Images from the summer

So I have got back some film that I shot this summer but I did not have a chance to scan the negatives, so basically there is no image to this visual blog...


Anyhoo,


I was shooting water lillies up north, they are black and white shot with the holga, of course you cannot look at these little water thingies without thinking of Monet and his work. Back in 1992 I went to where he lived and worked, Giverny, it was just like walking into the paintings. I should find some of those pics and scan them, especially as I am not in them so you cannot see how tragically long my hair was at the time.

I digress, here is a link of those paintings that are in the oval galleries of the Orangerie, in the tuileries garden in Paris a short hop from the Louvre, if I remember correctly, which I may not. I looked up the name, the painting series is Les Nymphéas, 4 paintings in this oval gallery so you are surrounded by nature paintings, it is way better than it sounds.

The Link is a VR tour ( a la late 1990s!) of the 2 rooms, 8 paintings, be careful! It moves really fast with the panning you can lose your mind rapidos.

Actually at the gallery, you will also find Chaim Soutine painting(s?) there is the one of the altar boy

He also did this famous painting of a flayed beef, a homage to Rembrandt's Flayed Ox

this is Soutine's

This is Rembrandt's painting

And this is Francis Bacon

I think the text in the Bacon picture that was added by my cursor going over the image when I took the screen shot, saying "francis-bacon-painting" kinda adds something.

I love the thick rich painting style of Soutine, you can see how he has elaborated on the brush strokes of Rembrandt and perhaps has visually indicated where painting like this can go under the brush of Frank Auerbach, whose oil paintings famously sag from being wet for decades.

Here is a little video about him

A Homage to Donald Barthelme

Yes, this piece of mine has made it out of the studio

The piece looked great framed and I am happy to say the new owner seems pretty chuffed about the whole thing, for which, I am truly grateful.

Sold Work- A momentous occasion, I thought it would be fair to mention the writer Donald Barthelme whose writing was the inspiration for this image and whose post-modern fiction is, well, a real trip.

This is the writer guy by the way, not an image of C. Everett Koop, the former Surgeon General of the US in the 80s. He came out against smoking but I think his views on abortion were more murky. He was also involved in a dotcom boom site, oh the late 1990s early 2000!

This is neither here nor there with regards to Donald, the writer. It is interesting to read his stories and just listen to the jazzy pace and see how language and meaning was clearly breaking down around him and how this became a part of the stories themselves.

I think this collapsing of meanings is something that all of us are noticing these days wether on television, the arts, there is a great deal of slippage, the signs and signifiers have moved on.

Happy to be over the couch

Years ago, my friend from OCAD Margaret had this idea to sell artwork with the couch in mind, I think I was joking and added that you should sell art with 2 cans of paint and a whack of colour swatches, flying in the face of artistic doctrine, but hey it was 1993 and we were wild then, everyone hanging out at the Beverly tavern on Queen St West, watching Steve Anthony come in between scenes on Much Music to have a number of drinks and head back to being live on air.

Mayhaps the memory is all cloudy, Margaret will probably say it was all her idea, or deny the whole thing, either way she is probably right.

Anyways, I got this sent to me today. Yep, this is now in the home of an architect in the city and I feel pretty good about that. This is one of the pieces that went out of the studio in the past week that made me get into the work space and since I have been conspiring ways to get back there to do some work ( and subsequently assaulted by the cigar smell from the guy below, the renos to the unit south of me and the guy in the back laneway who is insanely dedicated to playing dreadful drumming all day long, so very dedicated...)

SO, it is pretty awesome to see something you had a hand in hanging in someone's living environment, it is a hell of a compliment.

This picture was shot on a sunny day in Paris back in 2006. I was only there for 48 hours, it was a tough trip for me, I went to pay my respect to relatives who were recently deceased and to see other relatives who I knew would be gone before I had a chance to come back. It was the first time I stayed in a hotel (what you would expect) in Paris as I always stayed with relatives, now there were no more of them.

Back in Toronto looking at these multiple exposed sculptures made me think of The Three Graces, this was is just on the lawns around the Louvre. It also reminds me of a B&W photo I've seen on a postcard looking up past 3 sculptures of women to see 3 helicopters, I combed the inter web for awhile but no luck. I really wanted that to be here on this post as I noticed in the bottom of this pic there looks to be a model of a Huey or some other transport copter.

a missive from the edge of the world

Well, I am not sure what took me so long to send in an update.

For the most part, I had nothing to show, so nothing to say. Lately, I have moved some work through the studio and I guess that got me thinking about the visual work that I do, or have done in the past or perhaps will do again - in the world to come not in the post end of days sense, just the world to come as in the future, and tomorrow and tomorrow.

For the past few days I have been playing with these images of actor Louis Negin, you could say he is like a muse of Guy Maddin, how the hell would I know, I have never met Guy but Louis, the London UK native, former Cabbagetowner features in many of Maddin's esoteric and absolutely wonderful films, such as My Winnipeg.

Yup, and he has acting chops too, often in films with Isabella Rossellini

Just look at this Lion in winter, you just want to hug him.


So check out some stuff about Guy Maddin, he uses low fi techniques in wonderful ways.

click here if you wanna see a short with Isabella and Louis



Here is Louis in a mad piece, sissy boy slap party