Out Drawing on Bloor Street Before Getting Soaked

As always, a long pause from making posts, and never a great reason except the drawings and art making are few and far between.

Anyhoo, here are a few drawings I made the other night at Mark Laliberte's art hootenany held at the Rustic Owl over by Bloor and Dovercourt.

The last time I did any drawing I was interested in making marks on old paper so I tried that with this old cerlox bound ukelele book in French my mom used to use as a teaching guide. I have accepted that although I am 43 and prime for learning uke at an evening event in a coffee shop, this holds little interest for me, let alone in French, so surplus paper with musical context galore. 

Mostly I was clearing the cob webs and chatting with Mr.Larry as per. 

Rustic Owl is a great place with sandwiches, yes they are yummy but no beer it being a coffee shop, so to that end, to 3 Speed I went to quaff a beer. Lots of people, but holy fuck, so much plaid. I honestly was trying to remember if it was Kurt Cobain week on Discovery Channel!

I was doing this fast drawing from the bar in the dark and the more I looked the more the plaid would reveal itself, this defacto clothing item on guys and they always look like they need a wash. 

Anyways, that beer took up enough time for me to leave and get uber soaked from Dufferin all the way home on the bike. 

Sketches based on Goya and Gillray

OK, what can you say about Goya that has not been said? His etchings are incredible, its even hard to experience them first hand because as an artist you have seen them reproduced hundreds of times before you can examine them in real life.

The AGO has tried to help you! They present a folio of the "Los Caprichos which has been hand tinted by a collector, seriously? WTF. This is just silly. It chromatically works better with Gillray but that is not the idea here. The work is changed and it is hard to appreciate the fine line work and Aquatints when they are presented like Ted Turner has caca'd all over the damn things.

Gillray's work is really terrific, he shows you the other side of how the United Kingdom saw the narrative of the French Revolution, instead of the shirking off the oppression of the Monarchy, you have a sense of the fear of the reign of terror.

And then there is Larry the mensch, beset by demons on all sides.

Upcoming Exhibition at Loop

So as the deadline to the new show approaches, there was a mention of it in Toronto Life this week. It has a grotesque photo of some sandwich meat...I eat beef and it looks gross to me.

Anyways, the pressure is mounting so I hope you can make it to the show, I think its going to be great, my exhibition partner Larry Eisenstein were talking about it, we are really excited to see how the work will play off each other, it is so much better if there is a type of inter play between the work rather than a room where two shows are happening at the same time.

If your eyes cannot read that or you do not want to click the picture, here is what it says:

Eric Farache
This photographer is best known for his take on the urgencies of city life, but his sketchbooks are testimony to febrile imagination. Life Lessons, a show of watercolour and ink paintings, approaches the torments and joys of boyhood with verve and nerve.

That is me, people, Verve.

Our show runs from April 30th to May 22, 2011. Please come, there will, as always, be cheese*. Our opening/vernissage is still being determined.




*this offer is only good for the opening, please do not show up on a Wednesday at 4pm and demand cheese, it is childish and demeans us both.