Good things come in threes
33 things from 33 years
Welcome to the last edition of Wilson Warbles in 2024! You’re reading because you subscribed through my website, Instagram links, or the Substack network. You can read this newsletter in your inbox, on the webpage, or on the Substack app.
Quick business things to begin:
Thank you so much for visiting me at last weekend’s holiday market and for your orders through my online shop over the past while. I am always so happy to see you out in person or see your name pop up in my inbox! This week I am working on sorting out a shipping option via courier until the postal strike has ended, though I still cannot guarantee any delivery dates. I will ship things as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience and understanding. Local pickup options are available in Prince George and Smithers in the meantime - more info here. Here’s one of my favourite new things I added to the shop, a new winter card design:
My online shop will be open until December 19 at 6 PM PST, then closed for a holiday break until January 3. And I’ll be at one more holiday market before the holidays: Saturday December 14th in the Old Church in Smithers, BC, for the Yuletide Bazaar.
33 things from 33 years
On the day I send this, I am turning 33 years old. A very good number!
Credit where credit is due: this post is directly inspired by Carolyn Yoo’s “33 things” list from her own 33rd birthday not too long ago. I love reading about others’ creative inspirations too much not to follow Carolyn’s lead and make my own list. In no particular order, below are 33 things (books, films, music, places, ideas, people) that have shaped me in my 33 years of life. Whether these things are visible in my artwork/writing or not, they all play a part in the way I create and show up in the world. These range all over the map from arty and philosophical, to cringe and a little embarrassing to admit…but my favourite thing about getting older is starting to care less about how others perceive me. May we all fly our freak flags a little higher each day.
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David Hockney is one of my all-time artist heroes, both for his colour sense and the way that no subject is too dull or simple for his careful attention, whether he is painting his lover, a dog, or a wheat field. And if, in my late 80s, I’m living in a cottage in France, making art with a fraction of Hockney’s vigour and joy, I’ll consider life a massive success!
David Hockney in the 1990s with his paintings and dachshunds, Stanley and Boodgie. (Photo: Richard Schmidt) Posters illustrated by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. When I was 15 I got to see a Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition in person at the Art Institute of Chicago. At the time I just knew I needed to have this Moulin Rouge exhibition poster in my bedroom, but in hindsight I was seeing an early example of a painter doing hand-drawn illustration work - a path I’m now pursuing on my own.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s lithograph, Moulin Rouge: La Goulue from 1891 The city of Montreal - After I finished high school, I moved across the country and got to spend the first four years of my adulthood in a place full of artists, other languages, history and joie de vivre. Part of me always yearns to be sitting on a wrought-iron staircase on a warm Montreal fall day, people-watching over a tarte tatin from the Patisserie au Kouign-Amann.
Sarah de Leeuw’s writing about northern British Columbia, especially in the books Where it Hurts and Unmarked: Landscapes Along Highway 16, showed me that my home place was worth researching closer, and that art could be a method of doing so.
This painting by Mamma Andersson (more on her work here) reminded me of the street I grew up on and gave me permission to make art about home:
Mamma Andersson’s painting Dead End, 2010, acrylic and oil on panel, 48 x 59 in In her album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, Lucinda Williams wrote about the grit and heartbreak of her own home place in the Deep South. More than 25 years after its release, this record is still a jam I listen to all the time, in every mood, no skips:
A teacher in my art program showed me Kim Dorland’s paintings, which made me want to use paint to tell my own story. For the first time, I felt I saw the grunge of the place where I grew up represented in art. His work encouraged me to make art about my real life, and to illuminate (perhaps in a fluorescent colour) the things that seem “ugly” and mundane. I wrote more about Kim Dorland’s work here.
Kim Dorland, Lost mother, 2, 2012-13, oil and acrylic on jute, 180 x 240 cm Myers Briggs Type Indicator, “INFP Type” - Yes, it is pseudoscience, and human beings do not fit neatly into 16 distinct types. Yet after scoring aggressively INFP on numerous MBTI tests for fun over the past decades, I can say that no other description of personality, for better and for worse, has ever made me feel so seen.
Susan Cain’s book Quiet helped me understand and embrace being a hardcore introvert.
I watched Aladdin enough times in early childhood that Robin Williams’ irreverent performance as the genie - endless impressions, sarcasm, puns - is infused in my DNA.
Jim Carrey’s physical comedy. Not me recommending that you should watch Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, a movie that has truly aged terribly. But the truth remains that nobody can make me laugh with their body language and facial expressions more than Jim Carrey did as unhinged Ace.
Steve Earle’s album The Revolution Starts Now is in the backdrop of so many of my childhood memories from summer road trips. Steve Earle’s critique of the Iraq war gave me a political consciousness as an adolescent, and his raw storytelling showed me that artists can speak truth to power. I have probably listened to this album several hundred times:
A Series of Unfortunate Events: I owe a great deal of my vocabulary and obscure knowledge to these eccentric, grim books. My friends and I were so obsessed with the Lemony Snicket-verse as kids that we spent multiple years writing an elaborate fan fiction back and forth via snail mail letters. I still think about those letters often, and wish that my imagination still felt as alive as it did in the world of Lemony Snicket’s characters.
Japanese woodblock prints - the images of the “floating world” (ukiyo-e) have delighted me since I was a teenager with their beauty, delicacy, and fashions. When I paint I like to think about the colour sense in these prints - soft pastels contrasted with blocks of deep dark colours.
Kikugawa Eizan, Three elegant beauties enjoying the evening cool, woodblock print c. 1810 (via RISD Museum) Austin Kleon is the Internet stranger I have been following for the longest - the earliest “influencer” I know. I discovered many of the people and ideas that shaped my creative life through his weekly newsletter. His book Steal Like an Artist helped set me on a disciplined creative path way before I identified that I was actually an artist, and his book Show Your Work is my most-used resource for how to think about marketing and self-promotion without the ick.
Musicals. I was part of many community theatre choruses throughout my teenage years; these were formative experiences of making something creative happen through the power of a group. Props to my sister Gracie who still knows exactly what point in the too-long road trip she needs to put on the Sweeney Todd soundtrack, so we sing, reminisce and split a gut laughing all the way to the driveway.
I can’t remember another film that affected me as deeply as Aftersun, a movie full of nostalgia for us children of the early 90s (wrote more on that here). I love the way the director Charlotte Wells used the medium of film, and the camera itself, to explore how lived experience actually feels.
Still from Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun (2022) Comics and graphic books: As I kid I adored my collections of Charlie Brown and Calvin & Hobbes, along with the Amelia’s Notebook series. As an adult I’ve learned so much about difficult/interesting things in the world through graphic novels and memoirs from the likes of Nora Krug, Alison Bechdel, Marjane Satrapi, and many more. Lynda Barry’s books and teachings made me realize the power of comics as a form of both art and communication.
Learning from my teacher and mentor, San Francisco-based artist Lindsay Stripling. Whenever I take one of her classes I learn not only a new technique, but a whole different way of looking at myself, my practice and my world.
Mr. Dressup was a childhood hero and the face of my morning TV time. He taught me the value of being creative and kind in this world. Still need to see the new documentary about his life!
Barbara Cooney’s sweet children’s book Miss Rumphius taught me that it was okay to spend time alone, to chart one’s own path through life, and that one should try to make the world a little more beautiful.
Miss Rumphius Scattering Lupine Seeds, illustrated by Barbara Cooney. Ballet class many times a week from age 6-17 taught me how to show up to practice and refine something over and over…and over. And how to find the strength in my own body.
Still liking the music of Kanye West has to be among the greatest of guilty pleasures - but The College Dropout was simply one of the first albums I discovered myself and made my own, without my parents’ influence, and that shit changes your life. I still know every word on the album and still love the gospel music sampling over the goofy jokes and chunky beats.
Robyn O’Neil - her art (all done with a mechanical pencil!), her newsletter, and most of all her podcast Me Reading Stuff. The spirit of Me Reading Stuff - praising the things you love, telling people about great books - was a big inspiration to start writing here.
Monty Python taught me that comedy can be both brilliant and completely dumb at the same time. At least several times a week I’m quoting something from The Holy Grail out of thin air.
We should all aim to channel one iota of the spirit, artistry and utter cool that Brittany Howard radiates. I can’t watch videos of her singing without getting chills. When I first heard the music she made with Alabama Shakes I knew I was listening to something utterly new. Seeing BH perform live is near the top of my bucket list! Do yourself a favour:
Rebecca Solnit’s writing. I’ll never forget finding my way to The Faraway Nearby during a very difficult time. I’d never encountered this kind of personal writing before - personal memories woven in with philosophical and political ideas - and now it’s my favourite kind of thing to read.
More non-linear nonfiction storytelling: I will never think of nature writing as boring again after reading Robert Macfarlane’s Underland and The Old Ways. I love a thinker that bridges ideas across disciplines, and Macfarlane’s books roam wildly through art, biology, music, linguistics, history, archaeology, geology, and more.
Looking at folk art. I’m obsessed with knowing that ordinary people throughout time, across every culture, found ways to make art with the things at hand. It is a human need.
Montée à l'alpage, Louis David Saugy (1871-1953), papercut, 28,5 x 38,5 cm. This artist’s work, and his use of composition, gave me inspiration for a new series of my own paintings that later became an exhibition. Painting with gouache. I wrote more about the material here (I’m a bit of an evangelist). Forever grateful to my teacher, Wendy Welch at Vancouver Island School of Art, for introducing me to the medium that I now paint with all the time, in her course “Painting the Everyday with Gouache.” Wendy also showed me the work of Maira Kalman, who uses gouache to paint playful illustrated narratives combined with her own whimsical writing. I’ve known ever since that I want to make work along similar lines.
I love the work of many Inuit artists throughout time, though I am especially captivated by the contemporary drawings of the late great Annie Pootoogook, who drew the joy, sadness, and simplicity of her everyday life.
Annie Pootoogook, Removing Grey Hair, 2006, coloured pencil and ink on paper, 22.5 x 30 inches The box set of Beatrix Potter’s collected animal tales was my most prized possession as soon as I learned how to read. Potter was a scientist, an illustrator, someone who felt at home in the natural world and saw the strangeness in everyday things - she feels like a kindred spirit from another time.
If I had to take one album to a desert island for the rest of my life, my easy choice is Paul Simon’s Graceland, an album with layers upon layers in both the music and its meanings.
You made it! Impossible to narrow down my life’s inspirations to just 33, but I hope you found something to read or dig into further. And if you make your own list, please share it with me - I’m nosy!
All the best for the rest of this year and into the next,
Emily
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Love this and you ❤️
I watched the Brittany Howard sing you shared and then her Tiny Desk Concert… truly an amazing artist! Thank you for sharing her with us! And happy birthday:)