In the news

The stars must be aligned in some special way, or maybe it's the creative and artistic influence of the Year of the Rabbit that I wrote about on January 22nd.
Whatever the reason, this is the first time I've ever had watercolour paintings in three different group exhibitions - all at the same time!
First is the "Entre-Nous 2023" gallery exhibition at the historic Trestler House, marking that building's 225th anniversary, which opened on January 19th and continues to March 19, 2023.
Then there's the gallery show and paired online auction with the Laguna Plein Air Painters Association (LPAPA), which runs until February 27, 2023. This is my first participation in an international exhibition, in the United States.
And today the third art show opened, this one a virtual event with Artists in Montréal (AiM). The theme of this "Virtual Valentine's Art Show" is "Object of My Desire", and I took a nature-lover's approach to this one:
What does a kingfisher desire?
A fish, of course!
So my watercolour painting in this virtual art exhibition is "I got one: Kingfisher".
You can view this exhibition by clicking on the Artists in Montréal link below, and then just scroll down on a phone or tablet to see all the artworks.

And feel free to vote for your favourite artwork, whoever the artist is!
View the 2023 Artists in Montreal "Virtual Valentine's Art Show"  

One of my watercolour paintings will be included in a new fundraising auction and exhibition, opening tomorrow, to benefit youth art outreach and other art education initiatives.
This will be my first participation in an actual gallery show in the United States. It will raise funds for an organization of which I've been a member since I began learning to paint two years ago.
Based in California, the Laguna Plein Air Painters Association (LPAPA) has been part of my artistic journey through their virtual plein-air painting webinars and workshops.
Their 2023 "LPAPA Strong - Painted Postcards" event will begin with a virtual or online auction, followed by a gallery exhibition.
All artworks are 5 x 7", the size of a standard postcard, in a wide range of styles and subjects.
The bidding on each "painted postcard" will begin at $50 USD, increasing in increments of $10 USD.
This is a fantastic opportunity to buy an original painting, and I plan to bid on a few myself!
The online auction will open tomorrow, January 30th at 1300 ET (1000 PT) and close on Thursday February 2nd at 2300 ET (2000 PT):

LPAPA Strong 2033 Painted Postcards Auction

Keep an eye out for my 5 x 7" watercolour "Sunrise silos", painted on a Multimedia Artboard.
After the online auction, an exhibition of these painted postcards will open at the LPAPA Gallery in Laguna Beach, California from February 2 through 27, 2023:
414 North Coast Highway
Laguna Beach, California 92651

Hope to see you online at the auction, as I won't be in California for the gallery show!

Today marks the start of the lunar new year, the Year of the Rabbit. I've been looking forward to this particular zodiac year, for its strong association with the arts:

"In general, Rabbit years abound with creativity and an appreciation for the arts.
You might feel yourself being pulled toward exploring museums, music festivals and performances."

Doesn't that sound lovely?
Whether or not this turns out to be true, I have to admit that my husband and I booked tickets today to a few upcoming artistic events.
First up will be a concert of Montréal's Métropolitain Orchestra next week, and then the "Lasting Impressions" 3D experience in February.
The latter is being billed as a "mesmerizing transformation of Impressionist masterpieces, brought to life by a team of artists using state-of-the-art 3D motion technology".
An "immersive 3D visual event" and tour "through late 19th century Europe, presented in 3D on a giant ultra-high-definition screen", this show has garnered rave reviews. The "Lasting Impressions" visual arts event has even been featured on PBS (formerly the Public Broadcasting System), in the United States.
For later in February, we booked tickets for a virtual museum tour of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection - which would otherwise be about a six-hour drive from our home in Montréal.
And next week I'll be participating in the virtual four-day "Watercolor Live" 2023 conference, from Wednesday through Saturday.

I wish you a Year of the Rabbit that does indeed "abound with creativity and an appreciation for the arts", as my own lunar new year is definitely starting out that way.
On that note, I'll close with one of my watercolour sketches of the eastern cottontails that spend their days in our gardens. And with the very artistic words of a well-known known and much-loved old rabbit:

"Everything that is real was imagined first." ~ The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams, 1922.

Happy New Year!

Guess whose words have appeared in Artists Magazine again, kind of? I don't whether they'll make it into an upcoming print version of this magazine - for now the publisher has featured one of my own creativity exercises on the magazine's website. It's the second one in this screenshot, from the website:

A little while ago they posed this question, to their artist-readers: "What specific creative exercises do you find especially helpful?" They that said they'd select a few replies to feature on their website and social media, and perhaps also in the print edition of the magazine.

I submitted a creativity exercise that I'd created for myself, something that I'd started doing to improve my art practice. No pencils or paper needed, only my imagination. Due to my rare disease and chronic pain condition, I often find myself waiting for medical appointments in places where it's simply not practical to pull out a pencil and sketchbook. For example on a hospital examination table, wearing a hospital gown!

So I came up with this little creative mind game to help me pass the time; I call it Value Games, a riff on the Hunger Games. In this example I've used a kitchen as the setting, but you can do this literally anywhere; an aircraft, a garden or forest, a restaurant, a shop, in the street...
This is what's currently featured on the website of the Artists Network, publisher of Artists Magazine:

"Value games: I'll imagine an everyday object in a "wild" colour, then picture the scene in complementary colours. Turquoise oven? Which shades and values of orange are the counter, cabinets, backsplash? The pots, fridge, etc? Imagine values for depth, shadows, reflections.
— Sandra Woods"

Try it for yourself, it's quite a lot of fun to do this - and much more difficult than you'd expect. 
If you'd like to see the website for yourself, here's the link:
My creative exercise, featured on the Artists Magazine website, 18 January 2023

Yesterday afternoon I delivered one of my watercolour paintings to a historic site not far from Montréal, for an upcoming anniversary exhibition. Trestler House, called "La Maison Trestler" in French, was built in the late 1700s on the shore of the beautiful Lake of Two Mountains ("le Lac des Deux-montagnes").

It remains a spectacular site; first a fur-trading post, then a home and general store, and now a museum, art gallery, and concert space.

Trestler House is staging an art exhibition to mark the 225th anniversary of this building, and I'm honoured that one of my watercolours will be included! The "Entre-Nous 2023" exhibition will run from mid-January through mid-March 2023; stay tuned for opening hours and details.

In the meantime, enjoy my photos of the Trestler House, before and after dropping off my painting yesterday.

With a bit of extra time over the holidays, I collected all of the art magazines that I'd left scattered around my home and set out to finally finish reading them.
Some I'd set aside to reread a particular article, others I'd started but hadn't finished, and several that I'd read and then forgotten to put away.
There were even a few, mostly from the warmer months when I spend as much time as possible outdoors - cycling and plein-air painting - that hadn't even been opened yet.
With a mild cognitive impairment, as a result of my rare disease, I'm easily distracted. 
I also have difficulty reading, for more than an hour at a time.
This means that magazines get abandoned mid-read, wherever I happen to be at the time, and I'll usually forget to find and finish them.

So when my husband went to his office on Monday (yes, he was at work on January 2nd!), I sat down with a cup of coffee and a large stack of magazines.
That stack of magazines isn't gone yet, but it is steadily shrinking.
And I found a lovely surprise in one of them.
I was quoted in the May/June issue of Artists Magazine, on page 16.
It was quite a nice feeling, as an emerging or new artist, to see my words in print - in an international art magazine!
It's on the right in this photo, second after the red subtitle:

This magazine has social media accounts, where they occasionally ask a question directed to their artist-readers.
Called "The Ask", this feature allows artists from around the world to reply to the same specific question. 
My replies have been featured several times on their Facebook and Instagram pages, but never before in print.

Are you wondering what my quoted reply was, in this magazine?
It was my response to the following question:
"What's your favorite painting series by a famous artist?"
My reply - from last spring - actually relates to a watercolour I painted this past autumn; the one that won a First Prize in a Montréal-wide art contest just last month!:
"Cézanne's nearly lifelong series of paintings of Montagne Sainte-Victoire.
He interpreted the different light and moods of the mountain over time and captured the particular luminosity of Provence.
I've hiked to the summit, and it still inspires me to think I may have walked in the same places as he did!"
- SANDRA WOODS

I'm happy that I only found this printed quotation now, because my First Prize painting last month was of the Montagne Sainte-Victoire.
Painted from reference photos that I took on that same trip to Provence, 20 years ago!
I remember telling my husband: "Some day I'll paint this mountain, too."
We're both long-time museum hounds and art lovers, so we already knew of Paul Cézanne's affection for this beautiful mountain landscape.
And I love the fact that I 'found' my words about it in an art magazine, exactly a month after my own painting of that mountain won an award.
How perfect is that?

What a roller-coaster year this has been, as an emerging artist in her 50s who only began learning to paint - and even to sketch/draw - last year.
Particularly because this all started as a DIY approach to help me deal with several symptoms of my rare disease - and to raise awareness of chronic pain.
First as a form of movement-therapy for chronic neuropathic (nerve) pain in my right hand & arm, along with bone & joint issues, skin problems, spasms, tremors, and more.
Also as brain plasticity training, to hopefully prevent any worsening of the 'mild cognitive impairment' caused by this disease; Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS, formerly called Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy or RSD).
Just how good year was it?
From January through March I had a watercolor in a group exhibition at a gorgeous historic site, then in May three of my watercolors were juried into a group exhibition at an art gallery in downtown Montréal.

Also in May, I was presented with a certificate for having won the 2021 national Art Awards of the Canadian Pain Society; the award ceremony had been delayed by the pandemic.
Throughout the summer I participated in the cross-disciplinary "What the Pop" series of events showcasing emerging artists in & around Montréal; with musicians, performing artists, visual artists, and other creatives.
This culminated in a one-day outdoor art show, on the grounds of a popular microbrewery, which was fantastically successful for me; it was lovely to meet so many people, after painting mostly alone during the pandemic.

Also in August I was featured in a news piece in the largest weekly newspaper in the province, for how how I use art to raise awareness of chronic pain and of CRPS:

"What the Pop! free pop-up art exhibition...", by Anthony Bonaparte, The Suburban
Another 3 of my watercolors were included in a group exhibition in September, and in October this art website was launched - feel free to add a comment on the "Guestbook" page here, by the way!
In November I submitted a just-completed painting for a Montréal-wide art contest... and it ended up winning First Prize in the Amateur Adult Artist category for Watercolour & Gouache works!
At a Gala Art Awards on December 2nd, I was presented with a framed First Prize award certificate by one of Montréal's City Councillors.

That prize-winning watercolor was then exhibited at the stunning Pierrefonds Library until just before the holidays.
In addition to these in-person art exhibitions, a number of my watercolors were included in virtual or online art shows throughout the year.
And finally... On December 30th my first commissioned painting was picked up (it has an almost "Where's Waldo" vibe, for the figures!); I was so excited that I completely forgot to get a photo of the painting with its new owner, as is the tradition among artists I know.
I literally couldn't have imagined any better, for only the second year since I first picked up a paintbrush, or even a sketching pencil...
It has truly been a roller-coaster ride, never knowing what's around the bend.
As we head into the New Year, I wish you many happy moments in 2023!
To close, I'm sharing my favourite painting of this year...

I received a unique and artistic gift for Christmas this year, from my sister.
It's a "Paint Your Own Cookie" food-art kit, created by a local artisan-baker.
The shortbread cookie comes with a design outline stamped onto it in black, a food-grade paintbrush, and 5 dots of colour.
You paint colours onto the cookie using the palette provided at the bottom of the design outline, using the cookie as the canvas.
I wasn't able to get very creative as there wasn't much colour in each well of the palette, but it was still fun to do. Thanks, V!

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, a blessed Kwanza, a joyous New Year! Whatever you celebrate - or don't - I wish you a comforting holiday period.
I've opted to 'close' my at-home art studio for the holidays, to spend time with loved ones who're off work, so I'm going to share with you what I've been painting over the past couple of weeks.
These aren't very good photos of my latest watercolours, snapped with my phone, but they'll still give you an idea of what I mean...
I painted several similar historic buildings in our almost-European Old Montréal district, using two different watercolour approaches, based on MANY photos I've taken in and around the city this year.
My aim is more for the style of the first watercolour, a 'looser' and less detailed take on these gorgeous domed buildings.
For certain iconic local landmarks, though, I find myself still wanting to add detail - as in the second painting.
It's a delicate balance of simplifying a composition, while providing sufficient visual clues for a specific building to be recognizable.
You'll probably be seeing more historic sites in my paintings, throughout 2023. There are many historic buildings along my cycing routes, set in forests and gardens, so I'll still be doing plein-air nature paintings next summer - off the back of my bicycle - while occasionally integrating a historic site.
As I looking through my photos of historic  buildings, to plan these paintings, I realized just how thankful I am to live in a city with such beautiful architecture. 
We have buildings dating back to the 1600s, some of the oldest on this continent.
I'm reminded once again how lucky I am, to have such fantastic opportunities for painting right here in my hometown; I'm within cycling distance to forests, farms, island shorelines, beaches, even a a vineyard!
On that note, my theme for the holidays this year is Thankfulness. For my loved ones - family and friends, for all the beauty around me, and for the opportunities I've been granted this year... More on that will follow on New Year's Day!
In the meantime, all the best for ths holiday season.

This week I picked up some treats for myself, while helping others at the same time.
My local Artists Circle holds an auction at our annual holiday get-together, to raise funds for a local community organization.
Members can donate extra or unused art supplies, art books or magazines that they've read, new or nearly-new household items, and more - things that other members might find useful.
My bids won several old watercolour books, donated by a long-time artist and instructor who recently retired.
It'll be a while before I get to any of these, as I already have quite a backlog of art books to read, but I just couldn't pass these up. 
Isn't this a lovely way to raise money for our community, and to re-house books and other objects?
On that note, I'd like to wish you a happy and healthy holiday period and all the best for 2023!