first commission I received last year. My client was a minister who wanted to give personalized thank you gifts to the ministry’s major donors. The whole project would consist of four paintings to be completed during 2020. This first painting was for a woman who was the owner of a company in Asia.

Last month, I wrote about our family’s trip to Kamloops in 2020. This month’s painting is from the same trip. It is an 8″x8″ acrylic painting on a canvas that my kids had previously played around on and that I repurposed. I had brought a pad of canvas paper with me (which I used to create my Kamloops Sky Trio) but I knew I wanted one nicer painting on canvas that I could keep as a souvenir. So I tucked the solitary canvas into my luggage and on the last full day of our vacation, took it out to create a keepsake.

Here we are in the second month of 2021! The painting for this month is titled, “Settling into the Quiet” and is a smaller piece at 5″x7″, painted with acrylics on watercolour paper. It was a thank you gift for our Airbnb host.

Welcome to my new series of blog posts, entitled, “Every Painting Has a Story”! In this series, I intend to share some of the back story behind each month’s painting in my 2021 Art + Scripture Calendar. I hope that through this series of posts, we can journey through the year together.