Author: Conal (Page 2 of 19)

When it comes crashing down and it hurts inside...

Artist Spotlight: Karen Blanchet

I chatted with Edmonton-based artist Karen Blanchet a couple weeks ago. Our chat went fairly quick, but the conversation was rich in substance. 

I learned a lot about her, including the fact that she learned French… in Australia. Plus, she has such a unique style that her husband coined a new term for it: Neo-mosaic. 

I hope you enjoy my chat with Karen as much as I did.

[Featured Artwork: “Fear No Evil/crains aucun mal by Karen Blanchet.]

Karen Blanchet
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Paris: The Friends of the Louvre


This is the first story in a four-part series
about the 15th anniversary trip my
artist wife and I took to Paris.


There we stood; waiting in line at the Louvre. I had bought her an annual membership for our anniversary, in part, to avoid this. 

Five minutes earlier we had passed through the member’s entrance at the Louvre. I had flashed my subsidiary membership card, and we breezed through the metal detector.  

Once inside, however, we had to swing by la Société des Amis du Louvre (Friends of the Louvre Society).

The society’s reception office is tucked away across the giant main foyer from the main information desk. 

As soon as we rounded the corner to enter the office, there it was… the line. A line we had to wait in. There was no way to avoid it. 

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Artist Spotlight: Nadiya Maznychka

I had the pleasure of chatting with Ukraine-born, Edmonton-based artist Nadiya Maznychka this past weekend. It was a wonderful conversation about her and her art, which is very clearly part of her DNA. Currently, she is known for her amazing pet portraits.

I suspect she didn’t realize it during our chat, but she shared some profound insights about the art community. I hope, when you read through our chat, you come away with that impression as well.

[Featured Artwork: Assorted pet portraits by Nadiya Maznychka.]

Nadiya Maznychka
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The Missing Car

Our car was gone! 

When we left the restaurant after celebrating my artist wife’s 30th birthday, we strolled casually to the parking lot with the fluorescent beams of light glowing above the pavement under the half moon.

As we rounded the corner of the building, our little Honda Civic was not there. The spot we had left our car in was filled with a black SUV.

Frantically, my artist wife whipped her head around in every direction hunting for any sign of our maroon-coloured little economy car.

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Artist Spotlight: Linda Finstad

Linda Finstad is an Edmonton-based artist and author. Throughout the pandemic, she painted using coffee. Yes, coffee. Now, she’s painting with cat hair, dust bunnies, cigarette butts, and other truly useless items. Yes, truly.

The England-born artist started out as a horse-show photographer and sort of, kind of fell into an art career because of a combination of cellphones, Facebook, and an art collector from Texas. It all comes together in the interview below.

Linda has a fabulous sense of humour — as you might expect — given her ability to paint with some of the above items. The laughs came a mile a minute during our chat. Enjoy!

[Featured Artwork: “Whole Bottle” by Linda Finstad.]

Linda Finstad
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The Louvre Top 10 Tips & Observations

There I sat on my hotel bed in Paris. My artist wife lay beside luxuriating in the white hotel bathrobe as we unwound from our busy day in the City of Lights.

She was reading a story while I was tapping out another 500-word Saturday Morning Story on my new MacBook. It was her 15th anniversary gift to me. We had just used my gift to her — a membership to the Louvre.

As I tapped out the story, I decided that it could wait. Instead, today I provide you — free of charge — 10 of my immediate observations about the Louvre fresh from that same night, mere hours after I returned from the world’s most famous museum.

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