Old Ottawa East “Walk of Art”: Sept 20, 2025 10 Sep 3:00 AM (last month)
It’s that time of year again! Where I flail passionately in public while talking about my favourite topic: art 👩🎨 (Genetically, I am 35% Muppet.)
I’m doing the Old Ottawa East “Walk of Art” again on Saturday September 20. Ottawa friends, mark your calendars and come say hi!
Join me from 10am-3pm at 17 Mason Terrace where I’ll be showing several never-before-seen still life paintings created at my new studio, along with prints, at a range of price points. (The prints are perfect for kitchens, where original artwork can easily get damaged!)
Details:
Date: Saturday September 20, 2025
Rain Date: Sunday September 21, 2025
Time: 10am-3pm
Location: 17 Mason Terrace, Ottawa
Download “Walk of Art” Neighbourhood Map
There will be plenty of other artists within easy walking distance and the view from the canal just can’t be beat.
This free event is easily accessible from downtown and will have over 40 artists with their art displayed outdoors for attendees to peruse (and purchase!) Enjoy a walk through our lovely neighbourhood and see the wonderful creativity of its residents.
I hope to see you there!
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Powwow Life Drawing at the NAC: Sept 9, 2025 7 Sep 11:54 AM (last month)
Photo credit: Jurgen Hoth
Come join us for this two-hour life-drawing session where you can capture the dynamic beauty of powwow dances and their regalia on your own paper. Participants will bring their own material and work with art facilitators to create drawings that capture both the movement of the dancers and their regalia.
Suitable intermediate to advanced artists. Bring your favourite materials along to participate. Some supplies will be offered to those that do not have any on hand.
Sarah Marie Lacy will be facilitating the session, offering guidance for those who want it. It’s a wonderful way to stretch your creative muscles!
Free to participate! All attendees must be there to draw.
If you have any question about our Powwow Life-Drawing sessions, please email indigenousarts@nac-cna.ca.
Details:
Date: Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Time: 6pm-8pm
Location: Al Zaibak Lantern Room (2nd floor), National Arts Centre, 1 Elgin St, Ottawa
Cost: Free! No registration required.
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Free Powwow Life Drawing at the NAC: Tues Nov 12, 6pm-8pm 8 Nov 2024 5:51 AM (11 months ago)
Come join us for this two-hour life-drawing session where you can capture the dynamic beauty of powwow dances and their regalia on your own paper. Participants will bring their own material and work with art facilitators to create drawings that capture both the movement of the dancers and their regalia.
Suitable intermediate to advanced artists. Bring your favourite materials along to participate. Some supplies will be offered to those that do not have any on hand.
Sarah Marie Lacy will be facilitating the session, offering guidance for those who want it. It’s a wonderful way to stretch your creative muscles!
Free to participate! All attendees must be there to draw.
If you have any question about our Powwow Life-Drawing sessions, please email indigenousarts@nac-cna.ca.
Details:
Date: Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Time: 6pm-8pm
Location: Al Zaibak Lantern Room (2nd floor), National Arts Centre, 1 Elgin St, Ottawa
Cost: Free! No registration required.
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New! Workshops at Wallack’s Art Supplies & Framing in Ottawa 30 Oct 2024 7:16 AM (11 months ago)
New! Workshops at Wallack’s Art Supplies & Framing in Ottawa
I’m excited to partner with Wallack’s to offer a fun, budget-friendly way to explore my approach to portrait drawing! 🎨
In November and December, I’ll be hosting three 2-hour portrait drawing demos—perfect for anyone wanting to refine their skills or dip their toes into the world of portraiture. Working in graphite on white paper, we’ll cover portrait essentials, key anatomy insights, and how to use light and shadow to make your portraits come alive.
While each session will cover similar elements of portrait drawing, we will have a different live model each time, so you can come to just one or come to all 3!
You’ll leave this workshop with practical tips you can apply to your portrait drawings immediately. Bring a sketchbook and pencil to draw along and take notes!
Tickets are just $7.53 and you can register at the appropriate link below!
Dates:
Tuesday, November 5, 6:30-8:30 PM
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/portrait-drawing-demo-tickets-1045117353137
Sunday November 17, 1:30pm-3:30pm
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/portrait-drawing-demo-tickets-1045459667007
Sunday December 8, 1:30pm-3:30pm
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/portrait-drawing-demo-tickets-1045460569707
Hope to see you there! ✏️
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Free Powwow Life Drawing at the NAC: Tues Oct 15, 6pm-8pm 11 Oct 2024 8:53 AM (last year)
Free Powwow Life Drawing at the NAC: Tues Oct 15, 6pm-8pm
Come join us for this two-hour life-drawing session where you can capture the dynamic beauty of powwow dances and their regalia on your own paper. Participants will bring their own material and work with art facilitators to create drawings that capture both the movement of the dancers and their regalia.
Suitable intermediate to advanced artists. Bring your favourite materials along to participate. Some supplies will be offered to those that do not have any on hand.
Sarah Marie Lacy will be facilitating the session, offering guidance for those who want it. It’s a wonderful way to stretch your creative muscles!
Free to participate! All attendees must be there to draw.
If you have any question about our Powwow Life-Drawing sessions, please email indigenousarts@nac-cna.ca.
Details:
Date: Tuesday, October 15, 2024
Time: 6pm-8pm
Location: Rossy Pavilion (2nd floor), National Arts Centre, 1 Elgin St, Ottawa
Cost: Free! No registration required.
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Come see me at the “A Walk of Art”! (Sat Sept 28) 25 Sep 2024 11:19 AM (last year)
Come see me at the “A Walk of Art”!
Mark your calendars if you’re in Ottawa! I’m doing the Old Ottawa East “Walk of Art” Tour again on Saturday September 28.
Join me from 11am-3pm at 17 Mason Terrace where I’ll have a variety of pieces on display along with prints for sale, alongside my neighbour, urban sketch artist Timothy Hunt.
This free event is easily accessible from downtown and will have over 30 artists with their art displayed outdoors for attendees to peruse (and purchase!)
Enjoy a walk through our lovely neighbourhood and see the wonderful creativity of its residents.
You can download the tour map below or download a list of the addresses:
I love being able to share my work in person.
The internet is a fabulous thing, but even the best photos don’t do paintings justice.
There’s a lusciousness and texture to oil paint that gets lost on a computer screen. The subtlety of the colours and values get lost. A little of the impact goes missing.
It’s why I love doing the Old Ottawa East “Walk of Art”. It’s a chance to invite people into my creative world and see not just the portraits I share online, but the smaller pieces and studies, as well as some of the works I’m making for a future solo show.
I love being able to answer questions and have in-depth conversations about creativity and what goes into my work.
Details:
Saturday September 28, 2024
17 Mason Terrace, Ottawa (near the canal)
11am-3pm
I hope to see you there!
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“The Light Bearer” selected as Top 10 Finalist 1 May 2024 8:49 AM (last year)
I’m delighted to announce that my painting, “The Light Bearer”, was chosen as a Top 10 Finalist in the Ottawa School of Art‘s 2024 Portrait Contest. Grand prize is a commission of the Canadian astronaut Colonel Chris Hadfield!
All 10 pieces that were selected as finalists will be on display from May 6-11 at the Downtown Campus of the Ottawa School of Art in the Byward Market (35 George St, Ottawa).
The grand prize winner will be announced on May 16, 2024.
“The Light Bearer”, 18″ x 24″ oil on panel
The Top 10 Finalists are:
Adrienne Seel
Alexandra Tataru
Gahen Thanabalamsingam
Jiaxuan Yi
Karen Loofs
Kendall Ayoub Nichols
Lucia Alloggia
Michael Silverstone
Sarah Lacy
Sylvie Champagne
You can see the top 10 finalist paintings here: https://www.artottawa.ca/top-10-finalists
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why my art doesn’t look “just like a photo!” 5 May 2016 2:11 AM (9 years ago)
“Oh my god! It looks exactly like a photo! Wow!”
“Just like a photo! Amazing!”
If you decide to work in a realistic style as an artist, you hear this all of the time. And it’s always intended as a compliment, and I do take it that way.
All the same – it makes me inwardly cringe.
And this is no disrespect to photography. Photography is its own art form with its own set of standards.
But it’s nothing like painting and I hope that my painting is nothing like it.
Somewhere during the last 100 or so years, photography became our substitute for what real life looks like. We view the world through a lens, photographing our memories, our experiences. It’s gotten easier and easier to record our entire lives through the click of a button.
And in some ways, that’s really wonderful. But it’s like we forgot that the world was 3D first and 2D only after we release the shutter.
A photograph happens in a split second – it is one specific moment, captured exactly as it was. (Photoshop aside.)
A painting, particularly a painting done from life, is a record of a series of moments of life. It is a record of moods, of breathing, of slight movements, of the three-dimensionality of the moment. It is not a split second experience, but an experience of days and weeks and months.
I don’t want my paintings to feel frozen, the way photographs do. I want you to believe that my painting could breathe at any moment, that they could get up and walk away – or better yet, dance away.
I want my paintings to trick you into believing that real life is happening within the depths of that canvas. We can’t suspend disbelief with photos – we know what it is. We understand how it happened.
But there’s something about a painting or drawing that allows us to believe for a second that there is something more going on. That maybe there’s a whole world just beneath the surface of that canvas. That maybe there is magic. We fall for the story, for the mystery.
Paintings speak to us in different ways than photographs do. Not better – just different. They speak to the part of us that has been making marks on walls for 30,000 years; that urge to create our own worlds, to tell our own stories, with our own hands.
So I hope my art doesn’t make you think of photos. I hope my art makes you think of life.
(This was first published in my newsletter, which you can sign up for here!)
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painting: keeping me humble since 2003 28 Apr 2016 2:09 AM (9 years ago)
CH, 13″ x 17″ charcoal on toned paper. Available, $600, unframed.
If there’s one thing art has taught me, it’s that I know nothing. Literally, not a damn thing.
You’re just painting along, thinking you know what you’re doing and then BAM.
Suddenly everything looks different and you were so, so wrong before.
The thing is, the truth of what you’re seeing is always 10 steps ahead of you. Life, liveliness, nature, movement, beauty – it’s always dancing away from you. It’s like quicksilver, slipping through your fingers and shimmering away. It’s mesmerizing, fascinating and exasperating as all get out.
Vision is a funny thing. You have those lovely eyeballs hanging out in your head, but what they process and tell you about is determined almost entirely by your brain. So you can train yourself to not just see more, but to understand more of what you see: to perceive more clearly and truthfully, to shed symbolizations and preconceived ideas of what’s actually in front of you.
Sometimes painting can feel like dealing with a bad mafia movie godfather:
“YOU THINK YOU KNOW, PUNK? YOU THINK YOU KNOW?
“YOU KNOW NOTHING.”
Other times, it feels like veils falling away from your eyes. You’ve been studying something for hours, learning about its very inner workings, and then you look down at your palette, look back up, and a whole new galaxy has appeared before you. Your vision has shifted and a new, deeper level of reality has come into focus.
It is both glorious and hair-tearingly frustrating. I am constantly humbled before the truth of nature and reality. Its depth, magnificence and wonderfully cohesive organization never cease to amaze me.
Which is huge part of the reason I’m madly in love with what I do. I love the challenge. I love not knowing and trying to understand. I love it when the pieces fall into place and suddenly my vision sharpens and clears. Even something seemingly tiny, like truly understanding how someone’s specific nostril is put together, feels like a triumphant achievement.
Because painting the human body has taught me how vast and complex and deep nature is. That I am a speck amongst a marvellously organized cosmos.
You think you know?
YOU KNOW NOTHING.
And I rather like it that way.
(This was first published in my newsletter, which you can sign up for here!)
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wholeness of vision 21 Apr 2016 2:07 AM (9 years ago)
Tracey, 13″ x 19″ pink pencil & white chalk on toned paper
People see my work and think that the process of creating it is somehow fiddly – that I crawl across the surface of my paper or canvas with pencil or brush, minutely registering every tiny detail.
But there’s a world of difference between just copying what you see, and understanding what you see in your imagination and constructing it on the surface in front of you.
Everything I do starts with movement first. My drawings start out almost invisible. I am thinking about the movement sweeping through the body and how that arranges the forms from a larger perspective – the twist of the spine, the curve of the neck into the head, the grace of the limbs as they spiral out from the core movement of the ribcage and pelvis.
We are built like a solar system, with limbs like arms of stars twirling out from the centre.
I don’t draw a thing that looks like a human until I feel like I’ve got a grasp of the inner movement of the body. Then I start to put together the largest shapes, always thinking about movement, about how they fit together.
Once I have a “framework” for the body, I fall into the light. When people think I’m rendering tiny objects like moles, I’m actually not seeing any of that – all I’m seeing is light on flesh. How does the light touch the skin? How does it reveal itself on the form? And then I’m just following that delightful path wherever it may lead.
It is about broadness of vision, wholeness of vision. How do I create a drawing of this wonderfully whole person that feels wonderfully whole on the paper as well? When I’m really in the zone, it feels like the person is blossoming across the page, blooming into life. It feels like magic.
At the end of the day, it always comes back to grace, humanity and connection. Am I imbuing this drawing with grace? Is their deep humanity depicted on the page? Am I connecting with who this person is and expressing that? Am I connecting with myself and what I want to say?
In the tradition I studied, we learned what humanity looked like and what it didn’t look like. We are not made of cylinders and spheres and tubes. We are made of movement. We are made of stars, like some earthbound constellation.
We are everything organic and fluid and grounded. The human body is this conundrum, a vortex of energy held to the earth by gravity.
Drawing humans filled with life and vitality is the opposite of crawling across the page. Crawling freezes, stiffens, steals life away.
All I want to do is get as much life into it as possible.
(This was first published in my newsletter, which you can sign up for here!)
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