Home is Where the Art (Making) is

Dad doing a watercolour at Victoria Beach.

One of the joys of summer time spent together as a family is all the art making we collectively do; both separately and together. From sketching with dad, to creating art works at events like Paint The Town and submitting artwork for art competitions like the Annapolis County Exhibition, to making a short-film that a few members of my family helped work on, the best part of all is that we are together. Here are some photos of some family and our summer art--and film--making.

A watercolour of toadstools I made while participating in the Paint The Town ARCAC benefit
event in Annapolis Royal August 20th and 21st. 

Everyone sketched while we waited for the food to arrive at a local Annapolis Royal restaurant. 

                                                      Dad holding up the portrait I did of him.

Dad sketching Goat Island from Clementsvale side. Gorgeous sunny day, and the seagulls, 

which reside on this side of the island were "talking" so loudly at points dad and I

 couldn't hear each other speak.

                  Max and his local birds color marker drawing which won a second prize ribbon 

                                  at The Annapolis County Exhibition art show.  

Max and his pastel Loon drawing that won a third prize in the children's art category of the art competition at The Annapolis County Exhibition. 

Marie drawing at the First Annual Peace Party in Young's Cove on August 14th.

Liz makes an Origami frog (with me) at the Theme Park. Liz's is the one with the fly on its tongue!

I won a couple of ribbons for a watercolour self-portrait of mine at the Annapolis County Exhibition; a second prize plus a prize for the best watercolour in the show! 

One morning all three of us were making art in our porch studio at the same time. Kerry made some coffee dipped monochromatic pieces, Max was working on a drawing and I was finishing a piece for the Paint The Town show.

Curphey Forrestall is at the moment beginning a large block long mural that he won a big commission for in competition with several other muralists and artists! It will involve scenes of Nova Scotia 

and this project will take him most of the month of  September.  

Frank Forrestall is in post-production on a dark version of a  short film "Jack & Jill" he directed this summer that he describes as a "haunting fable about Love, Death and Spiritual Despair." Curphey Forrestall acted as Art Director while our amazing niece 

Millie Webb did all the hair and make-up. 

http://www.indiegogo.com/Jack-Jill-Short-Film

Renee was one of 8 artists chosen chosen to take part in CBC Radio's Sharing The View calendar 2012. Here is some of the information off the CBC website plus a link

 below to a podcast interview of Renee speaking about her work. 

"Announcing the Final Eight!

Wow, what a challenge, to choose eight painters from among the 137 imaginative submissions! Thanks to our Marquee Artists for the time and care they dedicated to the selection process.
The eight artists chosen to take part in Information Mornings 2012 Sharing the View Calendar are:
Virgina McCoy, painting the Inverness racetrack.
Wayne Boucher painting an Annapolis Royal sunrise.
Al Chaddock painting Mahone Bay
Renee Forrestall painting Peggy's Cove.
Sarah Jane Conklin painting a fall landscape.
Alan Bateman painting the fields of the Annapolis Valley.
Carol Pye painting the church at Grand Pre.
Darren Bennett painting the Commercial Cable Office in Canso."

http://www.cbc.ca/informationmorningns/features/sharingtheview/

A fam sketch trip resulted in dad's beautiful watercolour (top left), Renee's wonderful oil painting (top right),
my unfinished watercolour (bottom left) and Max's landscape watercolour (bottom right).

My finally finished watercolour of Queen's Anne's Lace in front of a lobster boat for sale at Victoria Beach.

Renee sketching at Victoria Beach in August.

Max stands next to his watercolour of a Tree Swallow on the French Basin trail at the Silent auction
of The Paint The Town benefit event in Annapolis Royal in August.

I'm standing with some of the watercolours I made for Paint The Town art benefit in August,
which I did  with Max this year. The watercolour closest to my head is of Max bird watching.

And I'm currently writing and illustrating a fun children's chapter booklet 

as a project for a restaurant chain. It will be distributed in 120 restaurants all over the United States. Exciting!

--Monica Forrestall

"For The Love of Art" Natalie Forrestall memorial Art Prize for Best Child Art Entry at The Annapolis County Exhibition 2011

Renee, dad and I gathered up art supplies and an art book to put together the prize we give annually in our dear mother's honor. Since mom was a children's art teacher, and always encouraged and inspired us to make art, for the last six years since she passed away, we have done this.

I delivered this years bountiful basket of sketchbooks, drawing material, watercolor paint, paper, brushes etc...to the Annapolis County Exhibition Art Show on Thursday, August 18th. Dad very generously gave a signed copy of his retrospective art book. It's such a wonderful thing to be able to do for the budding artists of the valley, who have no places to buy quality and varied art materials like these. I got to see the winning entry, a lovely charcoal still life of pears. Well done!

Here is a photo of dad and I with the basket, before I delivered the prize.

The note I included in the basket for the winner.

And here is a photo of the winning artwork, a pastel drawing of two pears by Kenzie Taylor. Well done, and congratulations!

Tom Forrestall has two flower themed painting in show Flora at Gallery 78

Dad's  beautiful egg tempera paintings of two flower themed works are on display for the next few weeks at Gallery 78 in Fredericton.

There are a couple of egg temperas of dad's in the show.

Tom Forrestall's painting hangs at The National Gallery of Canada

Here are a few shots of an early painting of dad's hanging in the National Gallery of Canada.

A shot of the installation.

And another.

Renee Forrestall's contemporary portrait of Queen Elizabeth II is in a show of royals portraiture at The Beaverbrook Gallery in Fredericton, New Brunswick

A special exhibition in celebration of the recent marriage of Prince William and Miss Catherine (Kate) Middleton and their royal visit to Canada headlines the Beaverbrook Art Gallery’s summer program. On view are portraits from the Beaverbrook’s permanent collection that depict British kings and queens, such as Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Margaret, Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, Queen Elizabeth I, King Edward VIII, and others, as well as various associated members of British nobility. Among the artists represented are Edward Irvine Halliday, Luciano Guarnieri, Walter Sickert, Graham Sutherland, George Romney, and Nicholas Hilliard.

Also included are contemporary portraits of the British monarchy by Canadian artists Joe Fafard, Christopher Pratt, Yvon Gallant, and Renée Forrestall, along with a humourous recent portrait of Their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, by contemporary Canadian icon Charles Pachter.

Tom Fairs exhibition gets a rave review in the New York Times!

     The exhibition of Tom Fairs sketchbook drawings at KS Art gets a rave review in the New York Times on June 2nd, 2011.
Follow the link below to the story.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/arts/design/tom-fairs-drawings.html?scp=1&sq=Tom%20Fairs&st=cse

An Observing Eye: Artist Tom Fairs pencil drawings show

For those with an appreciation for the patience of an artful observer, an artist with a passion for drawing from nature has an exhibition of his sketchbook drawings.

My interest is primarily in things seen: landscape, interiors, still life where, in the light of the imagination, the commonplace may be transformed into the extraordinary. The ever- present transforming principle moves me. I have no theories, no special techniques and no information to communicate. I try to achieve a brief glimpse of the implicit order that lies beneath what we perceive as reality.
- Tom Fairs 

Tom Fair lived a life highly suspicious and with a complete lack of interest in showing his work. He turned down any suggestion to show his exquisite, complex pencil drawings in his lifetime. To many artists, who spent their careers working to get their work out of their studios and in front of appreciative eyes, it is inexplicable.
After his death, in 2007, Tom's sketchbooks of drawings were given to a friend, Bobbie, who appreciated and treasured them. And was determined to find a gallerist with the vision to recognize their importance.

Tom spent most of his career as a teacher, and when he retired in 1987, he devoted the last twenty years of his life to making his own art. KS ART gallery website
http://www.kerryschuss.com/cexrelease.html

"Each vividly realized scene is a fresh proposition, with its own felicitous arrangement of forms and its own set of exuberant notational marks. Fairs was an extraordinarily inventive draftsman, with a repertoire of wavering contour lines, staccato dashes and thick scribbles with which to conjure not only the city's compacted jumble of nature and culture, but the sounds of rustling leaves and far away traffic, the smells of coal smoke and grass, and even the colors of wet earth and overcast skies. Every encounter with the world generated a burst of individualized loops, squiggles, and shadings, which speak of an unselfconscious absorption in a place at the moment of its depiction and give the works a physical and emotional presence out of proportion to their scale."