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.

The new issue of Modern Painters

You ever tried to kill time by going into a magazine shop? Sure you have but perhaps not lately, honestly you should make the time. We always hear that print is dead and it probably is, but you walk into something as simple as Presse International on College St, and I really thought it was just awesome how many magazines are left, there was some great stuff.

Like many people, I get a lot of Art info off the web, but holding a copy of Modern Painters, why it is the bomb. The cover has a very specific texture and smell, the colour rendition in the magazine is terrific. My interest is not nostalgic, although I used to always order the magazine when I ran a camera store, knowing it would not sell and I would get to take them home, this magazine, this thing, places art and its contents in a world of its own, I loved it, all over again.

This November issue is full of a fairly diverse content, there is a small interview with Maurizio Cattelan talking about his retrospective at the Guggenheim (it is a mounting of his sculptures hanging from the centre of the gallery) and an article on the painter Michael Borremans, some people will really enjoy his style of painting. The artist Byron Kim, director Julia Leigh , writer and Director of Sleeping Beauty are also featured.

Can you find more content online? Absolutely, but there is something great and altogether optimistic about buying a magazine seeing what is featured, wondering about how some truly bad art has the money to advertise, all that good stuff.

So this holiday season, whatever your interest, treat yourself.

you can read about that Guggenheim show here

December 4th, 2011

Drawing from the television, I admit it, it was Californication.

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

Centaur

I used a reference here, this was just a study.

July 24th, 2011

A study for the AWOL gallery 12x12 show.