Boxed In Opening: Video

I wanted to do a better walk around so I could really show off the talent here in Port Credit... but the gallery was crowded (awesome!) and I was late arriving, so it just didn't happen. But what a fantastic show! I am continually amazed by the diversity and quality of the work of the artists I meet here. The work was priced to sell, so I wasn't surprised to see a couple pieces had sold. I actually was surprised that more hadn't sold. This is the kind of show that really should sell out.

In 2011 we had 713,445 people in Mississauga. We have 5 dedicated art galleries, one being the public, city-run gallery, and another being the one at the University. Two of the commercial galleries don't carry the works of anyone local (that I know of... I've been following them for quite some time and have yet to see it, but I could be mistaken). That leaves one... and I've submitted my portfolio and wasn't even graced with a response. We have artist-run initiatives: Imagemaker (not counted in my tally of galleries), who keeps it's doors open by holding classes, Pazan gallery, who survives as a framing shop with a display space for the locals, and Promenade Gallery, which has some interesting events centering around the South Asian community. We also have the wonderful Visual Arts Mississauga, who offer all kinds of artists programs and also have shows in their space. I know there have been other galleries open in the past, but they have had to close their doors. I've often wondered why this is, given the amount of money that resides around here. Houses by the lake go for over a million bucks. Some way, way over. Even a condo will set you back over half a million.  So there are people who can afford to have original art in their homes, yet they do not seem to buy it here. My guess is that they go into Toronto. My son has noted the same thing as a musician. There are very few venues for live music here these days. Most of the young people trek into Toronto to catch a show, because nothing much seems to happens here.

The Mississauga Arts Council is aiming to change all that. The Interim Executive Director spoke at the opening, and he had some inspiring things to say. Plans to make Mississauga residents more aware of the local talent we have. Programs to help Mississauga artists actually sell their work here. And combined with the planned conversion of the Small Arms building into a cultural hub, this should be a huge boost to the cultural community in this city. I have high expectations. I hope I'm not disappointed.

Oh and if I've missed something, please let me know in the comments! I love finding new, local spots to visit!

Boxed In: Project Entry Part 8 - Finishing Touches Canvas 3

"Escape", 12x12" Mixed Media on Canvas. Available.

This will be my last mid-week entry for this project. The end of the month is coming up, and I'm finishing up these paintings to get them to the gallery in time for the show. I was hoping to be able to live-stream the opening... I know a few of my followers who are not local would enjoy "being there", as much as they can. The easiest/most accessible version of "live" would be the new Facebook Live feature...... but alas, I still don't have access to it. Searching the help menu leads to the always  so helpful "some users may not yet have access to this feature". Awesome. First time ever Facebook has rolled out something new I actually want to use before it's available. 

I love this iridescent paint so much...

I do have other options. I'm on Periscope, but the one time I used it I got about 0 views. It's not like I've been on there much... most of my audience is not the 20-somethings that are up on every new app that comes along. So I think I'll go with the trusted YouTube platform... I can stream live (I've tried it out, but not exactly sure how it looks on the other end. How do you find live streams on there? I can't seem to figure that part out. Is it like a hangout?), and I can record it at the same time and save it to my channel. Yes I have a YouTube channel. My son was shocked.

Oh, and now it looks green! How cool is that?

I have another opening to get to this week... I was FINALLY accepted into the Artworks Oakville annual juried show. It's one of the local shows that is always really wonderful. Gets loads of entries, has notable judges, great prizes... all the things that make a juried show really hard to get into. I've entered repeatedly. To the point where when I fill out the entry form I feel like I'm making a donation to the group instead of actually entering a competition (it's the same with the VAM show, another really great juried show held at the AGM at the end of the year). Getting that acceptance email was a bizarre feeling... I walked around for a week thinking they surely made a mistake, and I'd be notified any day now. It's not that I don't think my art worthy of being in a show like that, it's more that my work is not so different that it would stand out when lined up against 100 or so other pieces. I'm make abstract paintings. Not unlike a plethora of other painters. It's just how it is.

Anyway, I will be posting the last of these paintings on Sunday. It feels like it's taken me forever to get these done.... but I've had a few other things going on. I'll fill you in on those at some point... I need to have something to talk about for these weekly entries.

Art Quartet: Live Collaborative Painting Event

One of two paintings created during the event last weekend. We were only planning on doing one, but it wasn't
big enough for us all to work at the same time. And a bunch of artists are not going to sit around and watch....

Artist Christine Newman starting off
the first of the two paintings.

Last weekend I did something new and different for me. I worked on a collaborative painting with 3 other artists from the area, and since we were working in a gallery, we opened it up to the public to come and watch. I actually don't really know how many people came by to see what we were doing.... I get very focused when I'm working and someone could stand beside me and I wouldn't know they're there. But I'm told it was a pretty successful event and we had a good turn out.

Working with other artists is interesting. Everyone sees different things when they look at a painting in progress. There were a few times when we stopped to discuss what was working and what wasn't, and then between us quickly figured out a direction. When I'm working alone it can take me weeks to figure out what the problem is and how to fix it. To complete two pieces in a 4 hour time span seemed pretty amazing to me. And the fact that I thought they were both good even more amazing.

Overall everyone seemed to enjoy the whole thing and it was agreed that we would do this again in the future. The gallery has already started to plan the next event in September... I won't be participating due to family obligations, but it is sure to be a good time. If you live in the Toronto area and think you'd like to pop around to watch, you can follow either Imagemaker gallery or myself on Facebook for updates.

I had a drawing of a bird prepared in advance... just in case we needed something. Here Lisa and Christine are holding it in place while I paint around it. 

As we had only planned on doing one piece, we had a charity lined up to take it and give it a home. The second piece came about because having 3 artists sit around while one is working really isn't a reasonable expectation. We were bored in minutes, and rooting around in the basement we found an old canvas we could use for the second. You can tell by looking at the finished piece that this was the one I spent most of my time on. It has something of my "style" showing... though definitely not my usual colour choices. The smaller "Whirlwind" painting was donated to Interm Place, a local women's shelter. We aren't sure yet what we're going to do with the larger one... they don't have space to take both, so we're looking at other charities as options. Or possibly auctioning it off and donating the proceeds. We'll figure out something.

Artist Lisa Jayne Irvine is working on the smaller of the two pieces.
We all switched back and forth all afternoon, working on the piece that was
speaking to us at the moment.  

Graffiti artist Joseph Capobianco adding the lettering to the almost complete piece...

While he was doing that, the rest of us worked on finishing the other one...

And the second piece complete. This one has been donated to Interm Place, a local women's shelter.
Everyone needs a little beauty in their lives. Hopefully this will provide a bit for these residents.

The Artist Project, Toronto

I love going to art shows. I don't do it often enough... but when I do go I come home inspired, full of new ideas and itching to get back into my studio. This weekend I went down to Exhibition Place, in Toronto, and wandered through the Artist Project, taking in as much as I could.

How great is this texture? Achieved with layers of paint,
sandpaper and a nail. It's on a wood panel... somehow
I don't think canvas would stand up to this kind of abuse.

This is a fantastic show. As I went from booth to booth, talking to the artists and getting up close with the art, I took notes. There was much there for me to learn, and the artists were willing to share. I asked a lot of questions about technique, and came away with a lot of great ideas of things to experiment with. I love it when artists are willing to share how they achieved an effect. I know from experience that sometimes you try so many things that you can't always remember... working in series helps solidify things in your mind. It's such a hands on thing. I love talking with the artists at these shows... I've even made some friends in the process.

I love these colour combinations. Stephen Gillberry.

There were a lot of people wandering around at this show, and people were buying. Good to know. Every artist I talked to had sales. Maybe not huge sales, but something... enough to cover the cost of the booth at any rate. The show is hard to get into and it's expensive to be at, but it's also heavily promoted and advertised. It's nice to know that there is some interest.

This show is going on my list of shows to apply for. Even though the calibre of the art is somewhat intimidating, it would be good to know if I could get into a show like this. I don't think I'm there quite yet. My pieces aren't big enough, they don't have quite the same polish. But I'm close... maybe next year.....

This installation was awesome... I didn't write down the artist's name (I figured I had a program so I didn't have to, but then I couldn't figure it out because the spot wasn't really marked. If you know, please leave it in the comments). It is made out of old socks. There was an explanation about how she was sick of picking up other people's dirty socks, and this was her "gendered" statement..... I actually laughed out loud when I read it.  Very clever.

Alice Vander Vennen's fantastic textile work was captivating. Lots of copper wire and found object additions.

Looking at Art

Sign outside the gallery. There was a life
sized sculpture of WeiWei inside made out
of cardboard... wish I got a photo but I
forgot my camera. All i had was my phone.

Free time is hard to come by these days... I've had a tough time getting downtown to see the Ai Weiwei show at the Art Gallery of Ontario,  even though it's been on my list of things to do since long before it opened. But, as it closes soon, I had to take a day and just go...  and while there I took in the David Bowie Is exhibit as well. Might as well, since my weekends seem to fill up pretty quickly and who knows if I'll have time to get back. I will if I can... it was a very interesting show that certainly deserves a second look. Both exhibits were great, and the gallery was as full as I've ever seen it. Quite a few time slots were even sold out (timed entry tickets to make sure the people actually get to see the exhibit and aren't just herded through like cattle. A good plan... but even at that the Bowie exhibit was too crowded in spots to take a good look at the items).

It's not the norm to have the gallery host two large exhibits simultaneously like this. Interesting to put a conceptual/activist artist like Weiwei and a performance artist like Bowie on together. I don't know if this was planning or coincidence, but it was interesting to compare and contrast the two shows. Both were about expressing personal vision and pushing boundries, Weiwei's being political and Bowie's being social norms and gender stereotypes. I've thought about it, but couldn't seem to find much else to connect them. I'm probably missing something.

I think my favourite part of either show was looking at David Bowie's creative process. I knew there would be notebooks and such, but there were some of his tools as part of the display. A video on his "verbasizer" shows how he uses it to generate random lyrics, which he then reworks (or not) to fit a mental image. There is also a set of Oblique Strategy cards, which I've seen before, and found intriguing. Definitely techniques to file away, to be used in the event of a creative block.

Outside the gallery I noticed a proliferation of street art that I haven't seen in Toronto in a long time... especially since the current mayor took office. In fact, Rob Ford has declared a war on Street artists. Odd, considering the current popularity of some well known artists like Banksy (who is in New York at the moment, doing a "residency"). I'm hoping to get back downtown in the next couple weeks with my camera, to get some photos before everything has been completely removed. There were a few spots that were really quite beautiful.

Abstract Cat: Step-by-Step

"In the Garden"   8x10" Acrylic on paper

This past weekend was a cultural event held every year called Doors Open. The Gallery in London, where I exhibit, has recently converted some of it's space into a workshop area, so they asked if I would participate in the event by teaching a short beginner class. I've never done anything like this before, but hey, I'm always up for something new. So, to prepare for this, I worked through a small painting, simplifying my "style" to something that would be pretty easy for a beginner to follow.

I took photos as I was going... mostly so I would remember what I did, but also so I could post it here afterwards as a refresher for my students. Unfortunately my plans to video tape didn't quite work out, but I have my working shots, so hopefully that will do. Here you go... "In the Garden", step by step.

Step 1: I always start on black. There are a few reasons for this, but it started as a way to avoid the paralysis that comes from staring at a blank, white surface. I worked in pastel for many years and developed a knack for working dark to light... it's unusual, yes, but it works for me.

Step 2: Add the whites. I don't just use a brush. I have brushes that i love, but I really will use whatever I feel like. You can probably see my hand prints in here (look bottom right), I've scraped some with an old credit card, and I've used my trusty fan brush to make some flower-like marks. I usually go for an equal white/black ratio, or if I'd like it darker overall I'll leave more black.









Step 3: Add some colour. I love the transparency of Tri-art acrylics (check the tube, it will be marked with a T for transparent), so that is what I have on hand. The paints at the gallery were a little more opaque, so things didn't work quite the same way. We added water to thin them out a bit. I add my colour the same way I do the white... with whatever strikes me. I added some white to my blue to lighten it up a bit, then scratched out some swirls with the back of my brush handle (see centre right). I've got a few layers going on here. If you are interested in this process in more detail, I've got a piece in progress that will be posted on my page on the Global Vernissage website. It's not quite ready yet, but will be soon.

Step 4 (not shown): the cat is cut out of paper. It's very simple, just a silhouette. I put the cutout over the most interesting part, the lower right corner, using it as a mask, and painted around it in white. Then I added in a little yellow and green around the head, to blend it into the background. Once you know how it's done it's pretty easy to see it. Go back and look... you'll know exactly what I mean.

That's me in the middle, my class working away.

Me, doing my thing.

My happy class, with their finished cat paintings. Every one was completely different. Awesome.

The Doors Are Open

One of my small works on paper, to be offered
for sale during London's Doors Open event
at the Art Gallery of Lambeth

I have an event coming up sponsored by the Art Gallery of Lambeth in London. As part of Ontario's Culture Days and Doors Open, the AGL is having an open house with artists giving demos and teaching short half hour classes for free all weekend. There will also be artists selling their creations in the park beside the gallery, for what will probably be one of the last Art in the Park events this year. As a represented artist I've been asked to participate, and what we've come up with should be a lot of fun. I will have a large piece of canvas spread out on the pavement in the parking lot (inside the gallery if it rains), and I am going to create a large scale painting. My method of working is flexible and intuitive, so having spectators participate is entirely possible, and will probably make the finished piece all the more interesting. I may not get it completely done over the weekend... but i'm certainly going to try.

In the meantime, I've been working on small pieces that I can matte and offer for sale during the weekend. I can't have a booth at the Art in the Park as I'll be otherwise occupied, but I thought it would be nice to offer something special (and specially priced) for the people that come out to the gallery. I'm not sure how many I'll have... I was kind of late to the game deciding to do this. I'll keep posting new pieces on my Facebook page as I go along, so if you see something you like, you'll know where you can get it.

New York, New York

I recently spent a very busy, culture filled week in New York City. I love New York... I went here once with my parents as a teenager and have been wanting to go back ever since. I took well over 500 photos (isn't digital photography wonderful?), so this will be a first installment. The architecture is absolutely wonderful. The fact that those fantastic buildings have been preserved and restored (and not torn down) is truly amazing... definitely had some forward thinking politicians at some point in their history. And I can see how the influence of all that art deco might find itself creeping into some of my projects. 

This would only happen to me... suitcase came flying
off the conveyor belt, doing a backflip onto the centre section.
Had to find someone in baggage handling to retrieve it for me.

The trip started off on a bit of a panic-stricken note... We had decided to fly from Buffalo instead of Toronto, mainly because of cost. Seemed easy enough, but crossing the border proved to be very time consuming. To the point of having us actually running through the airport to get there before they shut the gate, like you would see in a movie. Thankfully we made it... only to have a small mishap with our luggage on the other end. All sorted, we caught a train out to the apartment we rented in Brooklyn for the week, and then off to see the city.

New York Skyline from the top of the Rockefeller  Centre

The Empire State at night

Brooklyn Bridge

Duke honoured in NYC with a statue in
Central Park

He even has a street named after him

The Apollo theatre in Harlem,
where Ella Fitzgerald got her start.

Street Art in Little Italy

Van Gogh at the Met. Apparently, you are supposed
to stand BEHIND the line. But look at this brushwork...
it's just asking you to get up close.

Memorial at Ground 0. 

This guy played in the pouring rain to entertain us as we waited in line to get into the MET.
He's so going to be a painting.  :)

The Big Switch Up

It was one of those weeks. Too busy by far to do anything relaxing or creative, just a lot of running around. The show at the Meadowvale theatre was extended for a few weeks, but as both galleries where I have work on a regular basis are changing up the shows, I had to go to all three venues and move things around. I also had a one day art event held at the Lakeshore Yacht Club (in west Toronto), where I had donated a painting to the silent auction for Sick Kids Hospital, and had a few other paintings on display. Seemed like it was one long social weekend, which while enjoyable, has left me longing for some creative down time.

"A Cappella"    12x12" Acrylic on Canvas
Now on display at the Art Gallery of Lambeth in London, Ontario

Solo Exhibit at the Meadowvale Theatre

The main wall of the lobby, across from the bar. Each of these pieces is
30" wide. They look kind of small, but it just because the wall is so big!

Well, the big day arrived and my solo exhibit went up at the Meadowvale Theatre. Right up until we started sorting and leaning things against the walls I was concerned that I wouldn't have enough work... the place just looked so huge. Luckily my sister was around to help, and she's done this kind of thing many times before. We figured out their hanging system without too much difficulty, and started spacing things out.

By the time we were finished I had almost every space covered. I have to say I'm pretty happy with the way everything looks hanging together. The bright colours really pop on the neutral walls. I have a few new pieces, completed in February, that I have yet to post (as the astute observer will notice...). I will post them over the next couple weeks while I start work on my big "Big" band painting.  :)

Beside the bar, across from the big white wall

View from the front door. The piece beside the coat check
is 36" wide. It looks so little, but it isn't. That seems to be
my running theme....

The main wall from the opposite side.

Escaping: A Group Show at the AGL

My painting made the paper!

The show that I have been working towards for the last couple months has finally opened at the Art Gallery of Lambeth. When I dropped off all my work a couple weeks ago, I have to admit I was just a tiny bit concerned... they were doing renovations and the place was a disaster zone. I shouldn't have worried. They managed to get it all pulled together in time and the place looked fantastic.

I like what they've done there. They opened up the entire back section to make room for some new, bigger classes, and they've put in a counter so the desk, computer and big sinks are partially hidden from view. This will double as a bar during openings and private viewings, when they will be serving food and wine.

I think the evening was pretty successful, even though it was held on the Friday of the Thanksgiving long weekend. They maybe would have had a better turnout if it was next weekend, but there were still a fair number of art lovers who showed up to see the new works. And some of the new work is really beautiful. If I could afford it (and if I had the wall space), there were a few things I would have loved to bring home with me.

The wall with my paintings. You can see my two little bird paintings on the side wall.
There was a real photographer there so I'm hoping he got some better shots...
these don't look great, but you get the idea.

The long wall filled with all new work

Enjoying the ambience

A musician adds to the atmosphere