I’ll be at this beautiful venue with some new work as well as much-requested prints of orginal artworks. So, something for every budget, whether for original works of art or prints of same. Looking forward to seeing you there!

It’s at the Mid-Valley Performing Arts Center, 2525 Taylorsville Blvd., Taylorsville, UT 84129, AUGUST 9-10, in the cool of the evening, 5:00 to 10:00 PM!



(Pictured here: “Greek Dancer”, 20x24 inch oil on linen_in progress! Photographed him at the 2013 Greek Festival in Salt Lake City, and have wanted to do a painting ever since!)

The 1st Annual Wild, Wild, Westside Arts Festival is one for the history books. Glad I was part of the first such event in Taylorsville, UT. Big thank you to Irene Loy and her team, also to everyone who came out.

Next, and perhaps last festival of the year is PARK HILL FALL ARTS FESTIVAL in Denver, CO., Sept 30 - Oct 1st at the Park Hill Masonic Lodge grounds, 4819 Montview Blvd,. Denver, CO.

New show; new town; new state. I can't wait to set up in Salida's Riverside Park as part of the 9th Annual Salida Arts Festival, an artist-run show in an art-loving town!

salidaartsfestival.com

As to the high elevation and likely shortness of breath, I'll acclimatize. I always do!

See you in Salida!

Looking forward to again being in Union Station's historic Grand Lobby at the Ogden Arts Festival, June 10-11. I will have new paintings and some you may have been thinking about from last summer's show. Either way, stop by my booth for unique, original, and very affordable art.

After a quiet but very busy winter, I'm happy to say that I've been juried in to the Eccles Art Center's "Women: The Creative Edge" Show in Ogden Utah.

They accepted both "Bleu de Chanel", 12x12 inch oil on canvas, because who can see the array of blues, violets, indigos when the sun shone through the glass and not paint it? Along with "Bleu de Chanel", you'll find "The Last of Her Red Currant Jelly", a 24x30x1.5 inch oil on canvas, also inspired by the swoon-worthy effect of sunlight filtering through resplendent reds of my mother's last jar of her famous red currant jelly.

Opening reception is tonight, March 3, 2023 at the Eccles Art Center, 2580 Jefferson Ave., Ogden, 84401 from 5:00 - 8:00PM, and runs through to April 1st.

I have been invited to be one of the artists at an event in support of the Gifted School of Music! Join me at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, where the school's top soloists will perform and artists will be painting live on stage. Paintings will auctioned after the concert. Artists will also have up to two finished pieces available to be auctioned as well. What an amazing opportunity to support the students AND collect original art! Mark October 20th on your calendars.

Then, on October 21-23, guess who is part of the Utah Art Festival's OPEN STUDIO TOUR? Do stop by and have a look at what I'm up to, reserve a work in progress, or snap up an original oil painting. I will have some prints available, as well as my ever-popular greeting cards.

Excited to let you know I am juried in to the Urban Arts Festival, taking place at The Gateway in downtown Salt Lake City, Sept.3-4!

Now back to work so that I can finish "Wing" in time for the show!

Absolutely delighted to be in this year's OGDEN ARTS FESTIVAL, June 11-12 at the historic Union Station.

I'll be in the Grand Lobby again this year. DO stop by and say hello.

Very much looking forward to this show. It is very artist-friendly. They love art, and it shows!

The 44th Annual Lubbock Arts Festival is in the books! The organizers, booth sitters, staff once again made for an amazing experience, as did all those who bought my work. "Maudie 3" went to a very good home.

Having just made the 945-mile return trip, it remains to be seen if I'll apply for next year's show, simply due to the costs involved.

We'll see. Meanwhile, I had a fabulous time and made great new friends.

Delighted to let you know that four pieces of mine are in the Holladay TINY ART EXIBIT.

It's happening this February 7-11 downstairs at the Holladay City Hall, 4580 S 2300E, Holladay, UT.

All three feather pieces are matted and framed. The Maudie 7 painting is commanding enough that it needs no frame. It's entirely up to the buyer. The feather ones are $107 each; Maudie 7 is listed at $65.

Hope you can stop by. From what I saw on drop-off day, there's no shortage of talent!

The PETITE IMPRESSIONS SHOW is on now at the Eccles Art Center, 26 Jefferson St., in Ogden, UT.

"Feather 1_Inchyra Blue" (shown) and "Feather 3_James' White" were juried in.

Show runs until January 9, 2022 in the charming carriage house just behind the Eccles Art Center.

See my shop under "Paintings" in the Marketplace at:

www.SacramentoArtsFestivalOnline.com

"Our Tricycle" ... 16x20 oil on canvas, which you could say has been in progress since about 1963 when I was tooling around the back yard on it.

It's been in progress since 2004. Painting spokes is what spooked me. Didn't think I had the ability.

Well, with luck and work, it will be finished in time for the show. Do drop by my booth at the Lubbock Arts Festival, July 24-25 at the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center. Saturday runs from 10:00AM to 6:00PM; Sunday is from noon to 5:00PM

Hope to see you there!

The weeks leading up to this year's Ogden Arts Fest were to be devoted to preparation. I wanted my first post-COVID festival to be my best showing yet.

Life happened. Nearly four weeks of a) dealing with dishonest workmen who replaced only part of the fence, bought inferior materials, oh, and left without finishing the job, taking about $1,200 for their fun money. Then, b) our sweetie cat, Bingo, was hit by a car. In full panic mode, I got him to the emergency vet, only to find his injuries were too extensive to even consider anything but setting him free. The next day, his nephew, Willie racked up nearly $500 in vet bills with his treatable issues.

One day left to prepare, and I felt like cutting my losses and just skipping out rather than be mediocre.

But no. Rallied enough to buy some unbleached muslin for a new booth look. Decided to try using grid walls suspended from canopy frame via bungee cords. It worked at my first show.

What could go wrong? I could set up the day before, so even if the hubs was working, no problemo.

Um, problemo.

The bungee configuration didn't work. One painting dragged the whole set of four bound grid walls plunging earth-ward, which meant re-configuring the bungees. #NeverAgain. Plus, I hadn't quite allowed for enough cloth, so the bottom edges were exposed and, well, cut none too smoothly, with not enough length to wrap it around the grid wall edge. Which ate up all my set-up time, leaving the all-important hanging of the paintings on the morning of the show.

Show time! Eight hours is a long time to sit in a booth, smiling, without selling so much as one greeting card. Nothing. Nada. LOTS of compliments, but not one sale. Not for me, and none for my immediate neighbors either.

Sunday, everything changed. I kept getting heart-warming compliments on my work, even on my booth, but sales began happening. Including the above painting, bought by a beautiful lady who said she "had to have it".

And at the end of it all, just as we began tearing it all down, a man came up, pointed at five (5) paintings, and said he'd like to hang them in his display-only space on 25th St in Ogden. Not the same as a sale, but his enthusiasm was almost tangible, and as we speak, five of my pieces are in his underground tattoo parlor, Black Lodge Coven, a former bordello. Better to have them up for people to see rather than here in the house. So, chance taken.

Ya just never know.

Delighted to be included in this year's Ogden Arts Festival, June 12-13 in the heart of Ogden, Utah.

All the more delighted to have made the cut, since the above painting began as a photo taken while climbing onto a Union Pacific locomotive several years ago.

Iron Rust Leather Denim will be available in several formats to suit everyone's budget, namely, the original oil painting; giclée on canvas; matted prints; and greeting cards. Original oil paintings, a selection of matted prints and original drawings will be available as well.

Here is the link for more details. Booth number and location to follow. http://ogdenartsfestival.com/

Immensely pleased to have two pieces accepted into the Holladay Fine Arts Show. It's on now at Hollday's City Hall 4580 S 2300 W, Holladay, UT.

Hours are 9:00AM - 5:00PM, March 22-26, and Saturday the 27th from 9:00AM to noon.

With unbridled glee, I announce my being selected for the Holladay Arts' "Eye to I" Self-Portrait Show!

It's Such a Strain, 24x24x1.5 inch oil on canvas, is part of the show.

It runs from February 22-27 at 4580 S 2300 E, Holladay, Utah. 801-272-9450

SO pleased to announce that I have been accepted as a participant in the 43rd Annual Lubbock Arts Festival.

More details as they become available. For now, it is slated for July 24-25th, in the air-conditioned comfort of the Lubbock Memorial Civic Arena.

Now, back to the studio. No shortage of work to do between now and July.

The show must go on ... and it does! Join me on Friday, July 3rd from 5-8PM for the opening reception at the Eccles Art Center, 2580 Jefferson Ave., Ogden, Utah.

Two or my pieces will be available for sale: the above-pictured "Cope 2", a 24x24 in oil on canvas, and "Iron Rust Leather Denim", a 20x30 inch oil on canvas.

"Cope 2" is an homage to nostalgia, even though I personally never chewed tobacco nor rode the open range. Ever. Many did, and some still do (to the detriment of their health, but I digress). Nostalgia comes into play, however, for a way of life rapidly disappearing. The wild west, cowboys, train men, ranchers, loggers ... all but a dying breed. The actual battered lid from an old tin of Copenhagen chew was found in the desert somewhere outside of Panguitch, UT. I loved the texture and the lore and knew immediately it was worth the math to scale it up to this 24x24 inch painting.

"Iron Rust Leather Denim", also redolent with western lore, is based on a photo I took of my husband's boot as he clambered up on a Union Pacific engine at the Ogden train depot. Again, the colors, textures, and nostalgic lore demanded the image be rendered in oil.

Both of these pieces are among my favorites. I'll be thrilled if they go into new homes to bring pleasure to their new owners.

PS: the Eccles Art Center will be making "Traces of the West" available online, including the ability to purchase works online.
www.ogden4arts.org
801-392-6935

Very pleased to announce that "Death By Chocolate" is part of the *Colors of Pride" group show at the Eccles Community Art Center.

They are located at 2580 Jefferson Ave., in Ogden, Utah.

*Colors of Pride" continues until June 27, 2020.

The annual Hollady Fine Arts Show, a two-day event with a reception on both days, accepted two pieces of mine for their 2020 show.

Though slated for next week at Holladay's City Hall, as one might surmise, the show is being postponed until OCTOBER. Good news: as the Fine Arts Show is now concurrent with the October show, I will have pieces in BOTH shows. Details to follow.

I will of course post more details as they become available.

With Spring comes a freshening breeze ... and look ... the art elves jooged my wall at Eborn Books, Gifts, & Collectibles.

Come by and see a selection of my original oil paintings and prints. There are greeting cards too, some with images of my paintings, others featuring my photos. All at VERY reasonable prices.

Those tulip paintings though!

Something unusual for this past Valentine's Day -- my first time participating in the Utah Arts' Alliance "Connect" event.

We had the Urban Arts Gallery as venue, in downtown Salt Lake City's The Gateway. One of the only events I know of where one can get vaunted "exposure" for FREE!

Each artist brought two pieces of art. At evening's end, everyone voted on their favorite pieces. If I have this right, the top five pieces can be shown again at the next Connect event. All in all a wonderful evening, not the least of which was the voluntary pairing off with a fellow artist for impromptu critiques of each other's work. Great fun to have a speed painting session with a live model. Thank you Vinny DiGirolamo for leading the sesh and generously supplying all the art materials. Who knew I'd get over my timid self and zone right out! (Pictured is the painting I worked on. It was done in three stages of five minutes each: a drawing, painting, and the finishing. I was the middle-stage painter.)

I am delighted to announce that Mark Putscher, the force behind Landmark Artists and a tireless supporter of local Utah art and artists, has invited me to become part of the Landmark Artist cooperative.

A selection of my work is now available at Eborn Books, Gifts, and Collectibles, recently opened in South Town Shops, 10450 S State Street, Sandy, UT.

For those who asked, yes, there shall be a few more Marguerite Davis illustrations, matted by me. Some are from the actual reader, printed in 1929, from which I learned to read.

Also, several new oil paintings on offer, along with prints, AND new greeting cards!

Come by Booth 19 at the Gateway from 1:00PM - 9:00PM on Saturday, December 14 and Sunday the 15th.

NOTE: This year's Winter Fest is being held in three separate spaces in The Gateway. My booth will be in the former Apple store, Space 1. It's free, festive, warm, fun.

Drop by The Gateway in downtown Salt Lake City for festive fun and unique gifts for yourself or friends.

I'll be participating on the weekend of December 14 & 15th.

Do stop by, have a chat, a look, and see what painting, print, or card pleases your eye!

It's official. I am participating in the Albuquerque Arts Showcase, August 15-20, 2019.

Indoor show, air-conditioned comfort, featuring many award-winning artists. I am delighted to be part of this show, all the more as it will benefit the New Mexico Children's Cancer Fund.

Talk about win-win-win!

See below for all the details.

https://www.abqartshowcase.org/participating-galleries-artists-guilds

Thank you Salt Washed Co., Holladay, Utah's premier vintage decor and gift shop, is according me their window display for the entire month of May!

They love art and artists at Salt Washed Co., and their artist co-op space proves it. They are at 1928 E Murray Holladay Blvd., just off Highland A

Looking forward to bringing my best splashes of color and verve, with one-of-a kind original artwork, prints, and a selection of greeting cards. Something for every budget.

(Photo: NDG Bloom No. 5, 18 x 14 inch oil on canvas. Will be for sale at Salt Washed Co.)

Excited to participate in the Made in Utah Winter Festival, happening indoors at The Gateway (18 N Rio Grand St.,) in Salt Lake City, December 15-16, 12 noon to 8PM Saturday and noon to 6PM on the Sunday.

Admission is free. I'm at BOOTH # 31.

Something new on offer: vintage illustrations by the inimitable Marguerite Davis, matted on archival-quality boards. They are from the Friends: A Primer reader written by Pennell, Cusack, and MacLeod, published January 1, 1929. Imagine that! I learned to read from this book, which had been in our attic in Nova Scotia where I grew up.

As much as I hate tearing pages from books, these are too beautiful to go unseen. I will have a selection matted to 8"x10" or 11"x14" available, very affordably prices, original oil paintings, as well as matted photo prints and greeting cards made from my art and photos.

DO come by and say hello!

This is it, I am about to participate in my first Art Fair, and what a great way to kick it off!

It is the 4th annual Made in Utah Festival, and I will be there along with local artisans, food & beverage epicures, complete with live music and a great vibe, happening in downtown SLC's Gateway.

Click for details here: www.madeinutahfest.com

When it rains ... I pour paint onto canvas.

If you asked how I lucked out enough to be laid off every winter in order to paint, and have a hard but rewarding job driving a water tanker, I'd look at you and say, 'Beats me!".

While it may seem as if my production is low, that I don't crank out a painting every day or every week like some arteests, nevermind. I am declaring this winter to have been VERY successful. Wait until you see the finished "Tulip-ness 1" and "Tulip-ness 2", to say nothing of "It's Such a Strain". I am also very pleased with the first run at "Lee's Ferry Memory" for its tantalizing color harmonies. "Look Homeward, Angels (A Vision While Flossing)", as well as "Tête du Lac – Abstraction" were break-through pieces. 'Angels' being my bare you-know-whats was quite a leap, as was my having captured a fleeting, highly amusing thought so – dare I say – adroitly.

The fuchsia sky in ['Head of the Lake] – Abstraction" represents another break-through wherein I could toss the photograph and just go with intuition and feeling rather than be slave to a photo's dictates. "Pé-père's Barn", another work in progress begun this winter, recalls my grand-father's house and barn in Belleville, Nova Scotia. This one wants a different kind of brushwork, more animated, more Van Gogh-ish rather than smooth blending.

Another break-through piece is "The Whip". The image is stark, graphic, conveying the all-too human sense of being let go of ... or the relief one gets when deciding to just let go. Conceptual, a little disturbing, yes. So is life itself.

"The Last of Her Red Currant Jelly" is another effort from the 20117-2018 lay-off period, it being a portrait of one of the very last jars of red currant jelly my mother ever made. it's one of those pieces I am loathe to 'wreck'. Taking my time. I want it to be as sublime as the clear red bliss itself.

So, in what is perhaps my final week at home before heading back to work keeping the dust down in two quarries, I am racing to finish Tulip-ness 1 & 2. I have until Saturday, April 7th to submit them to the Springville Art Museum's Spring Salon.

Hope springs eternal.

If you are feeling like Provo on Friday night, DO stop by the Utah County Art Board's Early Spring Show.

I'll be at the Reception, slated from 6-9PM at the Health &Justice Bldg, 151 South University Ave., Provo.

It will be a pleasure to meet you and answer any questions you may have about "NDG Bloom No. 5"; "La Tête du Lac – Abstraction"; and "Tomatoes – Before the Soup".

A year ago, today, I was in Washington, D.C., attending the Women's March. We made history. Long ways to go yet.

For all the political upheaval, I'll confine my pithier comments to Twitter. Here, I'll keep it art-centric. Why? Not because I divide my self into compartments – no – art for me, simply put, is the best antidote to the horrors we are witnessing. By keeping this page politics-free, I am making a political statement: creativity is the best cure.

To that end, my trip from Salt Lake City to Washington DC last year was also a much-needed art immersion tour. I wandered as a parched itinerant might hurtle from fountain to spring to bar to brook, drinking flat out from the treasures in the National Gallery; New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Whitney; the MoMa; and Chicago's Art Institute (returning as I did from NYC by train to SLC).

My art studio, now a well-lt space at the top of the stairs in our new home, was set up again after nearly five years in boxes. Our previous home had zero studio space and besides which, I was working feverishly to finish my Memoir, Good As Gone: My Life with Irving Layton (Dundurn Press, Toronto, 2015). Upon returning from the East Coast last January, I found my brushes, paints, canvasses and began painting again after the long hiatus.

So here I am, another winter season, laid off from driving a water tanker as there is no dust to control, painting almost every day, inspired by the works I saw, gorging on YouTube clips of artists like Diebenkorn; Milton Avery; Georgia O'Keeffe; Patrick Graham; Alex Katz; Katherine Bradford; Katherine Bernhard; Katherine Bernhardt; Rothko; etc.

Who knew it would take this many decades to find one's own voice? I have not found it yet. Not completely.

Every brushstroke, every breath held and released as I paint the finer lines, exudes gossamer fragments of a song not unlike Whitman's "Song of My self". I mean, hey, why wait until fifty years after my demise for someone to make the observation? No. Reason. Whatsoever. I contain multitudes.

After a post-partum downturn following the publication of my memoir, Good As Gone: My Life with Irving Layton - for who could have anticipated Canada would get dementia as far as Irving Layton goes? - things began to look up.

Last year's dry season here in Utah saw me driving my trusty water truck, keeping dust down and the bank account up.

Come late fall, we finally bought a house. A real one, not cookie-cutter, not ticky-tack. As I write this, I look out onto a sylvan paradise. Over half-an acre of pine, cedar, fruit trees, honeysuckle, roses, yucca, and oh yes, a towering sycamore.

Perhaps the best feature of all: a chicken coop / horse barn built in 1943 which will become my ART STUDIO! Until then, I make do with the landing area atop the stairs, with its abundant north light. The chicken coop conversion will It take a lot of work.

Most bucket list items do.

It was just a matter of time before Good As Gone: My Life with Irving Layton encountered the reviewer it deserved. Here is Anne Cimon in the February 2016 issue of Montreal Serai


Good as Gone: My Life with Irving Layton, Anna Pottier, Dundurn Press, 2015, 336 pages

In her recently published memoir Good as Gone, about her marriage with internationally renowned Canadian poet, the late Irving Layton, Anna Pottier boldly asserts that “modern Canadian poetry was born in Irving’s living-room” in his “tiny house” on Kildare Road in Montreal where he lived with his third wife, Aviva Layton, in the mid-1950s. This informal gathering of local poets took place every Friday night and Leonard Cohen, then in his early twenties, dropped by. He immediately impressed the well-known Layton with his early poems.

Pottier, in a chapter entitled “The Golden Boy,” describes her meeting with Cohen, a close friend of Layton, on June 7, 1984. She wants to set the record straight on literary myths such as Layton having been Cohen’s mentor. This irritated Layton, she writes, because it was not the truth. And this is what Pottier wants to reveal in her passionate account of the twelve years she shared with Layton, years that she admits have marked her deeply, irrevocably.

Pottier, born in the Acadian village of Belleville, Nova Scotia, dreamed of becoming a writer, not a doctor, as her parents wanted her to be. In 1981, as a twenty one year old student at Halifax’s Dalhousie University, she attended a poetry reading and met Irving Layton who was famous, married, and forty-eight years her senior. They began a correspondence, and when Layton separated from his fourth wife, Harriet Bernstein, two years later, he invited Pottier to move into his Niagara-on-the-Lake home as his housekeeper. She agreed, thrilled that he took an interest in her poems and encouraged her to write.

Pottier began this memoir soon after the death of Irving Layton in January 2006. She defines it as “my homage to and thanks for all that he lavished on me: his absolute trust, an Ivy League education taught at the table, during long walks, and in the pre-dawn light as he challenged me like the extraordinary teacher that he was, all imbued with unconditional love.”

In Good as Gone, Pottier, who now lives in Utah, is remarried, and is a painter in demand in art exhibitions, writes with candour about her relationship with Irving Layton. Since the beginning, she kept personal journals that were very detailed, included verbatim conversations, and notes about Layton’s views on life, death, and the poetic process.

Pottier (her birth name was Annette but Layton preferred to call her Anna, which she agreed to) was as meticulous in her journal keeping as in her work as assistant in preparing the poet’s later books for publication such as his childhood memoir Waiting for the Messiah. Pottier remembers laboriously typing draft after draft on a typewriter, PCs not yet widely in use. Among the interesting selection of rarely seen black and white photos, is one taken by Pottier in May 1985 at their house on Monkland Avenue in the NDG area of Montreal. It is of Layton sitting on the sofa, gazing into the camera, his look bemused and exhausted, the final manuscript pages spread around him on the cushions and coffee table. As she notes in the caption, they had little time to relax as they were bound for Athens.

Some of the best chapters are those that describe the couple’s trips to Italy, a country where Layton’s poetry won deep respect in large part due to the brilliant scholar and translator Alfredo Rizzardi, who promoted Canadian Studies at the University of Bologna. In fact, Italy would nominate Layton’s work twice for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

In an uninhibited voice, Pottier recalls how she accompanied her husband-to-be to the International Festival of Poets, where he had been invited to give readings:

“Landing at Fiumicino, I had to pinch myself. Barely one year earlier, I had come through Rome as a nearly penniless hitchhiker, solitary, hungry, and barely distinguishable from millions of other backpackers. How very, very different for me now, stepping out into the Roman air, warm with oleander, refined perfumes, Marlboro cigarette smoke, and testosterone, on the arm of a poet who was soon to be received like a rock star.”

Pottier also found that Italians accepted their age difference, and this freed her of self-consciousness, being looked upon as the youthful muse of a famous aging poet. One of the happiest of the anecdotes from Italy is in “Lunch with Ettore and Fellini,” when Layton meets and entertains the great filmmaker of 8 1/2, Amarcord, La Dolce Vita, and she finds herself in Fellini’s Mercedes.

Not her family’s rejection, or the complications with Layton’s ex-wives and adult children, could undermine their solid marriage, but their age difference eventually did.

Accompanying Layton on worldwide cultural trips as he aged became traumatic. In 1992, a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease and the beginning of Alzheimer’s, confirmed Pottier’s unspoken fear that she might be incapable to assist her beloved husband as he lost control of body and mind.

With harrowing honesty, Pottier relates how being the caregiver eventually led to burnout. Tears became frequent between the couple rather than the laughter that had bound them. Pottier began an affair with a younger man than herself, and sought the counsel of one of Layton’s lifelong friends, also her friend at the time, Musia Schwartz, who agreed that she should separate and offered to care for Layton.

In Good as Gone, Pottier vividly captures the impersonal cruelty of aging and conveys the love and creativity of their marriage. She writes how she still misses the man and poet who had made so many of her days extraordinary, the memoir a heartfelt testimony to this truth.



Anne Cimon is a Montreal writer and poet who was a student of Irving Layton in late seventies and has published several articles on his life and art.

[http://montrealserai.com/2016/02/07/good-as-gone-my-life-with-irving-layton/]

As often happens, I see something and - boom - act on it with a certain degree of "Yes!", that mysterious indicator that something good will come of it.

A few weeks ago, I received an invitation from the Eccles Community Art Center up in Ogden, UT. They've been around for a long time and seem to trail quite a bit of prestige. In fact, a few years ago, I entered their venerable state-wide photography show. Both "Green Truck" and one of my "Eye of the Beholder" series, were rejected.

Undaunted, I felt certain that "Summer - or- The Sugar Cone" would fit the bill. Cutting it perilously close to the deadline, I had a giclée print made, framed it, and dropped it off for consideration.

Weellll….success! Reception is on Friday, February 5th, 6 - 8 pm. It feels very good to be stoking the visual arts fire after all this time at my keyboard.

All too briefly, let me just say that the whirlwind tour was a short but sweet one, with four appearances in Halifax and Montreal, including a wonderful time at Concordia University. Great audience, great questions.

It took a bit of time to settle back down to daily life here in Utah -- I say "daily", not "ordinary" life, as I just don't do "ordinary" as a rule.

So now, following a near-catastrophic car purchase (just don't ever buy a 2006 BMW 750i. Enough said), and plunging into Operation Sort & Box, 2016 bodes well.

What's Operation Sort & Box? This: going through ephemera and cataloguing what remains of Irving's papers, as well as sorting and indexing the Pottier Fonds. Sounds odd to use the term, but Concordia University wants Irving-bilia for their world-class archive, the Layton Collection, and yes, they want the Pottier Fonds.

Stay tuned for more on my next adventure: "Driving Irving", an essay commemorating the task of letting go of the last remnants that link my life to Irving's. Once sorted, indexed, catalogued, and suitably boxed, the plan is to drive solo from Salt Lake City back to Montreal. Driving Irving home.

As you can see, my motto still rings true: Live Big and Go Far. Do stay tuned, it's going to be a blast.

While in Halifax, I was invited to CTV Atlantic's studios for an interview with Jason Baxter, their Live at 5 news anchor. Thank you Suzette Belliveau (down home gal) who made it happen.

http://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=758355&binId=1.1145729&playlistPageNum=3

Halifax, Nova Scotia: Thursday November 26th, at 6:30pm - The official book launch! - at the Halifax Central Library, 5440 Spring Garden Rd., in the Paul O'Regan Hall. (info: 902-490-5700)

Montreal, Quebec: Friday November 27th, at 5:30pm: book-signing as part of the Atwater Writers' Exhibition (AWE) at the Atwater Library, 1200 Atwater Ave., Westmount, QC (info: 514-935-7344). Wine & cheese: 6-8pm.

Montreal, Quebec: Tuesday December 1st, at 4:00pm: reading / talk at Concordia University. Room # TBD. Likely in the Webster Library Bldg., 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W.

Hoping to arrange more appearances in other cities. Details will be posted as soon as they are available.

DATELINE: November 9, 2015

We're still looking at an alternate Ottawa reading and a Toronto one as well. In the off chance we can't book a Toronto reading, I will still be venturing to TO. Lots of people I want to see. Meanwhile, here's the scoop:

HALIFAX:...where it all began…November 26, 6:6:30pm, Halifax Central Library, in the Paul O'Regan Hall. Thank you BookMark, Halifax's premier independent bookstore who will be on-site with books for anyone wishing to get a signed copy.

OTTAWA:… still a possibility…TBD

MONTREAL #1:…ground zero, really…Two appearances! I will am DELIGHTED to announce my participation in AWE (Atwater Writers' Exhibition) with a book signing at the Atwater Library on Friday, November 27th at 5:30pm, and the wine & cheese reception follows from 6:00 - 8:00pm.

MONTREAL #2: Date and exact venue TBD, but I will be giving a reading at Concordia University in the first days of December. Also delighted to know that there will be a presentation by a librarian specializing in Concordia's Layton Collection. This reading will likely be during the day, and primarily for students, though I am 99% certain the public will be welcome to attend. Watch this space for further details.

TORONTO…did I mention for old times' sake?…Date and venue TBD

More details and updates to follow.

Dateline: November 7, 2015:

For reasons known only to themselves, Ottawa's Soloway Jewish Community Center cancelled after twice confirming my appearance there. Apparently, they have a "big event" planned for December 1, but it "wasn't on the calendar" at the time when the lady in charge of booking events confirmed my reading there.

OH WELL. That's the way the matzoh ball bounces. Watch this space, as an alternate Ottawa gig may yet be added.

Dateline: 28 October, 2015:

I am delighted to announce that Good As Gone: My Life with Irving Layton will finally be launched in style at the spectacular new library on Halifax's Spring Garden Road. It is only fitting, as Halifax is where I attended Dalhousie University and there, met the poet Irving Layton.

HALIFAX...where it all began…November 26, 6:6:30pm, Halifax Central Library, in the Paul O'Regan Hall.

OTTAWA… for old times' sake…December 1, 7:30pm, Soloway Jewish Community Center

MONTREAL…ground zero, really…Date TBD, Concordia University

TORONTO…did I mention for old times' sake?…Date and venue TBD

More details and updates to follow.

CATCHING UP ON THE NEWS: While the post-publication media has not yet been saturated with articles and interviews about Good as Gone: My Life with Irving Layton, safe to say the process is underway. I like to think that the overwhelming number of messages I've received (all superbly positive) from people who read the book indicate that word of Good as Gone will spread like a wildfire, at its own speed and from reader to reader. That said, every author hopes to see favorable reviews in the traditional press. Here is the Montreal Gazette's excerpt from today's paper.

http://montrealgazette.com/entertainment/books/excerpt-from-good-as-gone-a-memoir-by-irving-laytons-last-wife

And later today, a link to Carla Allen's profile piece which appeared in Yarmouth Nova Scotia's The Vanguard newspaper.

Beginning on February 16, 2015 -- exactly thirty-four years to the day since I first met Irving Layton -- we will be giving away 10 copies of Good as Gone: My Life with Irving Layton. Contest closes on March 6, 2015. Click on the Goodreads Author Page tab (here on my webpage) to catch up on my more writerly doings. There will be an easy click to enter button for the Giveaway as of midnight February 15, 2015.

By the time Good as Gone: My LIfe with Irving Layton hits the bookstores – slated for March 14, 2014 – it will mark the end of a nine-year span. In some ways, I began writing the book decades earlier, perhaps even as early as February 16th, 1981. That was when I attended Irving's poetry reading at Dalhousie University and had the premonition he and I would become a couple. It was going to be a larger-than-life story, and I was determined to live as well as write it.

That was then. This is now and the page proofs have arrived. One can never have too many "I can die happy" moments, and seeing the page proofs surely qualifies.

I do believe 2015 will be rife with adventures, triumphs, and unique bursts of splendiferous sensations -- all of which I am more than ready for.

Great. Added a new photo to my PHOTOS tab, and managed to accidentally delete the entire folder. This means rebuilding it over the next few days…sheesh.

DATELINE: 5 September, 2014:
As summer begins to slip into fall, I am settling down to the exacting task of editing Good As Gone: My Life WIth Irving Layton. Fortunately, Dundurn Press assigned Michael Melgaard as my editor. Who knew how he would turn the challenge into an (almost) fun exercise.

The biggest hurdle we face, aside from the expected shifting around of paragraphs to improve the flow. Not at all surprising for a book that took me ten years to write, and the first half of it written pretty much out of sequence. A powerful memory or new perspective would well up, and that became the next chapter. Our main challenge is to bring the text down to a more manageable length. Just because it happened, does not mean I can include it!

So, after yesterday's minor surgical procedure (the old straighten the deviated septum trick), I am, as usual, bloodied but unbowed, and settling down to work.

Good As Gone's publication date is: March 14, 2015, and something tells me time is about to start flying!

http://www.dundurn.com/books/good_gone

June arrives with the news that Good As Gone is available for pre-sale on Amazon.ca.

Here is the link:
http://www.amazon.ca/Good-Gone-Life-Irving-Layton/dp/1459728564/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1401116185&sr=1-1&keywords=anna+pottier

Thank you for patiently awaiting further word on the memoir's progress.
Hard to believe my last update was back in August! Part of the long silence was the need to keep it on the low-down in terms of which publisher was looking at the proposal.

As one can imagine, it was difficult to continue writing while holding my breath. Finally, after several weeks, Grant and I were returning from a road trip to Marfa, Texas. Last night on the road, we stopped in Cortez, New Mexico. That's where I read that long-awaited email: "Book deal!"

So, I am happy to announce that GOOD AS GONE: My Life With Irving Layton is being published by Dundurn Press. They are Canada's longest-standing independent publisher. It's too early in the process to set a publication date. First things first: I am to deliver the manuscript by the first of April, 2014. Will that mean making the fall publication list? Check back for updates!

Closer to what? To getting GOOD AS GONE: My Life With Irving Layton published. The proposal and sample chapters were sent out on 08/08/2013. No ordinary date. It marked the 5th anniversary of when I left Montreal to embark on a road trip. I was 49, no job, no kids, no pets, no plants, and a 40-lb backpack. Only by grabbing adventure by the horns did I find the energy needed to complete GOOD AS GONE.

Watch this space, as there will be lots of good news to share in the coming weeks and months.

As the label suggests, the box contains some letters from my mother. The earliest was a post-card sent in 1967 when my parents took the only vacation I recall: a trip to Montreal's Expo '67. I came across these while packing for our recent move to a new home. Her letters to me are scattered throughout my files and papers, waiting to be put in their proper file.

Our correspondence began in 1975 when I left Belleville, Nova Scotia for Cohasset, MA, to serve as a live-in babysitter for two darling little girls. Even back then, her quirky style, as unique as herself, made quite the document. As does my painfully edited thoughts. Decades later, I can still recall how careful I had to be, clipping my verve time and time again so as not to elicit tidal waves of scorn and disapproval. She had a bottomless supply of that for me. Over time, when life became more adult and I made choices like marrying a much-older Jewish poet, well, the cotton candy really hit the fan. How badly? Any collateral damage? Very badly, with plenty of collateral damage. I'd long thought of one day publishing a selection of our letters. She must have sensed it, for after she passed away in May of 2011, I searched the house for my stack of letters to her.

Aside from maybe three of four I'd mailed in the previous months, not one of my letters to her - a virtual body of work 36 years in the making - survived. Though she saved everything, such as leftover gauze from when my brother accidentally blew his finger off, c.1974, and every random doodle my niece made as a toddler - these were carefully preserved. My letters, however, seem to have been burned as one would burn incriminating evidence in the basement's devouring furnace.

Those letters chronicled not only my life, but the telling way I had to edit and couch every single word in order to try to preclude her chronic disapproval. Her letters are perhaps a unique document in terms of an Acadian woman who had had to leave school at very young age, writing as she spoke (albeit in English, not Acadian French), detailing village life, gossip, doings, and her non-stop sermon from the mount regarding my [errant] life.

Looks as if she wanted the last word…but we don't always get what we want, do we?

As many of you know, I am currently hard at work on GOOD AS GONE: My Life With Irving Layton. For the time being, this takes every ounce of creative juice, aside from the occasional photo. For me, there is no division between writing, painting, drawing, or photography. The energy needed for each may differ slightly, but the goal remains identical: make your mark as best you can. So, there will be no new paintings on my easel in the immediate future. Do watch this space and / or Anna Pottier-Hickman Art (on Facebook) for more updates. Happily, I am nearly 49,000 words in, and can dare hope the book will do its subject proud.

It's official! Green Truck won an Honorable Mention in the Utah County Art Gallery Photography Show! It, along with Eye of the Beholder_5 (for Garo Deirmendjian) will be on display in Provo (inside the Health and Justice Building) until November 16th.

Happy to announce that two photos were accepted into the Utah County Art Gallery Photography Show! Reception on Friday 6 October in Provo, UT. The two photos: Green Truck and Eye of the Beholder_5 (for Garo D.) Thank you Grant for sacrificing your college football Saturday!

Very. Went on my first camping trip, Grant as trip leader, and we stumbled upon one breath-taking vista after another. Can you say Escalante? This while reading all about Georgia O'Keeffe and her love for New Mexico canyons....here were canyons!! Above all, the silence. Profoundly restorative. Paintings will come from this trip in due course.

July 11-18: Shall be spending a week re-visiting Belleville, Nova Scotia and showing Grant the wheres and whys of who I am. Fried clams, salt air, and, if we can snag tickets: a dance at Le Club for possibly the last Acadian Festival in Ste. Anne du Ruisseau.

Two pieces, NDG Bloom No. 4 and Cope 2, were selected for the Utah County Spring Fine Arts Show, Provo, Utah, 28 April - 29 June, 2012.