Everytime I draw live at an event I can't believe how LUCKY I am
that I get to do this for a living!
What a FUN night...

Living an Authentic Life
We are able to laugh when we achieve detachment,

if only for a moment.

~May Sarton

I believe authenticity is one of the most undervalued concepts in society. There is so much pressure to not be authentic...to pretend to be: someone else (without problems or issues), someone who is successful and/or someone who lives a life fulfilling the expectations that exist around us.

Even though I was fortunate to be given that freedom from my parents (by how I was raised) I still struggle with that true dialogue of what I am here to say in this life and the courage to speak up.

I crave to meet people there, in that place of no expectation.
I ache to see people as they really are (instead of how they think they need to pretend to be)
....and I want people to really see me.

Trust that if you feel “not like yourself” you are probably feeling

more like yourself than you have ever felt before.
~Lena Stevens

The Language of Artdetail of Brave painting

My Mom's first language was Polish. Her parents had emigrated from Poland before she was born and it wasn't until she went to school that she began to understand and speak English. By the time I was born, she no longer spoke Polish but for some reason she sent my brother and I to Saturday morning Polish school when we were about 7 and 8. I guess she was hoping that in one hour a week we would somehow be able to absorb a language that was entirely foreign to us. I still remember the feeling of complete and utter confusion as to what everyone was saying around me. The teacher would ask me things, encouraging me to respond, but I honestly had absolutely no idea of what she was saying (nor did I have the words or the courage to answer), so I would just nod and pretend to understand.

I think my first language was art. I understood colours and shapes instinctively as a young child. Learning to actually speak art on an intellectual level however, did not begin to develop until my early 30's when I began attending a professional artist's critique group. I remember a very similar feeling, akin to the Polish class, where everyone around me spoke a language I didn't understand. Things like value rhythms and intensity of hue...so, just like when I was 7, I spent a lot of time nodding and pretending.

I do speak art fluently now. I understand that lines, values, shapes and colours are like the letters, words and phrases of the literary language and I am constantly try to improve my art vocabulary. I also now understand that art is essentially a medium of expression, whether that expression is a statement of fact (realist art) or something more (abstract or expressionist art). There are many art 'dialects' (commercial art, fine art) along with numerous individual styles but the foundation and structure of the art language is really quite universal and does exist even beyond personal taste and fad.

The best part, is that understanding art and learning to speak the basics, is absolutely achievable by anyone with the desire to learn and the courage to make mistakes...just like learning to speak Polish.

“There's no reality except the one contained within us.
That's why so many people live an unreal life.
They take images outside them for reality

and never allow the world within them
to assert itself.”

~Herman Hesse

I think people don't place a high enough value on how much they are nurtured by doing whatever it is that totally absorbs them.
~Jean Shinoda Bolen

I get up every morning determined to both change the world

and have one hell of a good time.
Sometimes this makes planning my day
difficult.
~E. B. White (1899 - 1985)

the clock in my studio

I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer.
~Friedrich Nietzsche

Appreciating the beauty in sadness and pain.

Wow...its almost the end of January, already.
Since its regularly a slow time in the event caricature business, I decided to wait until February to start classes at my studio so that I might in fact have time to paint, work on my own drawings, sketch everyday, spend lots of time with my family, make some great meals, perhaps even deep clean the house again, etc. I had huge expectations for the way that I would spend this time, however it has proven to be completely different than what I anticipated.

A week and a half ago, I drew caricatures at a gig for (ironically enough) a chiropractic event and did some serious damage to my back and sciatic nerve. My back and hips had been very stiff from so many drawing hours (on bad chairs and very little stretching) through Christmas and it all cumulated into severe, debilitating, physical pain that night. Since then, I have been mentally distracted and physically stranded by the pain...limiting my thoughts and actions to short bursts of necessity.

And then of course, the sadness of Danny's death continues to wash over me with waves of disbelief. I keep waiting to wake up and tell Mark about this horrible nightmare I had where Danny didn't get better and he had died...but then I realize, I am not asleep....this really is it.

Tonight, when I stumbled upon this quote from South Park (of all places), I saw a ray of light through the trees...

"I love life...Yeah, I'm sad, but at the same time,
I'm really happy that something could make me feel that sad.
It's like...It makes me feel alive, you know. It makes me feel human.
The only way I could feel this sad now is
if I felt something really good before.
So I have to take the bad with the good.
So I guess what I'm feeling is like a beautiful sadness."

I am still feeling pain and sadness, but I know that the only way I could feel this now is if I felt something really good before. I apparently needed a wake up call to take better care of my body and not just expect it to suffer silently with the long, long hours of sitting and drawing. I also know that I loved Danny and I will continue to love the very special people in my life as deeply and authentically as I can, because well...its all life and
I'll take the good with the bad.

When the heart speaks,

the mind finds it indecent to object.
~Milan Kundera,
The Unbearable Lightness of Being

My wonderful brother in law
Danny Strilchuk
passed away peacefully at home
in San Jose, California
at 3:41 am today.

Danny, we will truly miss your presence in our lives.

What do you say to someone you love who is
quickly nearing the end of their life at 57 years old?
I really don't know.
But scanning in my daughter's drawings and writing a cheezy Dr. Suess "like" poem felt right tonight and gave me something to do with the waves of sadness.

Goodbye Danny
a "GREAT" bye for you,
(as great a bye as I could do).

Goodbye Christmas tree

Goodbye smile

Hello tears all single file

Goodbye arms that held you tight

Hello memories, shining light.

Goodbye Danny, love you—I do!
Hello heart that's missing you.

Love, Cath


Thanks to my little Piper for all her drawings in this goodbye to her uncle Danny

Standing on the threshold of this brand new year,
I resolve to imagine and live
my moments in
single file.

"Most of us think ourselves as standing wearily and helplessly at the center of a circle bristling with tasks, burdens, problems, annoyance, and responsibilities which are rushing in upon us. At every moment we have a dozen different things to do, a dozen problems to solve, a dozen strains to endure. We see ourselves as overdriven, overburdened, overtired. This is a common mental picture and it is totally false. No one of us, however crowded his life, has such an existence.

What is the true picture of your life?

Imagine that there is an hour glass on your desk. Connecting the bowl at the top with the bowl at the bottom is a tube so thin that only one grain of sand can pass through it at a time. That is the true picture of your life, even on a super busy day, The crowded hours come to you always one moment at a time. That is the only way they can come. The day may bring many tasks, many problems, strains, but invariably they come in single file.

You want to gain emotional poise?
Remember the hourglass, the grains of sand dropping one by one."
~James Gordon Gilkey

Our Christmas Day walk...

Walking Home from Oak-Head

There is something
about the snow-laden sky
in winter
in the late afternoon

that brings to the heart elation
and the lovely meaninglessness
of time.
Whenever I get home - whenever -

somebody loves me there.
Meanwhile
I stand in the same dark peace
as any pine tree,

or wander on slowly
like the still unhurried wind,
waiting,
as for a gift,

for the snow to begin
which it does
at first casually,
then, irrepressibly.

Wherever else I live -
in music, in words,
in the fires of the heart,
I abide just as deeply

in this nameless, indivisible place,
this world,
which is falling apart now,
which is white and wild,

which is faithful beyond all our expressions of faith,
our deepest prayers.
Don't worry, sooner or later I'll be home.
Red-cheeked from the roused wind,

I'll stand in the doorway
stamping my boots and slapping my hands,
my shoulders
covered with stars.

~ Mary Oliver ~

to my Kieran...photo by Mark Dobbelsteyn

having you in my life makes me the luckiest mom in the world.

Happy 8th birthday my sweet boy.

I love you all the way to Pluto...
(and back).
~Mom

Some more of my favourite live drawings from one of my gigs...

I wish you sunshine on your path
and storms to season your journey.
I wish you peace in the world in which you live...
More I cannot wish you except perhaps love to make all the rest worthwhile.

~Robert A. Ward

Painting drip people has been consuming a lot of my energy lately
...on altered books, birch panels and clipboards.

Tonight, sitting here,
I realized how much those random splotches
(where the paint used to be)
are like our lives....
in that the defining shape and length of our life
happens totally at random,
without our choice or control.

I guess all we can do is colour in
the space and time that we are given,
as individually and courageously
as we can.

More live drawing
Thanks to Jan Barton for being my wonderful assistant, driving companion
and photographer last night in Redwater...

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle
or the mirror that reflects it.

Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937)

Once again I drew at the magnificent La Chance Party at "100" on Sunday
and enjoyed every minute...

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900 - 1944)

My perfect space...

I have been working in my studio for about 5 months now and I LOVE it. Right across the street is the school that my children attend—out my front window you can see the school, the park, the playground and our community hall. My kids come for lunch at the studio and sit at the front counter, watching the world of our neighborhood go by. We play their favourite hip hop music, eat lunch, talk about the morning at school and watch for the kids who stay for lunch, to come out to the playground to play. Now that we have snow (TONS of snow), we have been tobogganing at the hill on the playground and soon will be skating at the community hall and then rushing back to the studio for hot chocolate.

When I tell people who come for classes at my studio about how I only live a block and a half away from the studio and that my kids go to school across the street, they inevitably say "Wow that is so perfect"....and you know what...it really is!

Having the studio has allowed my "roles" in life, as a mother and an artist, to finally begin to compliment instead of struggle against each other.

Timeless As we look deeply within,
we understand our perfect balance.
There is no fear of the cycle of birth, life and death.
For when you stand in the present moment,
you are timeless.
~Rodney Yee

That is what marriage really means:
helping one another to reach the full status of being persons,
responsible and autonomous beings who
do not run away from life.

~Paul Tournier

Happy Anniversary Mark!

Of all the great things in my life
(and there are many)
meeting you 18 years ago today,
and then marrying you 16 years ago today,
tops the list.

You are the most amazing man I have ever known.
and I love you deeply.