These Two Jokers

Just took in the Warhol show at the Dali museum the other day in St. Petersburg...Andy is like Tupac, he is releasing more material dead than alive, and in Andy's case, that is an accomplishment.

Also, we have been listening to a lot of 60-70s oldie stations and hearing the power of Diana Ross' voice, amazing really. 

So, with those 2 in mind, I happened to notice this picture as for another Warhol show back in 2006 ( I guess he was dead for about 20 years at that point) as I was flipping through an old copy of Modern Painters at the studio. 

Still, there was some interesting sketches  at that Warhol show I saw, but you can't help thinking, especially in a Dali gallery, it's all about the money. 

Maybe with art that doesn't matter, to paraphrase a Diana Ross song, as long as it touches you in the morning.

Mini Moi in Montreal

Winter is coming,  I will be showing some of the Talking Heads work at Gallery Youn, in La Belle Province.

Yes, Juno Youn, that art impresario is organizing a fun winter show.  if you plan to be in Montreal this winter, bring some long johns and come to the show!

Other artists include the amazing photographer Richelle Forsey, for all things Forsey, please look at her website


Here work is quite varied, but much of what she is doing lately is abandoned spaces like this little gem we have at our place

She founded the TLR club ( Twin Lens Camera) and they produced this book, Modern Canadian Interiors

I love that title.



I shot only a few abandoned spaces myself, main one being Whitby Mental Health before all the structure were torn down.

here is a photo I shot with some painting i did on top.

Courtesy: The  Skelton-Magner Collection

Mini Moi, at Gallerie Youn, November 12th to December 21st.

Comic Book

Finally getting some comic books finished, some of them are little 8 panel ones, I hope to have those done in the next week.

I really have to thank Willow Dawson, Graphic Artist par excellence. She is a Toronto based artist who taught a terrific class at U of T this summer, I took it and I think it has really pushed me to get some of my work to cross the finish line.

Please check out Willow's work

As for my comics, I will post them as they get printed... here is a tease, panel 1 from my mini comic- Immigrant Fathers Are Drama Queens

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.

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

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.

Collective Memory II

Collective Memory was a show I had in 2006, images of my personal and work spaces were mirrored with my family's penchant for collecting and saving items of dubious beauty.

Starting in February, I will be building a new installation, at the Jet Fuel. This will be using the "stuff' that has always sat in the basement at the family home and constitutes a life. This idea stems from a series of conversations I have had over the past few years with Daniel Garber, who with his site, culturalmining.com has an interest in aspects of cultural and its language. We have been exchanging ideas ever since I started to take papers, bills and flyers from our basement and posting them to the wall at Jet Fuel. He catches all the subtle nuances of the visual elements and printing quirks of these old documents. Daniel Garber ladies and gentlemen, a real gem.

The large obstacles are how to re-create something that lives on shelves in a basement while being visually interesting and faithful to these objects, how they came to be together and what they mean to those who stored them rather than threw them out.

So, it is an exercise in limiting your ego and letting the wonder of a commodore 64, AFX race tracks and about 3000 other interesting things play off each other.

Collective Memory II, at the Jet Fuel (519 Parliament ST) for the month of February, please come check it out if you are not claustrophobic.

Please check out Daniel's site, culturalmining.com

Plaza de Mayo

With my days in Buenos Aires winding down, I headed to the main square to do some painting. This place is known for protests but not much was going on this day, I think it was a Sunday? Anyways, instead of a protest there were a group of people shooting some sort of revolutionary recreation type thing for TV. Go figure.



If you look on the left hand side of the image, you see the television crew: far left in red is the make-up girl who asked me about immigrating to Canada and if she should go to Montreal; some crew members; the actor is the guy with the outstretched arm and beard; to the right of that the camera person with a 5D and an old lens and sound.

To the right of all that is a group of American tourists who were sitting in the park (actually my starting point, worked the other way across the page) the tourists were de rigueur annoying in the way you expect people to be, lame comments about the city and a insane allegiance to an overuse of the words 'like' and 'dude'.

As an aside, I have to admit that the Moleskine Watercolor Sketchbook has been really terrific for me for the past year: Cuba, Morocco and now Buenos Aires, the paper is great which has been what has been lacking with other Moleskine products for 'arty' pursuits. At some point I will upload these really crude (read rudimentary) paintings I did in Cuba which sort of got me started on this style of character depiction with watercolours.

Warhol can still wow

Well, I guess I should not be surprised but that old windbag Andy would still be pretty amazing over time. Here in Buenos Aires, there is a show of his work and the museum has these raws screen tests that were made over a period of years. Sure they are fascinating because you have people like Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Salvador Dali, Allen Ginsberg, Nico, Yoko Ono and Marcel Duchamp (and more) staring at the camera for a period of 4 silent minutes. But really, it is interesting, even amazing as people stare at the camera. The ones where people move around are not as engaging. Personally I found Susan Sontag's to be downright creepy as she shifted in her chair miming the word "CHEESE!" over and over again. Some of the ones I have put up have added music, just ignore that part.



The most compelling was Ann Buchanan, who barely moves but does not blink, she cries looking at the viewer, emotionless in her face, like French novel. Of course I can't find this one online to post.

Cabbagetown Festival

Ok, well with the Yoga Festival wrapped up, that means its time to get ready for the Cabbagetown Art and Crafts sale. My work will not be in the park, mind you, but I think I will put up some of my prints in front of my house for sale as the entrance to my place is a natural red brick walled gallery.

With an ice cream shoppe nearby, an added dimension.

So, if you are in the hood around Sept 11-13th, grab a coffee from Jet Fuel, stop by and say hello.

Oh, also, I am gonna try daily posts for this week which should prove to be interesting as I hope to create new work and exercise every day.

Dream big I guess.

Some More Older Paintings...

This is some older paintings that I found in the back of the hard drive-this was when I was obsessed with GIJoes of the 1970s.

At the time, I was just taken by the way these toys all looked similar but maintained an individuality due to what 'life' had exposed them to, despite having come from the same mold.

Incidently, for those who are unfamiliar with my work or not equally obsessed with GIJoes or Action Man figures of the 60s and 70s,you may find this stuff unlike the GIJoes you know. Yes, this bears no resemblance to the 80s, GIJoes and the real american hero schtick. In fact, as a kid, i did not understand how my figures disappeared, these amazing adventure team guys who would capture the pygmy gorilla, or the albino tiger, or discover the mummy- yes, those adventure team members! How did they disappear during the OPEC oil crisis and re-emerge, a few years later as 3" characters who all appeared to have been rejected from a village people toy tie in.



If you want to see more of these images please go to ericfarache.com and click on tickle trunk, you'll see plenty of images both painting and sculpture. My GIJOE studies are in the sketchbook area.

Old Painting 1995?

I was going through some old emails and found this picture my brother sent me of a painting I did for him in like 1995 or 1996. Part of the fun with this image was that I had to mail it from Toronto to San Diego and went to my local post office which, at the time, was the oldest post office of Toronto, the office of old York.

Anyways, they do not have anything modern there, that is part of their schtick, so I had to apply $60 of small denomination stamps to the painting to send it down. Years later, I think 2000, I was staying in SD and decided to heavily rework the background elements. I was more satisfied with the appearance of the woman, her look is more ambiguous and she appears to glance to the male and the viewer simultaneously. The guy from the left side with his back turned was a new addition as well. My brother? Well he wanted to be more monochromatic in blacks and grays.

And if you are curious about the old post office, it is still going strong, check it out here. You can even get sealing wax!

Long Time Comin'...

I thought I would log in an entry while the workers next door bash the crap out of the adjacent apartment, ...serenity now.

I decided to put this picture up on the blog, I drew it in 1994 0r 95. I say drew as it is oil stick on top of oil pastels on paper. I suppose it was to be a study for a another piece but it was rather large and the other drawing/painting was never completed- instead this is what started my 'urban architecture' series of that era which continued until I re-entered college in 1998.

(wow, 19__ really looks good and carries more weight than 20__. so take that 2012 and shove it)

This drawing/painting was severely damaged and I recently restored it, something I am very happy to have accomplished, so now it sits on the wall next to my computer.

Loop Gallery

Just a small plug here for Loop gallery, an artist collective on Queen west. I have recently been accepted to become a member so expect to see the flag of the International Art monkey fly over the gallery n the next 18 months or so, very excited over here.

Go to the Gallery's site, find out more- they are moving soon, check it out for those who care to know more about Loop Gallery click here

For those who care to know more about Lupins click here

sketches from London-Rubens to Paula Rego

When I was in London a few months ago, I had to go a few times to the National gallery in Trafalgar Square to see one of my favorite paintings, this lion hunt by Rubens. It is unfinished but I would like to think that he saw it as finished as it is- really bold and anticipates the romantics like Gericault and Delacroix by about 100 years.

It is a really fun piece to look at- the energy in this painting.

Below is a little sketch i did in my notebook, normally I just look at this painting for a long time.





In the nice restaurant at the gallery, there is this fantastic almost graffiti like piece that Paula Rego painted, based on the collection in the National Gallery. Her work incorporated the few images of females in the paintings. It is a long beautiful piece but you cannot get a postcard or anything, these are just a few sketches. It rifts off of Spanish/Portuguese painted tiles and always makes me think of that imaginary Synagogue that Salman Rushdie describes in The Moor's Last Sigh where the main character's mother is interpreting the tiles and telling the future.

Anyways, she is a fascinating artist (to me at least) and her paintings deal with childhood taboos, story telling she does a bit of it all.

click this link to see a minute or two of Paula talking about here studio and how she works

London

Went down to London to check out my favorite gallery, The National Gallery where you can see the very modern looking painting by Manet. I absolutely love this image, even if it is depicting something fairly tragic.


After the museums had closed, its just time to walk to the streets to catch construction workers just doing nothing but checking out people and then over to Covent Garden to watch insane street performers.

Movie Nights

This past week has been an awesome opportunity for me to chill out with my buddy Chris and catch some fantastic films.

Such as the first film by Ridley Scott, the Duellists I thought the film was a fantastic glimpse into the Romantic period which made paintings like these by Gericault, the French artist and inspiration to the movement, come alive.




Tonight, as luck would have it, the Kubrick film, Barry Lyndon is playing so we get to see it on the big screen.

We also saw a few really hard to watch but fascinating films, Max and Conspiracy- both about behind the scene events in Nazi Germany.

Images of Martyred Saints

I really love the weird nature of images like this. When I was in Italy I was obsessed with them, every time I entered a church I looked everywhere for them. Saints with Arabian swords still embedded in their heads, holding the instruments of their own torture and demise. So modern looking really. We all know about Saint Sebastien with his arrows, or St. Lawrence holding the rack he was burnt on, St. Bartholomew holding his flayed skin (but never depicted with no skin on, how does this work? I want to see a muscle only St. Bart!) but buddy with the rock stuck in his head? There are so many good ones!


By the way, St. John Martyr is the one with the rock in the head.
St. Peter Martyr is the one with either the schimtar in the head or just his head split open and bleeding, not too profusely.

ericfarache.com The site is up and running!

My website is online now, and you can check out a wide variety of images; sketches, photos, paintings and prints.


ericfarache.com

Just click the above link and it will take you there.

I have just added a gallery from our recent trip to China- One month in the world's most populated country, it was amazing. Most of the China pictures are digital. I also took a very heavy Yashica twin lens camera, look for more film pics to be added in the next day or so when they are scanned.

Please also check out the 2nd gallery on the site, marked "dreams" which I think comes closest to what I am trying to do with my photography.

Etching

This is the first update in a number of months, I thought I would start with some etchings from a few years back. They were done when I came back to my studio in Yorkshire after a hideous bus trip to Amsterdam.
This image is of night, somewhere in France or Belgium. I used a rag to daube extra ink onto the plate for a painterly effect, whose un-reproduceable qualities make it a Variable Print.Basically, its a method of adjusting the amount of ink on the surface of the etching plate to create the dramatic atmospheric effect. This place was dark and forlorn and made all the more so by a bunch of techno-kids who pulled up in a VW golf, all loaded up on uppers. It was the Gend'arme and their dogs that scared everyone the most. Even though the techno boys were wearing cowboy hats in Europe.

To illustrate the technique, this image is more or less a straight print.


This is the same etching with "inky effects" This is the Lieddeseplan Square on the edge of the Red Light district where i stayed at the crappy Bull Dog cafe in 1992. What a dump, the guy in the bed beside me held back vomiting for 3 hours from 6am till 9am and then went back to the bar to stay drunk.
I was walking by this place in 1999 in the aforementioned bus ride and was struck by panic to see the place again.I decided to sit and draw the passers by.