People selling junk

These people were like hippie tourists selling braids and crap like that. You could smell people did not wash, camped a lot and thought the rave scene in The Matrix 2 was HOT...Yikes, tres yikes.

San Telmo Market Painting III

I would like to show the whole thing at once, but it is just too long. You ever at the studio, remind me and I'll show you.

San Telmo Market Painting II

Here I moved to the area where people sell dreadful paintings or photos. On the left a tourist lady, on the right a aforementioned artist, this guy was from the States and was talking about Alien landings.....

San Telmo Market Painting

Using the Japanese fold out Moleskine, I sat at the San Telmo antique market and ink sketched a long flowing record of a few hours, as people walked in front of me, like this woman's butt, they just got added into the record.

Ongoing work

This painting is something that I am working on at the moment at the studio. There is so much that I can say about this Jacket and the others like it that have been graciously loaned to me, but suffice to say that I am really interested in trying to capture something in my painting, something at odds with the tangible of this object.

I started with an old piece of Fabriano paper, that I probably had around since 1992, then China ink in layers building up the underlying structure or architecture of this amazing piece of clothing and finally gouache paint, introducing some colour and texture to the painting.

I found the time to make it to the AGO, in truth, we went to Frank the restaurant, the snacks are great, the mixed drinks are too sweet for me.

Anyways, speaking of art, we stuck around long enough to check out the Julian Schnabel retrospective, a superstar of art, according to the AGO.

Really interesting to see the work, still after all these years I don't really get the broken plate paintings, I hope never do in a way.

Having said that, the painting that really touched me was the black velvet painting of Andy Warhol. Interestingly, this painting and the ones around it were in an intimate space not the volumes of air and concrete the AGO committed to this New York Big Mouth who has all but referred to himself as a modern incarnation of Picasso. For all that loud clothes and his bravado, there is something exceptionally touching in this piece he must of saw in Warhol, whose by his own accounts was fairly vacuous, so this painting dialogue between big mouth and superficial is something much greater than the sum of their parts.

here is an article from the Globe and Mail, see what they have to say


Maybe I am a sucker for velvet paintings ever since we had a red bull fighter in our dining room that my Dad painted.

Here is that painting, in the basement with an illustration on top of it from a series of photo/paintings of mine from 2006.



Julian Schnabel: Art and Film

continues until January 2, 2011, take your honey and have some fries and booze at FRANK.

Toronto International Art Fair

Hey, have not made a post in a long time, and guess what this one is about art, more specifically, my art, again.


Loop Gallery will be there, the wit, the banter, the 29 of us, a seething mass of artsy types looking for cheese and wine, hide your pinot grigio- the 11th annual Toronto Art Fair is in town!!!

Yes, art officanados of every stripe will be there with every look from a Jon Waters to a Jason Schwartzman, and that is just the dudes. You will see lady hipsters that run from Jean Harlow to Cruellla DeVille. And then there will be the people to whom you will only wonder, uomo ou donnna?

For Serious.

The art monkey will be there, but due to the time allotments of Loop, my work will only be displayed Thursday night and Friday afternoon.

Please come by, I will be there thursday to Saturday, lots of art to see- wear comfortable shoes.

Here is a link to TIAF

Thursday Night

SO, we decided that tonight was the night, the Perseids Meteor shower would be seen in the city.
We saw nothing, nada, bubkis. We looked in the right direction, we looked in the wrong direction, zip.



Instead, while standing around Central Tech listening to loud mouths, well, mouth off loudly, we spotted this cut out of Guantanamo darling Omar Kadhr, dressed up like the traveler, Waldo (or Wally as he is known in the UK, from which he originates).

I cannot speak to what the ideology of the person putting up this Kadhr image is, I can say that poor Omar is not treated well even as a 2 dimensional cut out- his head had been ripped off and fell to the ground before I finished snapping a few pics.

Upcoming Projects

My show has just gone up at Loop Gallery and yet, what is the next thing I'm working on?

A few things I guess. One, is a group of photos I took when we were in Buenos Aires in January of this year. We were staying near the Once (pronounced ON Say) district which is the Jewish part of town. For those who don't know, Buenos Aires has a massive thriving Jewish community and has one of the last daily Yiddish newspapers left and the only Kosher Mcdonald's outside of Israel.

I guess those are the obvious things about the Once area, the lesser known aspects is the tight knit nature of the area, the incredible old buildings-ancient bars that seem to have the original bartenders working and residential apartments which are also serve as houses of worship for entire congregations. Also the area is sandwiched in with a wholesale area that dealt in everything from obvious (textiles) to the lesser so (catholic religious icons)

Lots of pics to follow, for the moment have a look at this one.

This door leads to one such place of worship. I liked these 2 chicas who were talking loudly outside as I was standing there.



And for the hell of it, the Kosher McDonald's in Abasto shopping mall.

Terrific Saturday

The show opened at Loop Gallery and we had a large number of visitors, children and the odd hobo who strolled in. If you missed the opening, fear not, the show runs till August 8th, you have 3 weeks to catch show, please do.



This is one of the pictures you'll see at the gallery. I shot this in the desert of Morocco last year. I was on this insane desert tour of the salt route which was also known as 4x4 almost falling off the side of a mountain for 6 hours a day.

Anyways, we came into this part of the desert just after a brief rain shower and the sun had all but set. You could just see this amazing vista of forever and the odd dune. It was beautiful and more than a little haunting.

Show about to open at Loop Gallery!!!

I have been so busy I almost forgot to mention that my show at Loop Gallery is opening tomorrow and will run for about 3 weeks, so please come and see the work. This will be the first time I formally show my Dream Series photos taken with a Holga camera and these prints look awesome, large images.


The title of the show is Manifest Dream, a Freudian term to describe how we see our dreams, perhaps not any hidden meanings but what they look like on the surface. This is problematic: an interpretation of the dream creates a series of biases, there is no one answer or "truth". I argue that we can never know what lies below the surface and even as the artist, i create the image but its meanings shift, depending on the viewer.

The show runs from July 17th (our opening is from 2-5pm) and runs to August 8th. We will have a discussion on the 7th. Cheese is only available on the 17th of July, no discussion so please come out.

Last NYC post, promise

There is this picture/advert that says so much, so mush about things that are so wrong.



Yes, you are looking at a sandwich comprised of two deep fried pieces of chicken, processed cheese and bacon in the center with, i think, mustard/mayo sauce.

I immediately thought of Patton Oswalt, and his KFC bowl routine. Check it out here. "America has spoken,....we want a failure pile in a sadness bowl"

Left over stuff from NYC

I was looking for something on my phone the other week or more and I found all these pics I shot in NYC that I forgot all about.




OK, this one is really the best but I will start here. This was at the New Museum in the Bowery ( is it safe? is it safe?) Technically, i am in violation of the copy right for this image but I had to take a snap of this sculpture, I thought it was maurizio cattelan but I am tired and confused so whatever for the moment. It was a dark room and there in a coffin, lying in state was JFK as a wax sculpture, hair, a suit the whole 9 yards. It is really shocking to anyone who grew up in that time period or after in the shadow of Camelot.



Oh, this is the performance artist Marina Abramovic siting on her tuchas, in "the artist is present" she sat at this table for like a month or something. The real news is that the MOMA remounted many of her performances with performance artists including 2 nude people in a doorway, they are so close you and you have to pass betwixt them to gain entry into the gallery prompting the Tyler Durden question, who do I give the ass and who the crotch? The guy was my height so I faced him and trudged through, perhaps I was more comfortable being crotch to crotch as it were, passing swords whatever your metaphor. He was so damn close i looked him in the eye and I could not focus on the guy, that is close. I also stepped on the naked lady's feet.





Lastly, I think I saw these at the whitney...I am honestly not sure I know an old man asked me not to turn the handle of these doors. The windows of these french doors had these beautiful motifs on them, with zodiac and other characters, the three graces-simply elegant.



Also there was this, i meant to take more pics of these in the subway. People were putting there NYC 2 cents worth on every surface underground. I do not picture a tagger doing this but rather a 40 something witty nebbish office worker.

Chef again

Sushi chefs....I need better note taking.

Jesus and the Money Lenders in the temple

This sketch looks like I was looking at the El Greco painting, perhaps in the Frick collection in New York. It is an amazing gallery, around the corner from Central Park, the Neue Gallerie, the Guggenheim, all that good stuff.

This is just a detail, I like the way the painting is essentially done monochromatically then the reds yellows, etc are added in washes.

I always wanted to see this piece of St. Francis receiving the Stigmata

Of course, it was not on display.

YOu can plan your trip to the Frick HERE

Cafe Sabarsky....?

I have no idea where this is drawn, may even be the shitty Irish bar.

I must have hated this place

I wrote "Shitty Irish Bar in NYC"....yikes.

Bartender at Bread

Not sure what possessed me to make this naff drawing of the bartender.

Bread restaurant NYC

This place is great, food is good and the people watching is fantastic albeit dimly lit and difficult for drawing.

You can check out this place when you are next in the Nolita area of NYC, here is a review with terrible pictures from the New York Magazine