GLAMOUR PHOTOGRAFY

"Painting is just another way of keeping a diary."

If Janet Hill’s paintings were a diary, they would tell a tale of waking up with the sun to black coffee and a blueberry muffin, donning a nautically-inspired pleated skirt and deciding on a pair of beautifully embellished heels, arranging bouquets in a favourite vase before dashing out the door, for a bicycle ride across town to a favourite patisserie to fetch delectable desserts for an afternoon tea party . . .

create a longing for lazy Sundays, picnics and high tea, all while dressed in duchesse satin gowns and perfect pearls, and carrying Hermès Kelly handbags, of course!

Beauty without colour seems somehow to belong to another world."

Colour affects emotions, design, art, and trends; it dictates our fashion, changes our mood and it epitomizes so many, many things without the need for words. Ruby red lipstick can be worn to signify ardent love and desire; pink blush conjures romantic rendezvous, and a bouquet of yellow daffodils can be given to symbolize friendship . . .



. . . lavender candles in a powder room can symbolize femininity, grace and elegance; a black evening gown that flows in the moonlight can represent sophistication and style, and the colour of a string of heirloom pearls worn on a wedding day is said to represent marriage.

Colour has its own language and painters are its masters.



Michelle Armas, an Atlanta-based artist, doesn’t simply paint with colours, she fuses colours with thoughts, blending magic to canvas -- each whimsical brushstroke takes your mind away to almost a heightened state of being and awareness, as you follow the light she creates through colour in paintings that have the power to light up a room.

"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time."

Whether she is sipping café au lait in Paris, studying fine art in Madrid, or on a long-afternoon drive through lavender fields in Northern California, artist Kimia Kline continually draws inspiration from the stunningly beautiful things that surround her.

The artist's use of light brushstrokes and soft color schemes -- blushing rose, taupe, ivory, lilac & amaranth -- create the sense of morning sunlight peeking through lacy curtains and evoke thoughts of lazy afternoon picnics on sandy beaches.





Kimia's paintings have been featured in solo and group exhibitions at the Candystore Collective and the Swell Gallery, both in San Francisco, as well as in art exhibitions all over the world. She has won international acclaim, and was the winner of the NYAXE Gallery competition in 2009, and a national exhibition, 12"x12", at the Todd Gallery in 2010.



Kimia has had the dream-like opportunity to experience living in many countries around the world, places like Spain, Israel, the US, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Japan and Namibia, and in a few weeks, she will be moving to India for her next chapter; each place has influenced her paintings in a thousand and one ways, and this week, she reveals her:

. . . if you found coe & waito's delicately lovely pine cones utterly inspiring, toronto-based designer & ceramicist carly waito's stunning oil on masonite paintings of minerals will have you searching for your long-lost easel and forgotten box of paints and get caught up in creating beautiful things . . .

{images: carly waito via all the mountains}