Bow River View

I spent almost four years in Calgary, and have some great friends there. This watercolour with charcoal from fall '97 shows the Bow River in the morning, from just west of downtown.

Art Awareness

Golan Levin is an artist and engineer. He gave a very interesting presentation to TED about his work. (See video link.) At about 9 minutes into this video he shows two examples of art that looks at you. I recommend TED as a source for a lot of interesting presentations. Golan Levin video on TED.

Lady of The Lake

This 1992 collograph was a gift for my mother.

Where Faeries Live

Have you ever been to a place where it really did feel like there were Faeries hiding around you?

I painted this at twilight at just such a place.

Trees in the Middle Ground

Someone asked, "How do you paint trees when they're near enough to see them individually, but far enough that you don't need that much detail?"

This sketchbook page from 2004 uses overlapping zig-zag rows of 'trees.' See the top right where two of these fringes meet.

"Calais" is another favorite painting done during the same period. It brings together many of the considerations mentioned in my Artist Statement: printmaking, realism, the strangely familiar... The loose "grid" and coloured lines in the foreground are printed directly from a found object - the glue traces on the back of a piece of bathroom wall paneling. So as abstract as the result seems, there's also a "quirky" realism.

Blue Cochrane

This is one of my favorite watercolours. It was done on site, in about 20 minutes. The cut-out look of the clouds is direct homage to Milton Avery, (American).

Blue Mountain

I sometimes use charcoal to get a 'scratchy or dirty' feel to the paint. Here is a great example from my sketchbook.

Urban Design

This is acrylic and collage on plywood panel. Note the comic strip on the left and the yellow advertisements on the right.

I did this while living in the basement of a skid-row apartment.

The urban landscape looks different from a basement window. At night I could see hookers on the corner, plying their trade. The traffic was constant. Sometimes I'd find condoms right outside my window or awaken to the sound of breaking glass.

One advantage of living in the basement was that I regularly used the hallways to work-on my larger paintings. Some of the paintings in the 'Monoprint' series were done in the furnace room there.

Mekkonan

It was also in 1995-96 when I met Mekkonan, a former tank commander who had to leave Ethiopia as a refugee, when the ruling party lost power.

I sketched Mekkonan's favorite animal, a tiger, as an under-drawing for this acrylic mixed-media and collage portrait from 1996.

Large Monoprints (more to come)

(click to enlarge)

1995 and 1996 radically changed my practice of, and my thinking about Art.



I was tired of straight forward 'Realism.' By that time I had been an illustrator for more than 15 years, and could draw anything I wanted. As I walked in the city I began to see beauty in the sidewalk cracks, and felt inspired by the persistence of the plants growing in them. "Nature can be resisted, but never tamed." The contrast fascinated me and I decided to try 'printing' several patches of cracked concrete.

I showed 10 of these large, enigmatic canvases at a public Art Gallery in September of 1996. And in 1998, I was an Artist in Residence, demonstrating my technique at 'The Works,' Art Festival .

Angelic Host

(click to enlarge)


Inspired by a book of Tony Onley watercolours (Canadian) , Angelic Host is done in acrylic mixed media on plywood panel. Note the way the feeling of space in the sky changes: using a line to shift to a lighter area is a trick from Charles Demuth (American).

Burton, BC

I did this small, watercolour painting in1995.

Burton Narrows on Upper Arrow Lake, BC is a hauntingly beautiful spot to camp. In the sixties, the provincial government flooded the valley, and the Village of Burton with it.

Watercolour

Apart from drawing, watercolour sketching has been the dominant mode of 'expression' throughout my artistic career.

Here we have a favourite sketchbook page from about 1997, (depicting a remembered landscape from 10 years earlier).

Artist's Statement

(Click photo to enlarge.)


I am an artist and art teacher with nearly 35 years experience.

I see my work as research. Though my paintings appear quite abstract, I seek a new, fresher approach to realism. "Barrier," the painting in the header for this blog, was done using a roller on newsprint. The brown squares are moldy bread.

I made the 'background' impression by putting the paper over a wrought iron grate and rolling as if I was doing a 'rubbing.' The result is a loose pattern, which while being quite unlike the grate in character, has an important relationship with the subject. The fact that it borrows elementary characteristics (dimensions, parallel lines, diagonals) and was actually in contact with the subject for a time, brings very interesting considerations of what's "Real" and what's "Realism."

The large canvases in the mono-print series retained specific 'topographic' features. Replicas.

Anyway, 'abstract' can also mean to summarize or distill, and I like to distill characteristics of "ordinary reality" and present them in a new context. If the viewer gets an impression that's "oddly familiar," I consider the painting a success.

Some of these samples of my work are in public and private collections. Some are for sale.