In the news

At the end of last month I participated in an art therapy workshop, designed for artists (pun intended). This virtual/live event was presented by Montréal-based ELAN, the English Language Arts Network, 

To be clear, the two photos I've posted here are exercises rather than finished artworks.
The first photo was my creation during a "centering exercise", meant to let each of us listen to our bodies and minds - and then identify any immediate needs that seemed to arise during the activity.
My mind and body seemed to be sending me a message to a) get off of ZOOM meetings for the day (which I couldn't do at that point as I had additional ZOOM meeting from 1700 to 1830 for a chronic pain volunteer program) and b) get more sleep.

The second image resulted from a two-step "scribble exercise", in which you add colour to what you "find" or "notice" after you've scribbled in pen or pencil for three minutes - while listening to calming music. What did I "find" in my scribbles?
What I saw were nature scenes, of course! It felt as though my body and mind were telling me to go back into the forest near my home, and walk along the stream there. The art therapist noticed that my duck resembled a child's rubber-duck bath toy much more than an actual duck, so she suggested that a warm bath might be beneficial.

It was an interesting workshop, primarily focused on creative ways to listen to our bodies and to calm our minds. These skills are also important for chronic pain management, so I may well search out similar ideas as tools to help me deal with the multiple symptoms of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) - and to share with chronic pain patients through my volunteer activities and my Art Despite Pain initiative.

I've chosen to post this on the cusp of the holiday period, as a reminder to seek out activities that you find calming and restful. Whether that's chatting with loved ones, crafting, drawing, exercise & sports, painting, reading, sketching, writing, or anything else, I hope you're able to take some time over the holidays to do something just for yourself.

All the best for the holidays, and for 2024!

By mid-December in Montréal we usually have a good layer of snow on the ground, so I'd been planning to try plein-air painting in snow - for the first time - today. Unfortunately Mother Nature had other almost-winter plans, and a wave of wet and mild weather melted our snow overnight. There's even an Environment Canada "rain warning" in effect for Monday, when we'd instead expect "snowfall warnings" in this area.

So I'm hoping for not only a White Christmas this year, but also for mild enough weather for me to attempt plein-air (outdoor) painting with my watercolours. If the weather's too cold, of course, the water I use for painting will freeze. 

Whatever it is that you're hoping for, as spring draws to a close and winter begins, I hope that you get your wish. Happiness and health above all, for you and your loved ones, no matter which holidays you celebrate - or none.

And enjoy this photo I snapped in our yard, while we still had some snow!

Last week, during Miami Art Week, Pantone announced the "Color of the Year" for 2024. The trendiest colour for next year has been named as... "Pantone 13-1023 TCX", or "Peach Fuzz". 
As soon as I saw the colour swatch, I realized that I'd seen this shade just a few days earlier - in the last watercolour that I'd painted!
This colour is described by Pantone as:
"A warm and cozy shade highlighting our desire for togetherness with others or for enjoying a moment of stillness and the feeling of sanctuary this creates ... Peach Fuzz presents a fresh approach to a new softness." ~ From the Pantone website.

I was aiming to express a sense of peacefulness and sun-kissed warmth in my painting, so their description could fit.
Apparently I was just a bit ahead of the curve in creating this now-fashionable shade with my watercolour pigments. Or more likely, this was simply a coincidence.
Either way, enjoy this painting of what I call the "Sentinel" tree. It’s lives in a forest clearing within walking distance of my home, and I walk past it often.

The special Holiday Art Exhibition at the Trestler House national historic site (La Maison Trestler, in French) is drawing to a close, and will wrap on December 19, 2023. There's still time to get out to Vaudreuil-Dorion for a visit, just a few minutes west of Montréal Island.

The site includes not only the gallery spaces, but also a local history museum recounting the past 225 years of the area. It's well worth a visit, as are its stunning lakefront grounds.

The final day of this art show will also mark the end of the site's 225th anniversary celebrations, as Trestler House will then close until after the New Year; it won't reopen until January 2024. 

The current exhibition features holiday-themed pieces from thirty or so local visual artists, in a variety of mediums. My watercolour painting - of pinecones, pine boughs, and red berries - entitled "Festive boughs", is just one example.

Opening hours for this exhibition are Tuesdays through Fridays from 0900 to noon, as well as from 1300 to 1630.

On Sundays the opening hours are from 1300 to 1600. Trestler House is closed on both Saturdays and Mondays.

As they host occasional private events, Trestler House suggests calling before each visit to ensure that they’ll be open: 450.455.6290.

La Maison Trestler

85 chemin de la Commun

Vaudreuil-Dorion, Québec J7V 2C3 

Email: info@trestler.qc.ca

I have an event coming up that's art-related, but not in a way that you might expect.
Earlier this year I presented a 3-hour guest lecture to students in a pre-medicine program at a local university, on "Perception & Pain", as one class in their 300-level psychology course. It was such a success that the students asked their professor to have me give another guest lecture. 
My second 3-hour talk was on "The Limbic System", as part of a 200-level psychology course "Brain & Behaviour".
That second class covered the basics of the Limbic System, and how it relates to anxiety, chronic pain, depression, PTSD, and other health issues.

In two weeks I'll be giving a shortened one-hour talk at the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), here in Montréal, based on my second pre-med lecture.
My new presentation will focus on the body's Limbic System, and how it affects chronic pain. You may have heard the Limbic System referred to as the "Fight or Flight" response, or as the body's "Stress Response" to danger and other challenges.
This talk, for the MUHC's Alan Edwards Pain Management Unit (AEPMU), will include my art practice and other forms of art.
I'll be describing many of the techniques and 'tools' that I use to calm my own Fight or Flight response, to try to calm my high-impact chronic pain from Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS).
Some of these tools, of course, are art-creation and art-appreciation - along with listening to different forms of music, and even dancing.
In 2021 I began learning to paint and sketch specifically because of my rare pain condition, so I'm looking forward to sharing this more positive aspect of my pain-patient journey with others.

This is another example of how my Art Despite Pain #ArtDespitePain initiative combines my art practice with my volunteer chronic pain advocacy, awareness, and education activities.
Unfortunately this event is reserved for team members and patients of the AEPMU pain clinic, so I've hidden the log-in information on the hospital network's poster.

I’m truly honoured to have my chronic pain awareness activities and #ArtDespitePain initiative featured in the Fall 2023 Newsletter of the Canadian Pain Society (CPS). The CPS is Canada’s national organization for pain science, pain research, and pain medicine, bringing together clinicians, researchers, students, trainees, and people like me who live with chronic pain and advocate for others still suffering with pain:

"The CPS connects healthcare professionals, scientists, researchers, policymakers, and people with lived experience through evidence-based education.
Our purpose is to drive innovation through advancement and advocacy and revolutionize access and care for those living with pain.
The Canadian Pain Society is a chapter of the International Association for the Study of Pain, and “has been a leader in pain research, education, and advocacy since our inauguration in 1974.
It’s a feature of the almost 50-year history that the Society has retained the Chapter’s core belief of fostering an all-inclusive national network of multi-disciplinary members.
Championed by a history of distinguished presidents from a wealth of disciplines, we continually cultivate our contributions to evidence-based education in the face of ongoing voids in health care.” ~ CPS website

The current CPS Newsletter features two of my recent patient advocacy and awareness activities, both part of my Art Despite Pain initiative to increase awareness of chronic pain through art. This initiative uses my art practice and art-learning as means to help manage my own pain condition – and the resulting artworks are applied to raising awareness of pain, for all who suffer with pain conditions.

My Art Despite Pain activities encompass my volunteer work on projects with organizations including the CPS, the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists, the Pain Science Division of the Canadian Physiotherapy Association, and university health faculties across Canada.

You can read the CPS Newsletter piece here, as a series of four screenshots, as the actual Newsletter is restricted to members of the CPS: 

​Screenshot 1:

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Screenshot 2:

Screenshot 3:

Screenshot 4:

Thanks so much for stopping by, and feel free to leave a comment over in the Guestbook section - I always love to hear from you.

On Remembrance Day I'm thinking of family members and absent friends ...
And all those still in uniform - and their loved ones.
Mostly of my dad, who proudly served on the HMCS Restigouche in the era when she was a new cutting-edge vessel of the Royal Canadian Navy.
Also of my great aunt Flossie Ross, one of the rare women Pipers of WWII, serving with the Canadian Women's Army Corps.
And my uncle Geoff Turrell who served in the British Army during WWII, fighting Rommel's troops in the deserts of North Africa, in horrific conditions.
Of a younger friend gone far too soon, Sgt Chris Karigiannis, 1975-2007.
Lest We Forget.

The first Monday of November is CRPS Awareness Day, an appropriate way to begin National Pain Awareness Week here in Canada.
Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) is best known for "excess and prolonged pain and inflammation that can occur following an injury or other medical event such as surgery, trauma, stroke, or heart attack.
Although CRPS can occur anywhere in the body, it usually affects an arm, leg, hand, or foot...
If you have CRPS you will have changing combinations of spontaneous pain or excess pain that is much greater than normal following something as mild as a touch.
Other symptoms include changes in skin color, temperature, and/or swelling on the arm or leg below the site of injury.
Although CRPS improves over time, eventually going away in most people, the severe or prolonged cases are profoundly disabling.
Because of the varied symptoms, the fact that symptoms may change over time, and the difficulty finding a positive cause in some cases, CRPS is hard to treat.
There is no treatment that rapidly cures CRPS."
There are also "associated cognitive, physical, and emotional symptoms" with chronic CRPS, particularly after several years with this condition - including the CRPS-related mild cognitive impairment that ended my bioethics career in 2018.
This is why I began learning to paint in 2021, as a form of brain-plasticity training for my cognitive issues as well as movement-therapy for my severely-affected right hand and arm.
My Art Despite Pain initiative uses the resulting artworks raise awareness of CRPS and other chronic pain conditions.
The information quoted above is from the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH):

NINDS webpage for CRPS
https://www.ninds.nih.gov/health-information/disorders/complex-regional-pain-syndrome#toc-who-is-more-likely-to-get-complex-regional-pain-syndrome- 

The Trestler House historic site (La Maison Trestler, in French) is celebrating its 225th anniversary this year, and has chosen to cap off 2023 with a special Holiday Exhibition. I'm honoured to have been included in this event, and to have one of my watercolours on display in such a stunning setting.

Running from October 26 through December 19, 2023, this exhibition features the works of more than thirty local artists in a variety of mediums. And in keeping with the theme of this art show each piece has a holiday motif, including my watercolour painting of pinecones and berries entitled "Festive boughs". 

Opening hours for this exhibition are Tuesdays through Fridays from 0900 to noon, and then from 1300 to 1630, or on Sundays from 1300 to 1600. Trestler House is closed on Saturdays and Mondays. As they host occasional private events, Trestler House suggests calling before each visit to ensure that they’ll be open: 450.455.6290.

Although we don't have snow on the ground yet in Montréal, I've posted a photo that I took of Trestler House last winter as it looks so festive with the surrounding snow!

La Maison Trestler, 85 chemin de la Commune, Vaudreuil-Dorion, Québec J7V 2C3 
Email: info@trestler.qc.ca
Website: www.trestler.qc.ca

This weekend I'm participating in the juried 2003 "Gathering of Artisans" in Montréal, being hosted in the lovely lakeside community of Baie d'Urfé. Taking place today from 1000 to 1600, and on Sunday from 1000 to 1500, this is a fantastic opportunity to come out and meet local artisans and artists. 

The art and artisan fair is being held in two adjacent buildings, the Baie d'Urfé Curling Club and The Red Barn recreational centre. My booth features a number of my watercolour paintings as well as  information about chronic pain, as part of my Art Despite Pain (#ArtDespitePain) pain awareness initiative.

Feel free to drop by and say hi! I'm in The Red Barn, just past the big Canadian flag hanging from the ceiling. There's a lovely vibe here this weekend, with a few food trucks set up between the two buildings and already plenty of people dropping by to chat.

With more than thirty-five juried artisans and artists, and a number of food and other vendors, there are about fifty booths set up so far!

Free parking for this event is available at the Whiteside Taylor Centre/Library (20551 Lakeshore Road and then take the sidewalk towards the right) and the Curling Club parking lot (63 Churchill Road, Baie d'Urfé).