Original Painting “New Year’s Eve” Sold

New Year’s Eve by Deb Chaney (9” x 12”)

This post is to celebrate the sale of my original abstract painting called New Year’s Eve. Like Seraphina iii, the painting mentioned last week, this was sold during the Gabriola Thanksgiving Studio Tour in November. I didn’t get a chance to meet the collector but would like to thank them for their support. And I think it’s great that we’re posting about this painting so soon after New Year’s Eve!

About This Painting

This painting was inspired by playing around and experimenting with different media and exploring what we can do by integrating them with words and numbers in different ways. The painting was created in front of an art workshop, so it was also inspired by joy and exuberance – as evidenced by adding FUN in all caps.

The colours I’m playing with in this abstract painting are iridescent gold, white, and black. As this is a mixed-media artwork, I’m also using a sand texture medium as well as an encaustic formula that I was teaching my students. The encaustic creates a very waxy and iridescent translucent layer. In the lower-left corner, you can see small circles over the word FUN. They’re textured indentations that look like real wax, even though they’re not.

For some of the text, I used India ink as well as vinyl lettering. And on another layer, I also applied micaceous gold, so in the bottom-right and upper-left corners you can see a mica gold texture. And finally, in the centre of the painting, there is a lot of sand. 

This painting is part of my Little Gems Series, a prolific series of small paintings that are created for fun, with joy, and for creative practice.

Purchase a print here: https://www.saatchiart.com/print/Painting-New-Year-s-Eve/499285/4990087/view

See more paintings in this series here: https://www.saatchiart.com/art-collection/painting/Litte-Gems-Small-9-x12-Paintings/499285/160111/view

Prints and Original Artwork for Sale Online

This painting’s image is available in a high-resolution digital format for licensing for your interior design projects, TV and Film Sets, or personal art needs and print projects. Please contact the artist directly via email at info@debchaney.com for licensing agreement and costs.

The Process of Painting “A Love Letter to Myself”

A Love Letter to Myself by Deb Chaney (30” x 40”)

With my first Gabriola Studio Tour in the rearview mirror, I’m still moved by what a fantastic experience it was. And seeing how interested people are in the artistic process, I’m encouraged to share more “behind the scenes” posts. Therefore, this is the story behind my abstract painting, A Love Letter of Myself.

Mastering Mixed-Media Abstract Painting

This abstract expressionist painting began in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. During that time, I offered an online course called Mastering Mixed-Media Abstract Painting, or MMAP for short. It was 2 months long and it all took place on Zoom – which was necessary as people signed up from all over the world.

The course consisted of 3 projects and there was so much that I wanted to share with people within that short time. But in the context of A Love Letter to Myself, I’d like to focus on 2 key overarching ideas that I sought to impart to students in the workshop.

The Fundamentals of Abstract Expressionism

My first goal was that I really wanted to give them the fundamentals of abstract painting. These concepts would empower them to create paintings that support their ideas and communicate what they want to say in a visually intelligent and effective way. During this project – and the course itself – they were learning the basic fundamental elements of what you need for abstract painting to succeed as a piece of artwork.

The Mediums and Techniques of Mixed-Media Painting

The second goal I had with my workshop was to have them understand the mediums and techniques used in mixed-media acrylic painting. For example, if you walk into an art supply store and go to the aisle with all the gels and pastes and powders, it can be very daunting and overwhelming. You’ll probably just stand there, staring at the seemingly endless selection, wondering what to choose. And when you do choose something, when do you use it – and how? I didn’t simply want to give them an overview of all the mediums you can combine with acrylics, but rather show them how to really apply them.

I use a lot of different mediums to create really cool effects in heavily layered paintings like A Love Letter to Myself. It was on display during the Thanksgiving Studio Tour and it was actually the first time I’d ever shared it with the public. I got so many positive vibes and comments about it — people really loved it — and the most common question that came up was whether I had used wax. It looks so waxy, so they wondered whether it was an encaustic painting – an ancient technique popular with the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans.

And while it is not an encaustic painting, my technique emulates wax by using translucent acrylics to create layered effects that people think are real wax. And this “encaustic formula”, as I call it, was one of the techniques I shared with my workshop.

The Many (Physical) Layers of Abstract Expressionism

Laying the Foundation

The first step in creating this painting was writing the love letter. I wrote it on my computer, just putting down the free-flowing thoughts of all the things that make me feel good and loved and spiritually nourished — and supported and safe — and give me a sense of belonging. All of these thoughts and ideas went onto the page which I then had printed at Staples on a large engineering print. I had it mirror printed, so the words were reversed – which was critical for the first step. (You can see each step in the slideshow above.)

The next step (in the second picture) was applying a clear gel medium directly onto the words on the engineering print, then turning it over and sticking it face down onto the canvas. Following that, I took the canvas out in the backyard and ran the garden hose over it. Then I took a hard-bristled scrub brush and scrubbed. Then scrubbed some more. (With a 30” x 40” canvas, it was quite the workout!) But what happens is the pulp peels away and the words are left behind. And because they were mirror-printed and pasted facedown, they become legible when the ink is transferred onto the canvas.

Building Layers Upon Layers

After my love letter was transferred onto the canvas, I continued on the journey by adding further layers. The next step, which you can see in the next photo, was handwriting my letter using an acrylic pen. So each layer is a new medium, as you can see I’m mixing paints on my palette in the next photo, which I applied in the next step.

In the 7th picture, you can see me fingerpainting. And in the next 2 shots, I’m adding translucent acrylics and mediums, then laying down another layer of text in order to create these floating words. And this is the technique I most wanted to share with students, where it emulates the transparency of an encaustic painting. Then, in the final shot, I’m once again scrubbing away the pulp to reveal the letters.

The entire process lasted for the duration of the 2-month course and, in fact, I only truly completed the painting a couple of weeks before the open studio on Thanksgiving weekend. After the course, I hung it on the wall and let it gestate until it revealed itself to me and I knew the next step. This waiting period – letting a painting just hang there unfinished – was something I was reluctant to do in the past. But I’m now quite comfortable with it, so it’s just become a step in the process.

Original artwork and prints for sale

The original painting of A Love Letter to Myself is available for sale for $1,800 USD. The price does not include shipping, insurance, and tax. Please email me directly about purchase inquiries.

The painting is not up on Saatchi Art yet, but I’ll update this page as soon as it’s available and the links are online. Until then, you can browse through my collection on Saatchi Art’s online gallery. You can also find many of the paintings in my Little Gems Series on Saatchi Art. 

Saatchi Art offers multiple options to suit your personal tastes or needs. You can choose to have your print on paper or canvas and choose from 4 sizes to best fit your room. You also have the option to have it framed in white, black, or natural wood.

The Story Behind My New Painting “Stats 101”

Stats 101 by Deb Chaney (60” x 40”)

Every painting has a story to tell, and I’d like to share the tale behind this piece of contemporary abstract artwork I recently finished. It’s an acrylic mixed-media painting called Stats 101 and it measures 60” x 40”. 

I think it’s a really fun piece, so I’m eager to share not only the story behind it but to show the creative process and final result as well. Therefore, you can see photos of its various stages during the past year in the gallery further down the page.

It Was a Rainy Day in December…

This painting had its origins last year during the Christmas season. And for anyone familiar with Vancouver, the weather shouldn’t come as a surprise. December is typically quite wet in the city.

It was the end of the semester at UBC (the University of British Columbia) and my daughter was writing her final exam. So, I decided to go down to the campus and hang out while she wrote it. As she sat in the lecture hall, I wandered to the west end of campus and walked down the steep hillside steps to Wreck Beach.

It was raining, but it was really beautiful. And there were actually quite a few people down on the beach. As I strolled along the sand, taking in the lush nature of my surroundings, I happened upon a discarded book. It was a wet, tattered and torn textbook called Understanding Statistics.

My immediate reaction was the feeling I had gotten from my daughter about that whole “first-year” experience you get at university. It’s that early phase in your post-secondary education when you take all these non-elective, core courses outside your major or area of interest. They’re usually survey courses like “Statistics 10” and the farthest thing from joy you can imagine. Totally enjoyable, gruelling, overwhelming, and brutal.

I found it kind of amusing – and perhaps serendipitous – to find this abandoned textbook on the beach. I was compelled to pick it up and started turning its soggy pages. It was, of course, full of these math formulas, differential equations maybe, I wasn’t sure, it’d been so long since I took math. But the way the book and the chapters and the pages were laid out – the words, graphs, equations – it spoke to me from an artistic perspective.

The Relationship Between Mathematics and Contemporary Abstract Expressionism

From an artistic standpoint, math is beautiful. So, I hiked back up the staircase from Wreck Beach and picked up my daughter from her exam – with this dripping-wet copy of Understanding Statistics in my hand. I took it back to Grandma & Grandpa’s for Christmas and set it on the toasty hearth of the fireplace, turning the pages every now and then over the course of the holidays.

The first thing I did when I returned home was paint a series of Little Gems using ripped-out pages from the book for collages. (Read this post or this post to learn more about how I use my Little Gems to develop my art.) And in my opinion, some of those paintings turned out beautifully, having a really edgy, textured contemporary art look to them.

I had this old 60” x 40” frame and also had some canvas lying around, so I borrowed some stretcher bars from my friend Elsa, another artist here on Gabriola Island, then I just started collaging pages and pieces of pages onto the canvas and really digging into the themes and the numbers – and really riding on the energy of how math can be really frustrating, especially when you’re forced to do it in a first-year course you don’t even want to take.

But also, math can be much like art in the way that you’re in the process of figuring things out. And that’s what an abstract painting is. You’re trying to make it all work, trying to balance the marks and lines and gestures – and the whole composition. They’re all part of the equation. You’re wanting to add excitement, but you also need to add areas of negative space to exemplify the exciting bits. So, you find yourself adding new elements and taking things away. And, after a six-month journey of addition and subtraction, I finally finished the painting the week before last.

The Final Result

Meeting with another artist last month – who paints intuitively by following her heart – pushed me to finish the painting. I ended up stencilling the textbook’s title across the front of the painting – Understanding Statistics – which to me, is one big metaphor.

The truth is, I love this painting, and I’m really proud of it. There are so many layers to it and there’s so much thought put into it, and it’s just a really fun piece.

Original Artwork and Prints for Sale Online

The original painting of Stats 101 is available for sale for $5,500 USD. The price does not include shipping, insurance, and tax. Please email me directly about purchase inquiries.

The painting is not up on Saatchi Art yet, but I’ll update this page as soon as it’s available and the links are online. Until then, you can browse through my collection on Saatchi Art’s online gallery. You can also find many of the paintings in my Little Gems Series on Saatchi Art. 

Saatchi Art offers multiple options to suit your personal tastes or needs. You can choose to have your print on paper or canvas and choose from 4 sizes to best fit your room. You also have the option to have it framed in white, black, or natural wood.

Original Painting ‘Clearing Fear’ Featured in the Upcoming Netflix Series The Imperfects

Clearing Fear by Deb Chaney

As I mentioned in a post back in March, Hulu rented 5 of my original paintings for their new horror movie Fresh, starring Daisy Edgar Jones and Sebastian Stan. My mixed media painting Subtle Shift was the first of my pieces to be featured on the show, and I’ll share the others as they appear. 

However, this is not an update on Fresh – but it’s the result of my artwork being in the show. Hulu renting my artwork for its TV series led directly to my abstract paintings being featured on Netflix’s new show, The Imperfects.

The sci-fi drama stars Canadian actress Italia Ricci as Dr. Sydney Burke and Vancouver native Rhianna Jagpal as Abbi Singh. It was mainly filmed in Vancouver, which you may know is often referred to as “Hollywood North” due to all the movies and shows filmed there.

The synopsis reads:

After an experimental gene therapy turns them into monsters, three twenty-somethings band together to hunt down the scientist responsible and force him to make them human again.

Here’s the official Netflix teaser. But be warned, it’s not for the faint of heart – the trailer has profanity and a fair amount of blood and violence. Netflix has given it a TV-MA rating for language, violence, and gore, so it’s not really my taste.

How My Artwork Went From Hulu to Netflix

Source: Netflix

One of the art directors working on Fresh was a wonderful woman named Sarah. She enjoyed working with me and complimented me on my professionalism and how I replied to them quickly and got them what they needed without delay. 

The film and TV industry has a really quick turnaround, with people often needing things “yesterday”. Fortunately, I was aware of this beforehand as my daughter had done some extra work when she was younger, so I’d been on film sets and had a sense of how things worked a little bit. The experience helped me work with the industry and understand what its incredibly hard-working people are coping with.

After Fresh wrapped filming, Sarah moved onto another production. Soon afterward, she gave me a call to say that she’d enjoyed working with me and that she was excited about my art. In fact, she’d printed out most of my portfolio from Saatchi Online Gallery so everyone working on the art set of The Imperfects could choose their favourite paintings.

I was so flattered and excited and grateful for the callback.

Instead of renting my original work – as was done for the Hulu movie – Netflix licensed high-resolution digital images of my paintings. (I think they licensed somewhere between 20 to 30 paintings.) They then printed them onto canvas with a special giclée printer on set.

It’s a good thing they didn’t use my original artwork, because there’s a scene where one of the lead characters punches through one of my paintings. The scene went through multiple retakes, so they kept printing out my painting over and over again. I’m fairly certain the painting in question is New Laylines To Heal The Earth. The original is available for purchase – just promise you won’t put your fist through it. :)

About the Artwork in The Imperfects

Source: Netflix

Even though The Imperfects first season hasn’t been released by Netflix yet, one of my paintings already appears in the trailer! You can see it 40 seconds into the trailer hanging above the fireplace. (It’s mounted sideways – but it’s still wonderful to see it there!) :)

The painting is called Clearing Fear and was painted in 2019. It is acrylic mixed media on canvas and measures 91.4 x 122 cm (36”x48”) and is currently available to rent or purchase via the Surrey Art Gallery Sales and Rentals program.

Original Artwork and Prints for Sale

The original painting of Clearing Fear is available to purchase or rent from the Surrey Art Gallery Sales and Rentals program.

Prints of Clearing Fear are also available on Saatchi Art. You can choose the size, material, and framing to suit your personal taste. Prints come in 4 sizes, on paper or canvas, and you add a frame of white, black, or natural wood.

The “View In A Room” image places the artwork on a wall to give you a sense of its size and how it looks in a room.

New Laylines To Heal The Earth – the original or print – is also available for purchase on Saatchi Art.

My Painting ‘Keep it Real’ is Featured at Free Spirit Art Gallery on Gabriola Island

Keep it Real by Deb Chaney

I am thrilled to announce that my artwork is now featured in the Free Spirit Art Gallery here on beautiful Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Canada. It’s truly an honour and pleasure to be part of this gallery and artist community. I’d like to take this opportunity to share a bit more about Free Spirit Gallery, the woman behind it, and my first piece of artwork featured there.

The Importance of Art Galleries and the Free Spirit Gallery on Gabriola Island

A gallery is more than just a shop with art on its walls. Beyond displaying artwork, it is a place for people to interact – to inquire, collaborate, and get inspired. And everyone I’ve talked with is excited to have a genuine and professional brick & mortar gallery on the island. 

The Free Spirit Studio Gallery & Shop was established last November by a phenomenal woman named Catherine Hallam. She has 20+ years of experience teaching art & design and has been on the island for nearly 10 years. By showcasing the work of emerging and established local artists and artisans, Catherine aims to provide a mutually beneficial platform to bring artists and collectors together.

The Free Spirit Shop is a retail space for local artisans to display and sell their handmade works. The Free Spirit Studio section – launched a couple of months ago – is a space where artists can conduct small workshops and classes for kids and adults. She’s got 2 printmaking workshops scheduled for July, but visit the studio’s webpage for up-to-date information.

By rotating solo exhibits, Catherine features one or two artists each month on the back wall – which I think is a wonderful idea. Having your work featured is an empowering experience for an artist. You can see the exhibition schedule for the whole year on the website.

There are so many amazing Gabriola artists to be represented. The gallery is a special, beautiful place, and it’s a privilege and pleasure to be a part of it specifically, and the community as a whole.

About My Painting ‘Keep it Real’ on Display at Free Spirit Art Gallery

The painting I have on display is called Keep it Real, and it’s part of my Fragments of Life series.

The Fragments of Life series is about how we often morph and fragment ourselves to survive the challenges and trauma we experience growing up. We become people we are not – and do what we have to – in order to meet our needs. And the series is a healing journey about reclaiming those lost parts of ourselves, our fragments.

Each painting in the series represents a lesson from my spiritual journey. The painting process always helps me stay in the present moment – keeping with what’s real – and embracing, accepting, and loving it. We do this with the knowledge that we have the power and capacity to transform into the next version of ourselves.

The painting is an acrylic mixed media collage on 300-pound cold press watercolour paper mounted on wood panel, and it measures 58.4 x 76.2 x 2.5 cm (23 x 30 x 1.5 inches).

Original Artwork and Prints for Sale

The original painting of Keep it Real is currently available for purchase from Free Spirit Gallery Please email info@freespiritstudio.ca or phone the gallery at (250) 247-0197 to secure the original for your collection. 

You can also purchase giclee and fine art prints from Saatchi Art.

When it comes to prints, Saatchi Art offers multiple options to suit your personal tastes or needs. Prints can be on paper or canvas and are usually available in 4 sizes – to better fit your room. You can also choose to have your unique art piece framed in white, black, or natural wood.

The “View In A Room” image gives you an idea of its size and lets you see what it looks like on a wall.