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.

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.

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! 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.

Welcome to February, my friends! This month I will be taking you on a brief tour of my high school art, which I consider to be my most formative years. In today’s post, I will intersperse examples of my work from those years with narrative. I hope you enjoy seeing the pieces that gave me my art foundation!

To start us off, let me give you a little context about my high school. I attended Unionville High School (UHS) in Markham, Ontario. At the time, that school was the only public school with a specialized Fine Arts program in York Region. Called Arts York (now Arts Unionville), each year they accepted a limited number of students for entrance into Grade 9. You had to apply and audition for your discipline of choice (Visual Arts, Dance, Music, or Drama). Aside from the Arts York program, they had the regular education stream for students who lived in the immediate area. Arts York students would take specialized courses in their disciplines in addition to standard courses, which they would take with the rest of the student population.

When I was in Grade 8 and thinking about which high school to attend, I knew I could go to my local high school but I wanted to try for UHS both because I liked the arts focus and because UHS had a better reputation academically. I ended up auditioning for both Dance and Visual Arts. At that point, I had been learning ballet for 11 years and was taking exams that would allow me to pursue teaching if I wanted to, so I was pretty confident I would get in for Dance.

Visual Arts had always intrigued me and growing up, I was envious of my friends who got to take art lessons. Still, I didn’t know if I had the skills to get me into the program. My Grade 8 art teacher was really supportive when I told her I wanted to apply for Arts York and she helped me prepare the portfolio for my audition. I remember having to bring a self-portrait and a sculpture to the interview, among other required examples of work. I also remember feeling embarrassed at the interview because I had tried to carve a squirrel out of plaster but had only managed to finish half of it.

At the audition, they had us take a group art class and do several exercises, including sketching a shiny ribbon that had been stapled in various places to a board. Then they interviewed each applicant individually. It was a serious and involved process and I will forever be grateful they accepted me into the program!

Over the course of the next four years, I learned so much. I got to try things like printmaking, silkscreen, acrylic painting, sculpture, and textiles. I was taught art history and learned about various styles and techniques like Impressionism, Cubism, and pointillism. I also got the opportunity to do life drawing of real live models (something really rare for teenagers to get to do as we actually observed nude figures.)

In Grade 10, I did my first acrylic painting and learned about colour mixing, as well as how to build, stretch, and prepare a canvas. We would design the concept for our paintings, execute them, and then critique them to see how they could be improved. Do you see what I mean now when I say Arts York gave me my foundation?

Every semester for four years, I had an art class. My teachers not only taught us art skills but built our confidence. Our art would be regularly displayed in the foyer of our school so everyone could see our creations. The first person who ever offered to buy my work was a teacher at our school. It was a cubist style piece featuring frogs that I had created as a birthday gift for my dad so I couldn’t sell the original to the teacher, but I did end up creating a print of it and selling that to her. (That piece still hangs in my mom’s place.)

When I turned 40, I made a list of people who had had significant impact on my life and sent them a painting and a thank you letter. My main art teacher from UHS was one of them. I owe a lot of my skills to her! (Thanks Mrs. Chelin, for encouraging me then and still encouraging me now!)

High school was a time of flourishing for me. I would have some wilderness years throughout my 20s and 30s but my teenage years were definitely a key part of developing the artist in me.

Question for reflection, if you want to go deeper: When you think about the teachers who have invested in you (in school or just people who have taught you things), who comes to mind? If you’re able to contact them, consider reaching out to say thank you.

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: February 2024 – My High School Art appeared first on Olive Chan Art.

Hello friends, welcome to the first blog post of 2024! In previous years, I shared backstories to paintings featured in my calendars but this year will be a little different. Throughout 2024, I will be featuring some of my past work that will never make it into calendars and maybe not even onto social media. (Gasp!) Consider it a backstage pass to my artist life. I hope you enjoy what I have in store!

When I was planning the blog topics for this year, I thought why not start from the beginning? My mom had kept a folder with some of my earlier work so I have a few examples I can share. When I look back at my early art, I wouldn’t suspect that I would become an artist later. But I do recall always enjoying drawing and painting ever since I was young.

The earliest drawing I have is this crayon drawing. My mom noted who the people in the picture were. I have included my cousin (who was a young adult living with us at the time), my dad, my mom, and me, all wearing what appear to be party hats. In the top left corner I have included a yellow sun with radiating rays, some blue to indicate the sky at the very top of the page, and five rather large birds. On the ground is a flower and we are standing next to a yellow house. I’m guessing I drew this when I was around 5 years old.

I also have this photo of me standing proudly pointing at a painting on display. Judging by my buck teeth and pigtails, I would say I was around 6 years old here. I can’t tell what my painting is about but there are quite a lot of details. I also know that rainbows were a recurring theme in my art around that time.

These next two paintings were from Grade One (6 years old) and they also feature rainbows. It’s interesting to see how some 35+ years later, I’m still painting rainbows! Grade One was also when I got my earliest positive response and affirmation of artistic talent. Unbeknownst to me, my teacher had submitted one of my drawings to a contest for the Ontario Dental Association and it had been chosen as a cover for one of their brochures. I used to have a copy of that brochure but it has since been lost. Along with my drawing being chosen as cover art, I received a prize of $500 – which in 1987 was a big deal! (I think my parents donated the money back to the school.)

By Grade 5, I can start to see a more refined sense of aesthetics come out in my work, as this tulip painting shows. I have a couple workbooks from that year and in my drawings I started to include elements of shading.

By Grade 7, I definitely knew that I enjoyed art. This is one remaining drawing I have from that year – a fantastical monster that is both silly and colourful. I had the same art teacher for Grades 7 and 8 and when I told her I wanted to audition for a fine arts high school, she spent extra time at lunch and after school to help me prepare for that. (Thanks, Mrs. Shadrach!) She had no idea that getting into that school would pave the way for my future career.

There you have it. How my art journey started.

I don’t have any reflection questions this month but if any of my art from childhood connects with you, feel free to spend some time with it. Also, I would love to hear what you might see in my earliest work. Thanks for reading along. I look forward to sharing some of my high school work with you next 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 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: January 2024 – My Childhood Art appeared first on Olive Chan Art.