Jan 21st, 2011 out for Colwyn's Birthday

I did not do a drawing of Colwyn, the Toronto based artist and recipient of multiple art awards from various government bodies.

But I did catch this old coot who was wearing a jaunty angled bow tie and was playing a mean game of pool.

I did not mean for Joe and Ilka to look so serious, they were not, maybe it just came out that way as they were leaving early.

Whereas this is one of the bartenders explaining last call was over.

Here is a link to Colwyn's WORK

Loop General Meeting

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.

Bartender at Bread, circa 2012

I have a drawing in my 2010 grouping of a male bartender at the front of this restaurant, this is at the back. We were having some afternoon drinks.

Alan Chan, Jan 14th 2012.

After a late night and a cold walk, we stopped at this place on Prince street cafe for a coffee.

Raymond Pettibon

I love this mad man

He has said some keen things about the war in the Persian Gulf

He has a wide variety in his work

His work is intense and honest

I came across a show of his a few years ago at the Bergamot station in Santa Monica, he had just left, apparently he was unhappy with his framed prints so he pulled out a sharpie marker and added phrases in the white space, the gallery was a bit bowled over, some of the work had already sold and they had to sell work with stuff which could be just rubbed off, you know it would go all as part of the schtick, but that hadn't smoothed that out yet.

Hey its a long video, but if you have a few minutes and don't know about this artist, have a look:

Watch Humor on PBS. See more from ART:21.

Japanese influences

As you may have spotted before, I love Japanese prints, especially those of the style called Ukiyo-e, which I think is the Meiji period after the Edo like at the end of the Samurai, very Last Samurai without Tom Cruise faffing about- actually he was ok in that film.

Personally I love the prints which are a historical record of the Sino-Japanese and the Russo-Japanese wars.

Japanese compositions are so dynamic and this time period is fascinating as the imagery is a mixture of eastern and western influences.

Also, Japanese visual culture seems so inventive even 120 years ago, check out these two images!

I think this is just marvelous, the medical treatment of a damaged ship!

And this is right out of Macbeth, look at how the Tsar Nicholas awakes to see this nightmare of damaged armaments before him

The two below are from the Russian conflict, the upper image has old school Ninja types sabotaging Russia's major advantage, the train.

The lower image: the horrific results.

Well, having looked at all this, I'm not sure you can draw a direct line to my work but it is a mystic talisman that I gravitate to on some level. My sketchbook uses more of this narrative.

New Studies

I have been working a little bit in the studio and to get back in the groove and loosen up the arm, I started doing these conte sketches from an old photo album.

A friend of mine loaned me this album, I need to get it back to him, but I just fall in love with these images every time I open it up. I need to do some scans so he can get some prints done.


These pictures are like 100 years old, it is just amazing.

Looking at old pictures is so much fun, there is a world in each image.

I have some old pictures I bought on Queen East, at Gadabout and I just love how when you don't know anyone in the picture, you can look at the picture more objectively and just appreciate them for their beauty.

quick sketch

I'm thinking that i'll upload sketches for the days that I do them on. This was a sketch I did at Jet Fuel using conte with this awesome pen tool/holder my brother got me in Spain in 1992 at the Seville Expo.

This guys was on the phone with his hoodie.

As far as the Expo 1992 goes, you can find more here yup, it was to be a celebration of the 500 years since Columbus 'discovered' the Americas and all the fun that has ensued, they took a more upbeat look on it, when I say upbeat, I mean they glossed over what indigenous people of the Americas have endured.

But it was the 90s you might say.

An image from Lake Cecebe

Here is an image I took this summer, still playing around with these negatives.

Paintings from this summer

Forgot all about these three 12x12 inch paintings from the AWOL square foot show.

Yes the work in that things ranges from artwork to insane crap, but hey, it was nice to have a deadline.

This centaur seems to keep resurfacing in this body of work, he is something of my totem animal- a mascot but also something that is a representation of the animalistic desires within people.

There is a certain sense of innocence that I was playing with here, somewhere between Darger and Disney.

Here is a little Darger, not a Dzama

But you can see how much Marcel Dzama studied the decrepit borderline pedo.

I just googled images of Disney and everything that came up for about 17 pages was computer generated, the images look so dead, not surprising I guess- but poor Ariel, she must so disheartened with nothing but her Dinglehopper to console her.

I have been using the image of trees and cameos. I feel that cameos are such an ancient and potent image of women. There is something so special about that.

Trees: old trees, trees of knowledge- what that knowledge means and do you really want that knowledge? Perhaps leaving well enough alone may be in our best interests at times.

Coffee Anyone?

If you are in the east end, please swing by the Rooster Coffee house, at 479 Broadview Avenue, the coffee is great (they also have a great ginger tea for the non caffeine types) and I have remounted much of my 2010 show, Manifest Dream in the coffee shop.

When you walk in, you'll spot my large Ladies photograph on the northern wall and beside that, an image of the main square of Marrakech, Place Djemaa El fna 1 shot in 2009. The warm colours of the sunset look really great against the beat up brown leather chairs there.

If you are looking for more info on the coffee shop, click here

Also, keep your eye out for this image, I'm happy with it.

Botticelli and the Mystic Nativity

I happened to catch a few minutes of this BBC series last night on TVO, (props to the government funded arts acronyms!) its called The Private life of {insert artwork or artist here} they featured one on Botticelli's Mystic Nativity which is in the National Gallery in London. It seemed like the history of the painting is really rich and incorporates the history of Florence in the turbulent times after the Bonfire of the vanities and Savonarola being burned as a heretic.

I have always looked at this image with a lot of care when I was spending time in the gallery, the demons which peak out of the cracks of the earth are fascinating and I love how Botticelli thought the world was coming to an end in 1500 AD because all the problems in Italy at that time. I had a huge chat with my friend Jan years ago and I used this painting as an example of how we always think things are getting worse in life, no matter what the evidence, we think we live at the end of days as it were.

As per usual, she thought I was full of shit and thought it best to let me know, another reason why we all miss Jan- daily.

I digress.

Anyways, when I was a student in Florence back in 1992, I was really into the compositional poetry of the large paintings in the Ufizi galleries there. I went so far as to base a painting of mine on Botticelli's Primavera....However my painting was based on a series of disturbing dreams I was having at the time about US POWs after Viet Nam (wow, i am outdoing myself on the acronyms ce soir!)

man, another picture I do not have a slide of, 20 years ago, I have to see if I can find any reference to that painting of mine and I'll insert it here at some point.
Yup, I remember it well, these Pows had the attributes of 1970s men, moustaches and such, as it turns out Freddie Mercury died at that time and he really resembled one of my characters, or visa versa.


Back to the topic, the Nativity painting, it is really strange and wonderful and makes reference to a speech by Savonarola and his visions of Mary (Click here if you would like to know more about this Dominican friar).

Boy did this drag on, anyways look, I could not fins the doc on youtube but I found others on the series here, look at the sidebar for ones on Van Gogh, Michelangelo, Degas, Picasso, Rodin and the Japanese artist Hokusai of the wave painting, of which I will shamelessly insert my own version of that image as part of my mixed media painting/photography.

The TV series shows you an image in a different light, ok, they don't examine contemporary work which would be awesome but what can I tell you?

Please have a look at the National Gallery UK's site the collection is terrific, there is so much stunning work there, every time i am in the UK, I walk in that gallery and it feels like I am visiting a relative, I'll spend the day there.

Finally organized a shoot at the Studio

Took some time in the studio for this little portrait of Scotty. I have had this seamless around for awhile and I tend to use it more in lengths for painting more stark white paintings on black. For the purpose of painting, its fine, i staple it to the wall and it goes flat. But damn, it needs a ton of help as a backdrop. For these quick prints I did not bother, but I have to blur the background in Photoshop to get the cellulite texture out of the thing. Argh.

Anyways, Scotty came in with this ochre coloured zip up and this seemed like just the right colour mix, the blacks, ochres and browns of coffee on his jeans.

I was trying out these Kino flo knock off constant lights and I have to say I was really happy with the quality of the light, they are neat, 4 independently operated lights in each unit with barn yard doors, not to be a geek but they were cool, and not too heavy.

The fall off of light here is pretty dramatic and I like that a lot. It reminds me of 16th century full length Spanish paintings, not to draw any parallels between this hastily shot image of Scotty and the meticulous work of Diego Velazquez.

Nor am I trying to compare the actor Montgomery Clift like handsomeness of Scotty with famous the deformed lipped royalty of the Hapsburgs, whose portraits by Velazquez and others, now after 300+ years are just a testament to their mad money, vanity and mostly their weird looks.

This Hapsburg ain't the weirdest looker that is for sure but they got 'em.

But seriously, they looked crazy. I remember walking through the Art History Museum in Vienna and being just amused at the heroic portraits of the most inbred and fantastically ugly (and wealthy) people ever. I looked it up online but could not find anything, I have the catalogue for the Kunsthistoriches Museum so I'll put something up when I have a chance to scan the book.