The Painter Behind the Jewellery

Maybe a pendant caught your eye, or a pair of earrings, and you came in for the copper and the stones. If so, welcome — the jewellery is most of what I make, and most of what you’ll see.

But if you wander a little further, you’ll come to a corner where the metal gives way to paper. Small prints. A pelican. Two jays in the snow. A blue jay on his own. An iris. And a print of an oil painting I called "Chance Encounter."

I painted every one of them.

It’s all the same work

On the surface, jewellery and painting look like two different crafts — one is hammering and wrapping, the other is brushes and paper. To me, they’ve never felt far apart.

I take little bits and pieces of nature and create something to remind me what is important. To keep the connection alive. That’s the whole of it, really — and you’ll notice it doesn’t say a word about copper or paper. Some of those bits and pieces want to be worn. Some want to hang on a wall.

The prints on the wall

Let me introduce them, briefly.

"American White Pelican" began as mixed media, bold form and soft texture — and it comes with a true story about the day a flock of real pelicans landed on my lake. I’ve told that one properly here on the blog, so I won’t spoil it. "Winter Jays" began as mixed media too: two jays, crisp blues against soft snow-light. The "Blue Jay" began as a watercolour — the same crisp blues, softer edges. "Iris" began as coloured pencil, a botanical with soft, detailed colour. And "Chance Encounter" began as an oil painting, rich and painterly.

What you’ll find in the shop are fine-art prints — reproductions of my original paintings, on fine art paper, sized to frame. My jewellery is one-of-one, and I hold to that. The prints are the deliberate exception: they’re how a painting gets to be in more than one home.

The same eye

Set a print beside a piece of jewellery and you can see it for yourself.

The crisp blues in "Winter Jays" are not far from the blues of the stones I reach for — I still hunt for stones whose pattern or colour catches me. The "Iris" grows from the same place as the roses and leaves I shape in warm copper for the Garden collection; I’ve said before that sometimes it’s my garden that begs to be admired and immortalized into a favourite piece of art. And the soft, mossy greens of Moss & Metal come from the forest places where light goes quiet — the same places that find their way onto my paper.

When I design a piece of jewellery, I take my cues from the textures of the landscape around me. When I paint, I’m looking at the same things. Different tools, same eye… same little bits and pieces of nature.

Come see for yourself

The artwork has its own corner of the shop now, and it’s a quiet one — small pieces, each from my own brush or pencil. If you’d like a place to start, start with the pelican and its story, and then see which of the others catches you.

— Geneen. Derwent, Alberta