Hello world! Welcome to my website. In the days that I have spent working on evachristensenart.com… and then reworking and then deleting it all in frustration (thank you to the wonderful people at WordPress – the premium support package has definitely paid for itself in dividends) – I kept thinking about what I would talk about in my first post. So many thoughts and now here I am, sitting down to type and it’s a little tricky to get started.

I “did art” my entire life up until university and then I took a break so long it seemed like all of those memories were part of a different person’s life. School – biology, chemistry, physics – wasn’t conducive to artistic inspiration, and once I started working neither was the one bedroom condo where we lived for ten years with two cats hell bent on knocking paintbrushes off tables and drinking paint water. When my husband and I finally moved into our house four years ago I declared one of the bedrooms to be my art room, set it up with a brand new drawing table and easel and then… let it sit dormant for a few more years.

It’s not that I haven’t had any inspiration or any urge to create in that time. An idea would come and I’d think oh that’s a good one, too bad I don’t know where any of my art stuff is. I even managed to complete a few paintings here and there from sheer force of will, but I wasn’t too thrilled with them.

This really changed for me this past January. I completed a painting of our view from the top of the La Cloche mountains from our epic backcountry hike at Killarney park in the summer of 2017. When it was complete I posted it a photo of it on Facebook for the first time. Two things happened. One, I got a lot of positive feedback and I was somehow able to shake the feeling that unless my painting looked just like reality, it was a fail. Instead, the Killarney painting captured all the good feelings from our trip. Two, since I had finally gone to the effort of getting my paints and brushes out of retirement and literally dusting them off, I quickly completed another painting of our sweet vizsla Clicquot at Algonquin park the summer before.

And then everything snowballed. I found myself making more and more time for painting on weekends and in the evening after work, I decided to make a real effort to conquer acrylic paints, and I also made the decision to only paint the things that matter to me. I started an Instagram account to share my artwork (@evachristensenart). And I realized that as much as I enjoyed painting in high school, when there was a grade attached to creativity, I always felt like I had to make my artistic decisions based on getting the best mark possible.

What does it mean to paint for myself? I paint when inspiration strikes me, and when I need a break I take one. I like to paint what I see, what is real, but I am inspired by the things I love – our three dogs and two cats (Teelo, Riggs, Clicquot, Beesa, and Wiggis), experiences captured in photos I have taken, paintings that tell a story, my favourite artists. I like to paint big, and I love colour. I started painting with oils. As it turns out, inspiration begets inspiration. I now have a long running of list of projects – personal and commissions – and I was outgrowing the confines of my Instagram account.

I really want to share my art with the world, and to connect with people through my painting. So without a single technological bone in my body, I signed up for a website on a whim and here we are. I would really like to explore my relationship with art through my blog posts, share a little technical know how for those who are interested, and have a space to really discuss the evolution and inspiration of my work, now that I have finally found my way back to it. 

Thank you for reading!

What inspires you?