Recently, I stumbled upon an old review of my work and it made me so glad. It's nice to read this now as I've been transitioning in my work, once again, as the reminder is very important:

Veronica Funk's painting style is characterized by a vibrant, expressive use of color and a sense of spontaneity. Her work often blends abstract and semi-figurative elements, with a focus on the emotional and psychological aspects of her subjects. Funk's art frequently explores themes of nature, the human experience, and personal reflection.

In many of her pieces, she uses bold, sweeping brushstrokes and layered textures, which give her work a sense of movement and depth. The color palette is often rich, with contrasting tones that evoke mood and energy. Funk is known for creating dynamic compositions that draw the viewer's eye through layers of paint and imagery, sometimes using collage elements or mixed media to add complexity.

There's also a sense of freedom and playfulness in her style, which allows her to experiment with form and color without being confined by strict representation. Her work can feel both contemporary and timeless, inviting viewers to connect with their own emotions and interpretations.

Veronica Funk’s painting style is known for being bold, playful, and highly graphic, with a strong sense of joy and immediacy.

Here are the main characteristics people associate with her work:

• Vibrant, saturated color palettes
  She uses bright, confident colors—often high-contrast combinations—that make the paintings feel energetic and uplifting.
• Flat, simplified shapes
  Instead of realistic shading or depth, forms are usually flat and clearly defined, giving the work a clean, modern look.
• Strong outlines and graphic clarity
  Shapes are often bordered or clearly separated, which makes the imagery feel bold and easy to read from a distance.
• Playful, folk-inspired imagery
  Common elements include stylized people, animals, plants, suns, moons, and everyday objects, all reduced to simple, symbolic forms.
• Whimsical and joyful mood
  The overall feeling is lighthearted and optimistic, with a sense of fun rather than seriousness or realism.
• Balance of structure and spontaneity
  While compositions are carefully arranged, they still feel loose, expressive, and intuitive rather than rigid.
• Modern meets folk art
  Her work often feels like a mix of contemporary graphic design and traditional folk or naïve art influences.

In short, her paintings stand out for their cheerful energy, clarity, and fearless use of color, creating images that feel both modern and warmly human.

Veronica Funk’s artistic process involves creating vibrant, textured paintings that explore themes of nature, women’s rights, and environmental awareness. She favours watercolours and often incorporates mixed media elements into her work.

Her process begins with preparing her materials, such as coating wood panels with watercolour medium and using natural earth paint with a honey-based binder. Funk’s artistic projects often revolve around series, including “Sacred Vessel,” “The Grandmothers,” and “Simple Pleasures,” which showcase her ability to experiment with different techniques.

Her website and blog offer insights into her creative journey. Funk’s artistic style is characterized by bright colours and textured layers, often inspired by her love for nature and her experiences as a woman and mother.

Funk’s artistic endeavours are influenced by notable female artists and her surroundings, like the northern boreal forest where she grew up. Her project on woman artists of Alberta highlights her dedication to showcasing women’s contribution to the arts.

Her project, “Women of the West,” focuses on art history research to uncover the stories of these women artists and highlights the contributions of female artists to the growth of the arts in Alberta through a portrait series. Funk’s research involves archival work to shed light on these women’s stories, which were often overlooked in historical accounts.

Funk’s artistic work has shifted towards storytelling, celebrating women’s lives and stories through portraiture. Her recent portrait projects include “Mastrius Women” and “Woman’s Work,” featuring portraits of women who work in various fields, along with their stories of how their lives changed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some of her notable exhibitions include:

• “Women of the West” archival research project at Alberta Society of Artists Gallery
• “Mastrius Women” during her residency
• “Woman’s Work” exhibition at Sparrow ArtSpace

Funk’s work has also been featured in various art books and publications.

Some tools don’t just work — they grow a personality. My Guerrilla Painter 6×8 Thumbox pochade is one of those rare pieces of gear that has quietly followed me through seasons, moves, styles, and entire chapters of life. I’ve had it for about 20 years, and it’s still very much in active duty.

It’s paint-splattered, dented, softened by time, and honestly? I wouldn’t trade it for anything shinier.
Built like it expects to be dropped (because it will be), the first thing you notice about the Thumbox is how unapologetically solid it is. This thing was made to be tossed into my car, pulled out on a curb, balanced on my knees, or wedged against a rock while the light is disappearing fast.

Over the years, mine has:

• Been painted in snow, heat, wind, and fading dusk
• Lived on sidewalks, trails, bridges, and living room floors
• Been opened and closed thousands of times without complaint

The hinges are still tight. The closures still snap. Nothing rattles. That alone says a lot.
The 6×8 sweet spotThere’s something magical about the 6×8 format. It’s big enough to say something real, but small enough to keep you honest. The Thumbox keeps me focused, no sprawling, no overworking, no endless fiddling.

When I paint with it, I paint decisively. That limitation has shaped how I see and how I work far more than any class or workshop ever did.

A palette that tells a story. If you’ve ever seen an old Thumbox in person, you know what I mean when I say the palette becomes a diary. Layers of color build up over time, recording past paintings in ghost form. Scraped edges, stained corners, accidental mixtures, it’s all there.

Mine carries evidence of:

• Color experiments that worked
• Color experiments that absolutely did not
• Paintings done in a hurry because the light was perfect and fleeting

I could clean it but I probably won’t.

Quiet design, zero fuss. What I’ve always loved about Guerrilla Painter boxes is how unshowy they are. No gimmicks. No unnecessary complexity. Everything is where you expect it to be. It opens. It holds my panels or canvas. It holds my paint. After 20 years, I don’t think about the box at all when I’m painting and that’s the highest compliment I can give a tool.

Still relevant, still travelling. Despite newer pochade designs, fancy add-ons, and evolving materials, the ThumBox hasn’t become obsolete. If anything, it feels more relevant now. Lightweight, portable, reliable, and simple, exactly what I want when the goal is to paint, not manage gear. It’s been with me long enough that picking it up feels like muscle memory. Familiar. Comforting. Ready.

Final thoughts: Some art tools are stepping stones. Others become companions.
This Guerrilla Painter 6×8 ThumBox pochade has earned its place in my practice, not because it’s perfect, but because it’s dependable, honest, and built to last. Twenty years in, it still shows up ready to work, paint stains and all. And honestly? I hope I’m still painting with it twenty years from now.

I love painting my teacups using a variety of methods, but the direct watercolour method is my favourite. If you'd like to join me, I have a video on youtube where I create this painting in my sketchbook along with a little colour swatching here.

Women's empowerment through the use of paintbrushes and pigments

“My portraits aren’t a perfect representation of people.”

Veronica Funk, an eco-conscious and multimedia artist who grew up in Leaf  Rapids, located in Northern Manitoba, has been living in Airdrie for 30 years now. Her parents are both of South American descent. A lot of her early art education came from Cree grandmothers who taught her how to weave and bead. Growing up, she was surrounded by Indigenous arts and artisans that lit a fire in her artistry. Funk went to Red Deer for Arts and Design in the 80s at the age of 19.
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“It was a great experience, that’s where I got exposed to a whole lot of media, where we did everything there. The professors were fantastic, and I’ve met a lot of people who are still my friends to this day,” she said.

​What made her choose painting is how constant it is. Funk had experimented with different kinds of mediums, like oil, then switched to acrylics, but both of these formulas caused an allergic reaction to her husband, which prompted her to try organic and plant-based pigments.

“Environmentally, I wanted to leave a better footprint on the planet. I also walk as much as possible. I’m careful about the products I purchase and where they are made,” she said.
She converted to using natural pigments for the last five years.

The process of making her own watercolour pigments involves mixing these three ingredients. She uses gum arabic in a powder form from Natural Earth Paint, water, and honey. Then, she’ll combine the wet mixture with the powder pigments. Hand-milled them and then put them in the pans. Funk finds that it’s a lot more economical to do, which also lasts her for a long period.

As a mother of two, Funk would describe herself as a bit of an activist. “I see how women are often disregarded. The first project I did was 52 weeks of portraits of women my daughters and I admire, and it’s called ‘Heroes’ where I draw one each week.” During that project, she’s been experimenting with different kinds of mediums, colours, and textures, which led her to her next project, “The Nasty Women,” where she drew women who inspire her and made an impact. “I posted on social media and asked women if I could paint their portrait, from actors to politicians,” she said.

Before the pandemic started, Funk started a project called “The Grandmothers”. What inspired her was when she discovered that her grandmother from Paraguay had delivered the most babies in the area, and all of them survived. Her grandmother learned from a Canadian medical textbook about sterilization, which is the practice she applied.
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What made Funk focused on women’s portraits and stories specifically was her children. She believes that everybody deserves equal rights, and she wanted to draw attention through her works. Even with her ongoing project “Women of the West”, she took some art history courses during the pandemic at Alberta University of the Arts. “I had some professors, I know this is not their fault and it’s in the curriculum but they kept talking about men artist always in the classes and not the females unless they would mention them as the male artist’s sister or wife and yet a lot of these females were more successful at that time so I started researching Alberta's history and artists and it’s been wonderful,” she said.

Art Journal
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She started doing art journaling when she worked at Airdrie Public Library, where she saw many books being discarded, like books missing pages and getting damaged, so she started decorating them with different craft pieces and writing down her favourite quote.

Whenever I consider adding embroidery to my canvas I ask myself a few questions:

1. What colour(s) will complement this composition?
2. What pattern(s) will add or detract from the image?
3. Where should the embroidery be placed?

I love adding colour and pattern to my work but sometimes too much can make the work feel too disjointed so I have to carefully consider what I will add and where it will go in order to create a cohesive composition. I also have to think about where holes will be placed so that they don't interfere with the integrity of the completed work. If too many needle holes are placed too closely together, I run the risk of damaging the canvas and creating large holes over time. As well, to ensure that the embroidery doesn't loosen over time, I don't make a knot in the thread prior to beginning the embroidery process but, rather, leave a long tail so that I can tie the beginning and end pieces together to create a strong knot. Once I have completed the embroidery, I seal it in both the front and back of the work with a varnish so that it can be lightly cleaned with a modestly damp cloth and will hold up over time. It really is a fun process that brings me back to my childhood days of craft making. 

Though I completed this painting of Mount Rundle some time ago, it always felt as though something was missing. With the body of work I created as part of the 'Alberta Bound' project, I had incorporated embroidery and wanted to add it to this piece as well. As soon as I pulled out my embroidery floss, I knew I would include stars over the mountains. There is something special about embroidery as it was one of the initial art forms that I was taught as a very young girl. And, I especially like to add the texture and colour of fibre onto painted canvas...plus, as it's not the focus, I can be a bit more haphazard about how I do it, which suits me just fine when it comes to creativity.

There are many reasons to take part in an Artist Residency, but the most valuable to me are:

1. An opportunity to focus on work without interruption.
2. Time to experiment with new media.
3. A space for research.

During my time in Banff, I focused on landscape painting on wood panels utilizing slow drying acrylics. I have always been interested in the landscape but felt intimidated by it and utilized the time to figure out how I wanted to approach this subject. I have continued to work on plein air landscapes on wood panels, but am now incorporating handmade watercolours in my attempt to leave a lighter footprint on the earth.

While at the ASA Gallery with the Alberta Society of Artists, I had the opportunity to do some research on a series of portraits that I wanted to create which features historical Alberta female artists. It was the first time I created larger portraits utilizing watercolours.

Prior to the residency at the ASA Gallery, I was given space and time at Sparrow Artspace to explore two different media: embroidery on canvas and watercolour portraiture. Since that residency, I have expanded the work with embroidery as that was my initial introduction to visual art as my family is from South America and embroidered much of their handmade clothing. I am also making more watercolour paint while using Beam Paints watercolours, an organic Canadian made product. Also, I have continued work on watercolour portraits for the project titled 'Women of the West.'

Without the time and place that I was granted to explore this work, I don't know if I would have continued it. Since then, several projects have now been exhibited with another nearing completion and I feel very good about that.

Painting the quiet moments...Took my little travel palette out to Nose Creek by the library in the autumn and tried to capture the warm, fading colours of late autumn. There's something magical about painting in the landscape - you start noticing every patch of gold, every cool reflection on the water. Cold fingers were totally worth it.