Hello friends, we have made it to the end of another calendar year! Despite the frenetic pace that December tends to bring, I find that it also invites us to reflect on the past year. We look back and see all the good that has happened, as well as the difficult or stressful.

To close off this year of stories about my life through art, I wanted to share with you a piece I drew in 2018. There are actually in existence two of the same drawings. The first was a gift for my spiritual director. (If you’re unfamiliar with spiritual direction, it’s a Christian practice of companionship where one person “directs” the other’s attention to where the divine might be at work in their lives. Similar to counselling but with an emphasis on journeying together rather than trying to address any issues.) My spiritual director has accompanied me through adjusting to life in BC, new marriage, burnout, depression, the births of both of my children, and the start of all our businesses. I originally created this drawing for her birthday as a visual expression of how I experience her prayers for me. She is one of the key people who have held me when I was struggling the most.

The second drawing currently hangs in the foyer at our church, the Tapestry Mundy Park. Our pastor loved my first drawing when I showed it to him and asked me if I could create another one for our church. I appreciate that our faith community celebrates the arts and I was honoured to hang this one up for anyone passing by to reflect on.

To create this piece, I used pencil crayon on black paper. I looked up a couple reference images online to make sure I got the hands and bird correct. Hands are notoriously difficult to draw and I was quite pleased with how these turned out.

The drawing is inspired by a poem I read:

“She prayed as she breathed,
forming no words and making no specific requests,
only holding in her heart like broken birds in cupped hands,
all those people who were in stress or grief.”
– Ellis Peters, adapted

For me personally, this image grounds and calms me and brings me comfort. If I imagine myself as the bird, I feel safe and secure. And when I think of holding all the heartache that swirls within me like that broken bird, I feel compassion and relief that I don’t have to articulate it all into words in order to pray.

As we end off the year, I wanted to bless you with this image. Whatever you have experienced this year, however your heart is, may you know that you are held, like a little bird gently cupped in loving hands – by Divine Love and in my heart.

Thanks for journeying with me this year. See you in the new year, friends!

Questions for reflection, if you want to go deeper: What in your life does the bird represent? What or who do the hands represent? How can you hold this past year gently like these hands hold the bird?

If you enjoyed this post and want to read a monthly art story, remember to sign up so future posts get delivered to your email! Next year, we will be hearing the stories behind each month’s painting in my art calendar. I will be posting them the first day of each month beginning in January 2025. (Add me to your contacts list or you might need to check your promotions or junk folders if you don’t see the email.)

As always, I love to hear from you! If something in this story resonated with you, if you’re interested in commissioning a painting, or if you have other thoughts, feel free to email, or connect with me.

The post Every Painting Has a Story: December 2024 – “How I Pray These Days” appeared first on Olive Chan Art.

Hello friends, here we are in November! It’s amazing to think that there are only two months of 2024 left. This month’s story happened around this time four years ago and is about the power of beauty to bring light in dark times. I hope it encourages you!

Way back at the beginning of 2020, when “pandemic” was only the name of a board game to me, I decided to try making a career of my art (I write more about it here). Very quickly, I encountered the dilemma of what to do with leftover paint after a day’s work. Since I use acrylic paints, once they dry, they basically harden into plastic and I can’t use them anymore. Some artists use a special type of palette that has a cover to keep their paints workable for longer. But because I don’t usually have much paint left over, it didn’t seem worth it to try to keep those bits.

Still, I didn’t like wasting paint.

So I took scraps of paper and got some mini 2-inch canvases and started painting very small scenes to use up my paint. It was great – the paintings were cute and I was starting to amass a growing collection of them. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them, but I kept making them.

Then the world shifted seemingly overnight and we entered a season of sheltering in place, Zoom everything, and trying our best to cope with all the changes and information coming at us. In October that year, I found myself feeling unwell and needing to get tested for Covid. This was well before home testing kits were available so I looked up the nearest clinic to me. After I booked my appointment, I learned that the clinic would be closing due to burned out staff. That clinic had converted into a testing site while the local health authority was setting theirs up and now their staff were too exhausted to continue. I would be one of the last patients there.

Suddenly, I knew what all those tiny paintings were for. I would bring them to the clinic with me and give them to the staff as small gifts of appreciation. These folks needed to know they were appreciated.

When I got home that day, I still had some paintings left over, so I posted them on my social media and asked if anyone wanted to nominate someone to receive one. It could be front-line workers or anyone who was lonely in isolation. In a time when we weren’t allowed to be close to anyone outside our “bubbles,” these would be “art hugs.”

The idea was really well received and I thought that maybe other artists would want to do this too. I posted another batch of tiny paintings and put out an open invitation for others to join. I called it “Little Arts of Kindness” – playing off of random acts of kindness – and I made it into a hashtag so that people could search the term and see who else was participating. I contacted the local newspaper and amazingly, they published a piece about it. (Read more details about the #littleartsofkindness movement here.)

Ultimately, artists from around BC, Alberta, Quebec, Ontario and Nova Scotia committed to participate and it went as far as Michigan and California in the United States. In a time when we all felt helpless, this was one tangible way for people to reach out and connect – to offer some light.

For me personally, it was satisfying to know that I did something with what I had to make a difference in the world. I sent out probably 20-25 little arts and was commissioned to create a set of another 25 for some teachers. I only heard back directly from one recipient and I saw one other person post about it publicly on Facebook, saying that it really touched them to know that someone out there cared, especially after navigating a harrowing outbreak at their hospital. The rest of them, I can only hope that they were encouraged.

These little arts became the inspiration for my 40th birthday project where I painted 40 small paintings for people who had played a significant role in my life. And eventually, it spun into the 100 Tiny Expanses, which I painted for my first solo exhibition in April 2023.

I still paint tiny pieces with scraps and leftover paint these days. And I still give them out as small reminders to “Keep looking up.” Only it’s less systematic and just whenever I feel like it.

Questions for reflection, if you want to go deeper: Who in your life could use a little encouragement today? What can you do to reach out? What “scraps” in your life (time, materials, resources) could be repurposed to share love in the world?

If you enjoyed this post and want to read a monthly art story, remember to sign up so future posts get delivered to your email! I usually post them the second Friday of each month – this will be changing in January 2025 when I will post on the first day of each month. (Add me to your contacts list or you might need to check your promotions or junk folders if you don’t see the email.)

As always, I love to hear from you! If something in this story resonated with you, if you’re interested in commissioning a painting, or if you have other thoughts, feel free to email, or connect with me.

The post Every Painting Has a Story: November 2024 – “#LittleArtsofKindness” appeared first on Olive Chan Art.

It’s October! This month is special in our family because it includes our wedding anniversary (which happens to be today!). So, for this month’s story, it is only appropriate for me to shine the spotlight on my number one fan and partner in creativity and general shenanigans: Tim!

Tim and I met on a Christian mission trip to Japan in 2003. One of the first gifts I received from him was at the end of our six-week trip. It was a hand-drawn book of cartoons summarizing our team’s experiences packed with hilarious memories. I had to work so hard to suppress my laughter because he had conveniently given it to me and our teammates during what was supposed to be a serious meeting. Tim and I didn’t start dating until three years later but I noticed his creativity and thoughtfulness right from the get-go.

After that trip, I returned to Toronto and he went back to Vancouver. He knew I was looking for work that summer and he also knew I liked to paint, so he asked if he could commission me to create a painting for the apartment he shared with his siblings. He wanted a painting of mountains with the verse from Psalm 121:1-2, “I lift my eyes up to the mountains, where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the maker of heaven and earth.” I couldn’t believe that a guy I had just met would pay me to paint something for him. Little could I have known that that first commission would someday be hanging in my own house!

Over the course of our marriage, Tim has always supported my creative side. When the kids were little and I didn’t have much time or energy, he encouraged me to do small watercolours and later, acrylic paintings. When we started our blog over at timandolive.com, he added an extra page to highlight my art and promote my commission services.

One day in 2016, when I was starting to take on more side projects for people, he looked at me and lamented about how all these nice pieces of artwork never stayed in our house. “Why can’t you paint something that I get to keep?” It hadn’t occurred to me that he would want my work in our house. So I went and bought a 2’x3′ canvas and decided to make a painting just for him. One that he could keep forever.

For his birthday in 2017, I gave him, “Oregon Coast,” a painting of the area of the world where we had spent our honeymoon. I wasn’t aware of photography copyrights back then so unfortunately, I don’t know whose photo I referenced for that painting. But I chose something that included our favourite elements of water, mountains, and a beautiful sunset. Over the years, that painting has been displayed in various locations in our home but during the pandemic, it was moved to our home office to become Tim’s background for all his zoom calls.

In 2020, when I told Tim I wanted to step back from doing marketing work after 7 years of building our company together so that I could start my own art business, he fully supported me. He made sure my time was protected and intentionally shifted the types of projects he took on so that I could be freed up. The fact that he stays curious about who I am and who I’m becoming is something I don’t take for granted. Living with an artist can be challenging and he is so patient with me. On more than one occasion, he has driven me around to chase sunsets and waited for me as I got “just one more” photo of the sky. 

Tim has taught me most of what I know about business and marketing. From strategies, to pricing, to how to actually use a spreadsheet, so much of what I know and do on the business front I owe to him. In recent years as I’ve offered calendars and cards, he has spent many an evening packing orders with me and running to the post office for me. I would not be doing what I do today were it not for Tim cheering me on and supporting me.

Today, October 11, 2024 is our 16th anniversary, so… Happy anniversary, Tim! Thank you for everything. You are my favourite.

Questions for reflection, if you want to go deeper: In what small and big ways have you been supported in your life? How is Love inviting you to live out who you are?

If you enjoyed this post and want to read a monthly art story, remember to sign up so future posts get delivered to your email! I usually post them the second Friday of each month. (Add me to your contacts list or you might need to check your promotions or junk folders if you don’t see the email.)

As always, I love to hear from you! If something in this story resonated with you, if you’re interested in commissioning a painting, or if you have other thoughts, feel free to email, or connect with me.

The post Every Painting Has a Story: October 2024 – “Oregon Coast” appeared first on Olive Chan Art.

Well friends, here we are in September. In our part of the world, summer has wrapped up, the kids are back at school, and the weather is turning cooler. This month, I will be sharing the story behind a painting that holds meaning for me because of the season of personal growth it represents. I hope you enjoy the read!

For many years, Tim and I have held the practice of choosing a word at the beginning of the new year; a word to ground us, guide us, and orient us. Instead of New Year’s resolutions, we have found that choosing a theme word is a gentler, more practical way to focus our attention and energy throughout the year. (You can read about our year of “Enough” in this blog post as an example.) In 2022, I chose the word, “Release.”

At that time, I was struggling with some health issues and learning about how our bodies store trauma. I knew that my body was tense and that the tension was contributing to my pain. “Release” was what I longed for. So I adopted it as my word for the year.

I painted this piece to remind me of my word, with the iconic red balloon floating away as an image to encourage me let go physically and metaphorically. That year, I enlisted the help of a counsellor trained in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) to walk me through several traumatic memories. I no longer wanted to hold onto them. I also made a conscious effort to remember to pause throughout the day to take a slow, deep breath and relax the muscles throughout my body.

For most of my life, I have lived with anxiety and it not only affected me mentally, but physically as well. That year of “Release” was an important one as I learned to let go. It was a significant step in my healing and wholeness. Even though it’s been two years since then, I still tend toward worry and overthinking so I have left this painting up by my bedside to remind me to exhale and release my grip on things.

As we enter the Fall season, I don’t know what concerns might be weighing you down, but I hope this painting and my story can serve as an invitation for you to release those cares and rest for a bit, if even for a moment.

Questions for reflection, if you want to go deeper: What might the red balloon represent in your life right now? How tightly are you holding onto your “balloon”? What emotions surface when you see the red balloon floating away in the painting?

If you enjoyed this post and want to read a monthly art story, remember to sign up so future posts get delivered to your email! I usually post them the second Friday of each month. (Add me to your contacts list or you might need to check your promotions or junk folders if you don’t see the email.)

As always, I love to hear from you! If something in this story resonated with you, if you’re interested in commissioning a painting, or if you have other thoughts, feel free to email, or connect with me.

The post Every Painting Has a Story: September 2024 – “Release” appeared first on Olive Chan Art.

Hello friends, here we are in August. This month, I want to share with you a piece that is deeply personal to me and centers on some spiritual themes. I should also let you know that it touches on the topic of grief. I understand if you need to skip this one, but for those of you who stay to read it all, thank you for hearing my story. I am deeply honoured.

In March 2019, I attended a retreat at Carmel Hill, Little Flower Monastery. It was my first time participating in a three-day silent retreat as well as being at a Catholic monastery. My spiritual director (aka, friend and companion who month after month directs my attention to where God is present in my life) was part of leading the retreat and it wasn’t too far to get to, so I decided to try it out. I had invited some friends to join me and it was comforting to have their presence even though we spent most of the time in solitude and silence.

In the monastery, at the front of the chapel, was a box with a sculptural cover featuring five loaves and two fishes, along with five stalks of wheat. I later learned that this box was called an aumbry and that it contained specially reserved communion elements. During my time there, I kept coming back to the chapel and gazing at the box. The roughness of the cover and simplicity of the iconography touched me. It symbolized the sacred elements contained inside the box while representing the story of Jesus feeding 5,000 with a modest meal.

On a personal level, at the beginning of 2019, I had chosen the word Enough to focus on throughout the year. Sitting in that chapel and soaking in this unknown artist’s work, the word Enough resonated even deeper. This image and the story it recalled kept affirming to me that God could make what little I had enough. Unbeknownst to me, a week later, I would be by my dad’s deathbed and that word and image would sustain me through some of the hardest moments for the year ahead.

For over a year, I wanted to create my own rendition of that sculptural image. Then, in 2020, for my birthday, that’s what I did. I took a thrift store print that I never really liked and painted over top of it a version of this image for my room. It hangs by my bed as a visual reminder of God’s providence, not only in that really difficult year after my dad’s death (and subsequent pandemic), but also in my present life.

One of my deepest fears is that I don’t have or do enough; or that I am not enough. As an artist in this economy, I’m often visited by doubts of whether I’m good enough, if I’m hustling enough, or if I will be able to sell enough to provide for my family. The thoughts of “not enough”ness are pervasive. And perhaps they are exacerbated by our consumerist culture that benefits from our insecurities. But if I look at the message of Jesus and the life he lived, it tells me a different story: I am enough, there is enough, and God makes it enough. Always.

Questions for reflection, if you want to go deeper: What jumps out at you about this image? What is your heart’s response to the words, “You are enough”‘? In what areas of your life do you fear not enough-ness? How can you step into the truth that with God, it’s always enough?

If you enjoyed this post and want to read a monthly art story, remember to sign up so future posts get delivered to your email! I usually post them the second Friday of each month. (Add me to your contacts list or you might need to check your promotions or junk folders if you don’t see the email.)

As always, I love to hear from you! If something in this story resonated with you, if you’re interested in commissioning a painting, or if you have other thoughts, feel free to email, or connect with me.

The post Every Painting Has a Story: August 2024 – “Enough” appeared first on Olive Chan Art.

It’s summer in our part of the world and my kids are off school. July is often the month when our family has taken trips so I thought that for the story this month, I would invite you into some memories via some of the art I have brought back from our travels. If you love the ocean, you’ll enjoy the art in this post!

I moved to British Columbia in July 2008 not knowing much about this area of Canada other than the fact that it was near the Pacific Ocean. I didn’t know that just off the coast, there is a treasure trove of islands to explore – the largest and most famous being Vancouver Island. In February 2011, our church small group booked a retreat on Mayne Island, one of the islands in a group called the Southern Gulf Islands. One afternoon, our friends went oyster picking and came back with buckets of fresh oysters. The taste of those barbequed morsels will forever be etched in my memory – they were SO good!

At that retreat, I had been invited to conduct a Painting 101 session for people who were interested. Since I had my paints with me for that workshop, I decided to paint myself a little souvenir of the trip. This became the first of many painted rocks.

Several years later we took our first vacation as a family of four to another island, Pender Island. Since Tim and I are both drawn to the ocean, we tried to find rental homes that were on waterfront properties. We had access to a private beach for the week and found that the shells were plentiful there. So I painted shells to remember the trip by. I also painted an extra one to leave for our Airbnb hosts.

After that, each time we stayed by the beach, if I had my paints with me (which usually was the case), I would find some rocks or shells on which I could capture the local view by. One year, I found lots of mussel shells and was captivated by their iridescent inner lining. I thought it would be neat to try painting ocean waves against that background. On a couple trips, our parents joined us and I would paint them something to remember the trip by as well. Last year, our family stayed for a week on the coast in Washington and my kids found these large clam shells while beachcombing. I decided to paint a scene on the inside of one of those shells.

In every place we have stayed, I have left a little painted rock or shell as a thank you. I don’t know if other guests have found them, or if the hosts have kept them, but it’s a small way for me to show gratitude to the hospitality we have received.

When I look at our fireplace mantle where these rocks and shells are displayed in our home, I am reminded of the various trips, the beauty we enjoyed, and the particulars of those times and places. I remember how old my kids were at the time, the stages of development they were at, and the adventures we shared. These small pieces of art help me to remember the journey I have been on.

In a similar way, when I think about the pieces I have been commissioned to create, many of them are of places and moments that are significant to my clients. Art is a visual reminder to them of particular points in their journeys that they want to remember. As an artist, I am always humbled that people would invite me into their stories in such a meaningful way.

This summer, I’m taking a break from commissions but I do have a couple spots open for the fall. Maybe this post has jogged a memory for you of a place or a moment you’d like to be expressed in a painting. If so, please reach out. I would love to work with you to create something special.

Questions for reflection, if you want to go deeper: When you think back over your life, what are some places or moments that hold significance to you? How do you remember your journey by? Take a moment to sit with the length and breadth of your life journey, holding it with gentleness and gratitude.

If you enjoyed this post and want to read a monthly art story, remember to sign up so future posts get delivered to your email! I usually post them the second Friday of each month. (Add me to your contacts list or you might need to check your promotions or junk folders if you don’t see the email.)

As always, I love to hear from you! If something in this story resonated with you, if you’re interested in commissioning a painting, or if you have other thoughts, feel free to email, or connect with me

The post Every Painting Has a Story: July 2024 – Vacation Mementos appeared first on Olive Chan Art.

Hello friends, somehow we have made it halfway through the year! June is a relatively busy month in our household with school winding up and end-of-term activities happening. This month’s story is an invitation for us to pause and rest. I hope it meets you in your days, whatever they look like. [Note: I don’t typically talk much about my faith here, but this story is about part of my journey as a Christian.]

Fifteen years ago, I was newly married, freshly relocated to BC, and in the midst of burnout recovery. I had enrolled in a program called the Center for Spiritual Formation through Carey Theological College, a local theological school. I desperately hoped that spending a couple years tending to my spirit would help me find some solid footing.

One of the first exercises they asked us to do was to learn something called Centering Prayer. I had grown up knowing that prayer was talking to God. But this was the first time I was introduced to the idea that prayer could also include simply being with God – without telling or asking for anything. In Centering Prayer, we were invited to choose a phrase or an image to help “center” us; something we could return our attention to when other thoughts swirled about.

In one of my prayer times, I chose the verse from Psalm 46:10 to help me center. The verse said, “Be still and know that I am God.” As I held onto these words, the image of a rock in a stream came to mind. “Be still like this rock,” came the invitation. “Allow the water of My love wash over and surround you. Allow Me to do the moving. Let Me shape you. All you need to do is be.” I was so used to being active like the water, it was really a challenge to be still like the rock.

I loved that image so much that I decided to make a painting of it. (I looked up a photo online to work off of. Unfortunately, I don’t know who the original photographer was so I can’t credit them). I wanted a visual reminder to still myself and let God love me. My whole life I had been busy – both in my outer world and inside my brain – I wanted to learn how to be still. And this rock was a visual teacher to me.

I hung this painting in our bedroom next to our bed. It is one of the first things I see in the morning and one of the last things I see at night. I don’t practice Centering Prayer much these days but the painting reminds me of that season in my life when my faith was shaped in profound ways. It also continues to remind me that the invitation to stillness is always there.

Questions for reflection, if you want to go deeper: Spend some time with this image of a rock in the stream. Which do you identify more with – the rock, or the water? Which parts of you are you being invited into stillness? If you live close to an actual stream with rocks in it, go out for a walk and sit for a while. Notice what you observe.

If you enjoyed this post and want to read a monthly art story, remember to sign up so future posts get delivered to your email! I usually post them the second Friday of each month. (Add me to your contacts list or you might need to check your promotions or junk folders if you don’t see the email.)

As always, I love to hear from you! If something in this story resonated with you, if you’re interested in commissioning a painting, or if you have other thoughts, feel free to email, or connect with me

The post Every Painting Has a Story: June 2024 – “Stillness” appeared first on Olive Chan Art.

Hello friends! A couple of months ago, I introduced you to my dad and his important support for me as an artist. This month, it’s my mom’s turn. May is an appropriate month to shine a spotlight on my mom for two reasons: 1. Mother’s Day is in May, and 2. my birthday is also in May – and I wouldn’t be here without her! This month’s story will be about creative pursuits outside of painting but don’t worry, paintings will be back next month. I hope you enjoy this story!

Back in 2018, I picked up knitting again after learning how to as a child. I was inspired by all the pretty shawls I saw on Pinterest and decided to try it out. I also heard about prayer shawls and loved the idea of being able to pray for people through knitting; that prayers could be carried by each stitch.

I wanted to knit some shawls for my mom and mother-in-law. I had found a place online that sold reclaimed silk yarn and bought a couple skeins in two colours. My plan was that I would knit a silver shawl for my mother-in-law, a purple shawl for my own mom, and a third shawl with a mix of the remaining yarn for myself. (That third shawl is still sitting half-finished in a box under my desk.)

What I I didn’t know when I started my mom’s shawl was that I would be working on it during my emergency flight to Toronto when my dad was dying. Or that I would finish it in time to gift it to her on her first Mother’s Day as a widow during her visit to Vancouver. But that’s what ended up happening. I chose a pattern called, “Close to You,” which reflected my hope that every time my mom saw or wore the shawl, she would remember our relationship and know she wasn’t alone.

Many people have asked me where I get my “artistic genes” from. Both my parents are creative, but if I had to pick one parent, it would be my mom. Shortly after I was born, my mom quit her job at the bank to stay home and raise me. It didn’t mean she didn’t work though. Growing up, I watched her employ her wide range of skills to create goods for people. She made intricate multi-tiered wedding cakes with gorgeous piping and realistic gum paste flowers. She sewed curtains. She put together bountiful gift baskets tied with handmade ribbons. Being surrounded by her creativity nurtured my own.

Being my primary day-to-day caregiver, my mom was also my chauffeur; driving me to and from school nearly every day, all the way until high school. She was also the one who would go shopping for art supplies with me. Remember the garage door frogs that I shared about a couple months ago? Guess who brought me downtown to a specific paint shop so I could get a particular paint brush to do that project? That’s right, my mom.

My mom moved to Vancouver a few years ago to be closer to me and our family. Since her move, once a week, she picks up my kids from school, makes us dinner and stays to eat with us. She is often one of the first people who sees what I’m working on. Without her help, I wouldn’t be able to have a longer, uninterrupted chunk of time to focus on my art so regularly. Without her, I wouldn’t have been able to build my art practice and business. Last Christmas, I gave my mom a very special painting for her place. I won’t write about it this month as I’m planning to include it in my 2025 calendar so I will share that story in the future! (How’s that for a teaser?)

To say I’m grateful for the support my mom has given me is a major understatement. I literally would not be here without her. Thanks, mom, for everything!

Questions for reflection, if you want to go deeper: Who in your life has supported or served you in small, daily ways? How can you show your appreciation to them this month?

If you enjoyed this post and want to read a monthly art story, remember to sign up so future posts get delivered to your email! I usually post them the second Friday of each month. (Add me to your contacts list or you might need to check your promotions or junk folders if you don’t see the email.)

As always, I love to hear from you! If something in this story resonated with you, if you’re interested in commissioning a painting, or if you have other thoughts, feel free to email, or connect with me

The post Every Painting Has a Story: May 2024 – The Time I Knitted a Shawl for My Mom appeared first on Olive Chan Art.

Hello friends! This month we are taking a peek into my art as a university student. The art I am going to share this month won’t exactly be paintings, but I promise it will be interesting!

For my undergraduate degree, I studied Theatre Set Design at York University (Toronto). I had become interested in theatre production while I was in high school and thought it would be fun to major in it for university. [Please excuse the quality of the photos in this post. These were from the early 2000s and they’re the best ones I have!]

At York, all the first year theatre students studied the same courses and it wasn’t until second year that students could specialize in a stream. I remember having to take a semester of acting along with all the actually aspiring actors and actresses and doing an exercise where we had to move like the colour blue (I’m serious!). I thought I wanted to be a lighting designer when I had applied to York, but over the course of that first year, I realized I connected better with the set design professors, so I decided to major in set design instead.

My set design class had 8 women. We shared a studio room in the theatre building and spent many a late night/early morning working on our projects in there. Each year, the department would mount three shows, which meant that out of the graduating class, three set designers would get the chance to be part of an actual production.

In my fourth year, I was chosen to design one of the shows. It was called Shakuntala and based on an ancient Sanskrit tale, and the director was a post-grad student who was of Indian background himself. Three days before the design was due, I was called into a meeting with the director. He had had an epiphany and wanted the overall aesthetic to look like ivory carvings. Re-designing the project on such a short timeline was one of the most harrowing parts of my studies! The set turned out to be quite stunning and visually striking though.

When the show was over, one of the woodshop teachers offered to bring one of the archways from the set to my home for me to keep. Thankfully, my parents’ house was large enough for it! The school would keep another archway and I think the rest of it went to the dump, unfortunately. I was pretty thrilled that the theatre department went on to use photos of “my” show on their website and publications for a number of years.

Aside from my thesis project, during my fourth year, the university hired me and one of my classmates to create a maquette (scale model) of a tent they were hoping to use for an upcoming convocation ceremony. My friend (who went on to become an award-winning set and costume designer) and I spent hours upon late night hours cutting out a thousand tiny paper heads to fill up the rows. It was a memorable project and one of the bonding experiences in our friendship.

After I graduated from York, I ended up shifting my focus to missionary work for a number of years and I never went back to doing theatre. The hours would have been too long and unpredictable for me to sustain anyway. But I still love attending shows and I don’t think I will ever tire of the magic of live theatre.

Questions for reflection, if you want to go deeper: Live theatre is an experience of being in the moment. Once the performance is over, it is never repeated again. The same can be said of our lives. Holding that perspective, what would you want to keep in our life? What would you want to change?

If you enjoyed this post and want to read a monthly art story, remember to sign up so future posts get delivered to your email! I usually post them the second Friday of each month. (Add me to your contacts list or you might need to check your promotions or junk folders if you don’t see the email.)

As always, I love to hear from you! If something in this story resonated with you, if you’re interested in commissioning a painting, or if you have other thoughts, feel free to email, or connect with me on Facebook or Instagram. Thanks for being part of my journey and for letting me be a part of yours!

The post Every Painting Has a Story: April 2024 – My University Years appeared first on Olive Chan Art.

Hello friends, are you wondering where the first two months of the year went? Me too. March is a special month for me because it is my dad’s birth-month and also the month of his passing. So in honour of him, I’m going to share about his influence on me as an artist. I hope you enjoy these stories! (Note: if you have a fear of frogs, you might want to skip this post.)

Last month I shared about a cubist-style frog piece that I had created for my dad’s birthday when I was in high school. Those of you who knew my dad would know that he had a thing for frogs. For him, frog was an acronym for Fully Rely On God. And seeing frogs would remind him that he could rely on God.

One day when I was home from university, he told me he needed to repaint the garage doors. For many years, those doors had been white with red trim to match the red brick on our house. But this time, he didn’t want to do the red trim. “Olive,” he said to me over dinner, “why don’t you paint something on them?” I looked back at him across the table “…Paint what? Frogs?”

So that’s what we did. He repainted the doors white and I set to work painting a set of three frogs. One for each member of our family. It felt bold and rebellious to paint something so eye-catching in an otherwise serious neighbourhood. But people loved them. And whenever we had to give directions to our house, we could say, “Just look for the frogs on the garage doors!”

After the garage door frogs, I decided to have some more fun inside the house. One afternoon when a huge storm had knocked out the electricity, I had nowhere to go so I painted a little frog peeking out from one of the closet doors in our front entryway. Later, I painted one that looked like it was going through the other closet door, with the little bum on the outside and the head on the inside. And then I painted one last one on the front door looking like it was peeking out the peephole (which my dad had upgraded to a screen-like viewer).

Fast forward seven years, the original garage door frogs were all faded and the paint was peeling. I was engaged to Tim and planning to move across the country. My dad said it was time to repaint the garage doors again and I said I would paint a new set of frogs before I left; 4 of them this time to reflect our growing family.

You wouldn’t believe how many people stopped their cars to reprimand my dad as he put a fresh coat of black paint over the old frogs! We didn’t realize just how beloved those frogs had become in our community. He had to reassure them that new frogs would be going up and not to worry.

Eventually, my parents downsized and sold that house. A quick check on Google maps shows that the frogs were still there in 2011 but by 2014, they were painted over. People still talk to me about those frogs every so often.

Most Asian parents hesitate to encourage their kids in the arts but my dad invited me to display my work in the most visible way possible. (My mom was also supportive, of course, but she gets her own spotlight later this year.) Now that I’m an artist, I look back at 20-year-old me and think, “You lucky girl, to have parents like that.”

This month marks 5 years since my dad’s death. Although he never got to see my art career, I know he is proud of me. Thanks for your legacy, Dad.

PS. If you didn’t get a chance to meet my dad and are curious to know more about him, here’s a piece about his life that I wrote as a eulogy for his celebration of life: In Memory of Ben Lam.

Questions for reflection, if you want to go deeper: It takes a certain boldness to ask your child to paint frogs on your garage doors. In what area(s) of your life do you feel you are living boldly? In what area(s) of your life would you like to live more boldly?

If you enjoyed this post and want to read a monthly art story, remember to sign up so future posts get delivered to your email! I usually post them the second Friday of each month. (Add me to your contacts list or you might need to check your promotions or junk folders if you don’t see the email.)

As always, I love to hear from you! If something in this story resonated with you, if you’re interested in commissioning a painting, or if you have other thoughts, feel free to email, or connect with me on Facebook or Instagram. Thanks for being part of my journey and for letting me be a part of yours!

The post Every Painting Has a Story: March 2024 – The Time My Dad Got Me to Paint Frogs on the Garage Doors appeared first on Olive Chan Art.