It certainly doesn’t hurt to work for a JUNO award winning singer/songwriter who has a heart for humanitarian causes.

My art show’s opening night wouldn’t have happened if Steve Bell hadn’t gone to India and Ethiopia with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, taken loads of gorgeous photos that inspired me to start painting again and encouraged me in my painting efforts.

Then he allowed me to bamboozle him into performing at my art show opening, where he charmed everyone from children to adults, took some of us on a travelogue-style tour of my paintings, and then performed an intimate mini-concert.

He showed us the paintings that were created from his own photos, telling us amusing and informative anecdotes about the people he met, their economic and caste status, their reactions to being photographed and the generous hospitality Steve and his wife Nanci encountered on their visits. It was a night that will forever be etched in memory.

Steve is still working with the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. He is nearing the end of a 6 week fast from coffee, blogging weekly about it from his website www.stevebell.com, in order to bring awareness to the CFGB’s Fast for Change campaign in preparation for World Food Day on Oct. 16th, 2011.  For more information about the Fast for Change, click here. Steve said about his personal fast, “During that time, I’ll use the agony of my unrequited love of coffee (read: headaches) to remind me to pray, stir compassion, and to commit to learn more about the complex of catastrophes and complicities that generate abundance for some and desperation for others.”

Thank you to all who attended my art showing, to the helpers pictured, Steve Bell & Dave Zeglinski, Ebonie Klassen for her photography expertise, and especially to my wonderful husband Darrell! To see more of my art in person, you have only to make a personal appointment by contacting me at faye@fayehall.com.

You can also visit me at Booth #24 at the Manitoba Art Expo Nov. 3-6 at Assiniboia Downs. Click here for more info. Some of the paintings inspired by Steve Bell’s travels will also be at the Art Expo.