Remembering 2014

Screenshot of a 3-page Christmas letter

Adobe InDesign™ document

©2020 Charlene Brown

Here’s another Christmas letter, with the addition of a watercolour sketch of Samuil’s Fort on Lake Ohrid near the Macedonia/Albania border.

Rewriting in real time

 Bankhead 2002, Watercolour and crayon, ©2020 Charlene Brown

I have rewritten the collection of short stories, The Starting Out Years, about six generations of girls in my family, many times since COVID-19 hit.

The main character in the fifth story is my (partly fictional) granddaughter, Fiona, born in 2002 and introduced in a blog post on July 2   She finishes high school and goes on to McGill University in 2020 — a fairly smooth transition when I completed the first draft last year.  Because of the pandemic school shutdowns, I’ve been re-writing this story in real time throughout the spring and summer.

The fact is that none of my grandchildren was born in 2002.  This storyline complication was entirely self-inflicted by my whimsical idea to work the Chinese zodiac into a subplot running through the short stories.   I was born in 1942, the year my grandmother turned 60, and I had read somewhere that horoscopes based on the Chinese Zodiac attach great significance to connections between a grandparent and a child born in the year that grandparent turns sixty. The two are said to have similar character traits, capabilities and life fortunes.

The above painting shows one of the things that actually happened in 2002.  It is based on a picture taken during a weekend in and around Banff when my daughters and I celebrated my 60^th birthday that year.

I’ve rewritten the sixth story almost as often.  It is set in 2042 when my (really fictional) great-granddaughter and her friends are in their starting out years, reflecting on the weird situation their parents found themselves in, back in 2020.

 

Remembering 2013

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Screenshot of a 3-page Christmas letter

Adobe InDesign™ document

©2020 Charlene Brown

Here’s another Christmas letter, with the addition of a watercolour sketch of the enclosed part of Monet’s Garden at Giverny in France, and a painting of the view of La Défense from the top of the Arc de Triomphe. 

The Self Portrait Competition

Heli-painting in the Bugaboos

Watercolour and crayon

©2020 Charlene Brown

A call for online entries to an Artist & Selfie Painting Competition included an ‘Artists en Plein air’ category so I decided to enter a painting based on a photo of me taken on the heli-painting trip I mentioned in a blog post a coupleof days ago.

There was no requirement to mount, frame with glass covering, pack and ship the painting, and the entry fee was only USD 37. That ended up being CAD 50.78, which had risen to CAD 51.06 by the time it was posted on my Visa bill, but still… not having to ship the thing, usually a big problem with watercolours, was compelling.  And, there was no requirement to have your face appear in this portrait, also compelling.

Remembering 2012

Screenshot of a 3-page Christmas letter

Adobe InDesign™ document

©2020 Charlene Brown

Here’s another Christmas letter, with the addition of two paintings from Bugaboos Provincial Park in British Columbia.

Winter Watercolour Weekend in the Wild

Edworthy Falls

Watercolour and oil pastel

©2020 Charlene Brown

I had been planning to re-write a story I started (and abandoned) several years ago, Did She Ever Return? about a painting workshop, ‘Winter Watercolour Weekend in the Wild.’ I was going to start as soon as I got my autofictional collection of short stories uploaded for a final proofreading.

Thinking I might do this as a graphic novel, I began a series of winter scenes near Calgary with this painting.  It is a composite of two locations (that aren’t particularly close together) in Kananaskis Country. 

However, delays in the production of my short story collection, caused by the need to rewrite the fifth story (which takes place in 2020) in real time, have made it necessary to abandon the Winter Watercolour Weekend again.

Remembering 2011

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Screenshot of a 3-page Christmas letter

Adobe InDesign™ document

©2020 Charlene Brown

Here’s another Christmas letter, with the addition of watercolour sketches of Ohe’o Gulch on Maui, Durnstein in Austria and Marksburg Castle in Germany, as well as paintings of a coffee plantation and the Mayan archaeological site of Copan in Honduras. 

The girl from the sixth generation

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In my recently completed autofictional book, The ‘Starting Out’ Years, the sixth story begins in 2042, and is of course the most fictitious of all. 

Pictured on the left is Alexandra, my great-granddaughter to be born in 2027, as she will appear on the book cover, along with the other five girls.

Should you be wondering, she’s road-testing experimental electric-assist bounding boots...

Remembering 2010

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Screenshot of a 3-page Christmas letter

Adobe InDesign™ document

©2020 Charlene Brown

Here’s another Christmas letter, with the addition of two watercolour sketches I did during a Panama Canal cruise, and a watercolour painting of Magog Glacier in British Columbia by Doris Livingstone.