Max's love of bird watching inspires his art making for Paint the Town art exhibit in Annapolis Royal

Max loves birds. Watching them, writing about them and drawing them. His obsession with bird watching has inspired all aspects of his life, including his art making here at Beach Rose Cottage.This is Max's Common Loon drawing made using watercolor pencils we brought from NYC.  And this is the piece that Max has chosen to exhibit with his mom in the "Paint The Town" artists exhibition this weekend in Annapolis Royal. The plastic Common Loon that Max picked up at a yard sale in Granville Ferry last week for $5...(there was an astonishing amount of garden ornaments for sale). Whatever inspires a piece of art, is worth the price! I guess especially if your parents (Kerry here) are paying. :)

Below: Max's "Common Loon" (top right) and his "Mallard" watercolour pencil drawing submissions for the Paint The Town exhibition in Annapolis Royal on August 21st and 22nd, 2010.

Natalie Forrestall Memorial Children Art Prize at The EX

     Every year I organize a prize in our mother's name: The Natalie Forrestall Memorial Children's Art Prize. We sponsor this prize at The Annapolis County Exhibition's art competition. The Ex, as all the locals call it, is the BIG county fair and something my mother and grandmother loved going to, and taking us all to every August. Going to the Ex was (and is) one of the highlights of fun for kids summers in Western Nova Scotia.
     Our dad sponsors two of the prizes as memorial prizes for our grandmother Esther Forrestall and mom, Natalie Forrestall; the best watercolour and the best watercolor in show. And as a group, my brother Frank, my sister, Renee and I get together and buy some good quality art supplies to give as a prize for the best piece of children's art in the under age 8 category. This year the prize (which will be judged and decided on today) will include canvases, acrylic paint, craypas, watercolor pad, sketch books, watercolor pencils, brushes etc...In this area of the province, it's very difficult to find good quality art supplies, so this is our way of putting a nice and varied supply into the hands of a child who loves to make art.

It is also a small way of ours of acknowledging our wonderful mother, who was an art teacher for many years in Fredericton, New Brunswick, and helped support the family as my father painted. Our mother was a very talented painter and the woman who encouraged all of us to paint, draw and celebrate life by looking at and making art every day. To you mom!

A couple of entries in the drawing category August 2009.

And the 2010 winner of the Natalie Forrestall Memorial Art Basket is Jacob 

with his winning drawing of a birdhouse (below).

---Monica Forrestall

Artful walks and dinnertime talks: Happy (Summer) days are here again!

Dad  came down for a nice long visit for the past week. We enjoyed wonderful visits and meals with Kerry, Max and I at our home and spent time all over Annapolis Royal for Natal day activities like the Farmer's Market.

Tom Forrestall, Susan Tileston, ARCAC (Annapolis Royal Community Arts Council) 

volunteer table at The Farmer's Market.

Tom Forrestall and our neighbour Lorraine Beswick's Floral Arrangements

 booth at The Anapolis Royal Farmer's Market. 

Dinner at Cindy and Tom's (Farfetched owners) new Annapolis Royal cottage dinner Friday night was a  delicious and amazing culinary and design journey to Thailand. Cindy is the most amazing cook, who has perfected Thai cooking with Annapolis Royal sourced ingredients. 

Dad got to the Bay of Fundy and was inspired by one scene to make many sketches for a possible big painting this winter. The Annapolis Valley area is really the place that holds his heart.
Kerry helped make dinners of Jonathan's lobsters and Bay of Fundy scallops that I picked up from the fishmonger at the market. Max and dad hunted for crabs under the seaweed on our rocky beach.  Max found a new use for my kitchen tongs---big crab grabbers for transporting to the "crab house".

Dad and Max on a rocky beach in off the Bay of Fundy.

Conversation flowed about family updates, future plans for fun, Keilor Bentley and the books Kerry has brought to read, one being the life of Picasso. My brother, Frank Forrestall made it down for a couple of days with his daughters Jessica and Gwen and Max is crazy about his cousins. Winkie and Miles came over one night and our table expanded to nine, although someone had to sit on a rocking chair. Miles' stories were hilarious, he is the absolute best story teller. His stories of "Little Joe" have to be written down. They are a short story or a book, to say the least.

--Monica Forrestall

Nova Scotia fam time

One of my favorite family photos, that I set up in 1987. The whole family is here. From left; Renee (seated), Curphey, me (Monica), Jack, William and wife Anne, Tom Forrestall, (seated front) Natalie Forrestall (mom) and Frank.

Happy Father's Day to our dad and grand dad, Tom Forrestall

Dearest Dad,

We love you dad.  You are the inspiration and love of all of our lives, dad!
Your love and loyalty define who you are. Your talent and hard work inspires all of us every day!

We start and end with the family! (Anthony Brandt)

(from left): Monica, Renee, Jack, proud dad, our loving mother Natalie, Curphey (in mom's arms) Bobby (the bob-tailed cat) and William circa 1968.

xxxooo

Families are the compass that guide us. They are the inspiration to reach great heights, and our comfort when we occasionally falter. Brad Henry


Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible -- the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family.

Virginia Satir 


Your family and your love must be cultivated like a garden. Time, effort, and imagination must be summoned constantly to keep any relationship flourishing and growing.

Jim Rohn

You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them.
Desmond Tutu

No matter what you've done for yourself or for humanity, if you can't look back on having given love and attention to your own family, what have you really accomplished?

Elbert Hubbard



---Monica Forrestall

Day of sketching: Renee and Tom Forrestall and dear old friend Don Baker

After Renee's gala unveiling of the commissioned altar piece Renee designed for a new church, she and dad and dad's dear old friend Don Baker went on a sketching trip recently. Here are the two small paintings Renee made and the double watercolor dad created that lovely, sunny, joy filled afternoon.

Renee's painting of dad (right) and Don Baker (left) sketching a seaside scene.

Renee's smaller (warm up) sketch of scene. She pointed out a porcupine, far right, who entered and sauntered through the scene unexpectedly.

Tom Forrestall's watercolors that afternoon. He plans on these two being exhibited as one piece, 

framed together. Two views of one scene.

Renee says, "This is a journal sketch, in oil- I just sit & paint whatever comes

by, so a guy came along & took off his pants & jumped into the frigid ocean, some hikers walked by, others climbed the huge rocks in the distance, then a giant porcupine came along and looked at everyone, turned around and went back."

--Monica Forrestall

Frank Forrestall meets Moby Dick

 My brother Frank is a very talented animation artist, and for the past few months has been working with the 3-D animation team doing some of the special effects for a new Moby Dick movie, starring William Hurt as Captain Ahab and Ethan Hawk as Starbuck. This past week Frank was describing working on a 3_D Computer generated  (CG) model that will stand in for a scene for the film that was far too dangerous for an actor to fully create: Captain Ahab's final confrontation with the whale.
Frank is working out of a temporary studio quarters fora few months in downtown Halifax. The film was shot last summer in the town of Lunenberg, which stood in for the town of Nantucket, where the book "Moby-Dick" by Herman Melville was set.
Although Frank enjoys working on his own independent projects in his studio, working with this same team of animators he has worked with in the past (on kids shows like Poko) is something he loves doing. The comraderie of "working as a team is a lot of fun", Frank said.
--Monica Forrestall