It is Spring, at last. Today has bloomed sunny, full of the busy singing of birds, scrabbling of squirrels.

The trees have fat buds just on the verge but not yet open, meaning we can see the blue sky through graceful networks of branches.

I am recovering from bronchitis, and after my first good night's sleep (and despite my sore ribs) I was moved to make this new photo-digital image “Spring Returns”. It makes me think of cherry and plum blossoms, with the promise (or threat) of spring rain in the clouds behind.

The detail views allow you a closer look.

​Happy Spring everyone!

UPCOMING EXHIBITION:
I have a spring solo show of paintings May 8–20 at Otto Art in The Junction neighbourhood in Toronto, so if you've been waiting for a show in a more central part of the city, this is the one! 
​For more details click here.

The In Situ arts festival in late October was an extraordinary experience for me as an artist and a fun one in general.

With two large scale pieces in the main space and an entire room installation (allowing plenty of space for dancers to perform in), it was wonderful to stretch out (mentally and physically) into so much space.

The intensity required to conceive and execute so much in so little time is not sustainable for long (by me at least) but has some benefits. As I was just describing to a friend, it kept the threads of my thoughts white-hot, so every hour of work built 100% onto the previous hours, days and weeks of work – since most other distractions had been put aside... even sleep!

As well, working with the festival's fabulous lighting designer Joe Pagnan and working with light in the drawers and other components of my room installation 'Containment', has forever changed my thinking around light.

The incredible support and enthusiasm of Heather Snell, director/artistic director of the festival, and her wonderful husband Ken, was fertile ground in which to grow (thank you both!).

While I had nothing like enough time to get ready (in fact I am still trying to recover from the 24/7 preparations) but the joyful, creative and expansive experience that this was, coupled with the new work I produced for it, means I am glad and grateful for the opportunity.

And I still love that gorgeous, decrepit building!

Thanks to all who visited! For any who could not, I hope these photos will go some way toward compensating.

For the past several weeks I have been working on a new, ambitious installation for In Situ, an event I wrote about in more detail here (click to open).

What I want to focus on in this post is the relationship between artworks and their space, in a deeper sense than "does this painting go with my couch?"

I leapt at the chance to be part of In Situ even though it would cost me money I don't have, even though there was not enough time to prepare, all because of the space!

​Soaring ceilings, tiny welder's booths, classic windows, exposed pipes, industrial fixtures, peeling paint... what's not to love?

The Small Arms Building is a wonderful network of spaces in a gorgeous state of neglect, the perfect location to stage artworks (not just visual but also performance-based) that relate to this remarkable, untamed space.

As an artist working on projects in an imaginative-but-real world, I wear a number of hats. I put a couple on right away when first touring the space: the Practical Hat (the one that wants me to sleep 8 hours every night, not get up to my eyeballs in debt, see my friends and family more often and regularly, eat well and work out, you know the one) – it thinks about what work I already have that could work in this space; the Dreamer Hat looks at the vast potential of all the spaces in the building and imagines a fantastic array of mostly-impossible (for me in these circumstances at least) ways to transform them and create remarkable experiences.

I am grateful to both Hats: one for keeping me alive (more or less, depending!); the other for enticing me to stretch and attempt things that while less-than-sensible have been glorious to thinking about, to see realized, to watch people interact with and to talk with some of them about.

The photo above shows the space that will be all mine (insert evil laugh here). The room is 20ft by 50ft. A dance performance and its audience will need a pathway through it to the next room, but allowing for that I can do what I want!

At right (I hope it's that way for mobile users as well) is a shot showing a fraction of the drawers I have collected or had set aside for me so I can build my main new sculpture. I won't really know until they are in the space how many I will need, which is part of the fun (and also part of what tells me I have fully transitioned to being an artist now, as my designer self would have wanted to control every detail in advance!). 

In addition to drawers and boxes, I will be working with a lot of photo-digital image transfers, plexiglass and light. This work's roots are my 'Boxed In' figure drawings from 2010 and it will connect up to all of the 'Subject to Limitation' thematic work since.

I will be showing a few existing pieces, one reconfigured specifically for the space it will be in (not pictured here). One of the others has only been shown in BC back in 2012: "Turbulence" a 21ft long photo-digital mixed media piece comprised of six angled panels that will be hung high and look down on the people below. It should suit the main space very well!

So in answer to the question posed in the title of this post: both. I've had the idea for the drawers portion of the main sculpture piece for a few years now but other aspects of the installation that it will be part of were inspired by the context. Also the actual configuration and some of the details of the sculpture are responses to the space and particularities of the event.

​

In response to a 7-day nature photography challenge on Facebook, I've been layering up and altering some photographs (couldn't stick with straightforwardly produced ones for long!) and thought I'd share them with you on the blog.

Left: Royal Tree 2, shot in England last month.
Right: Nature Through a Fence, based on ivy I shot this fall, layered with a close-up of my Insubstantiated drawing/sculpture/installation as well as a detail from a painting of mine.

There is a lot of beauty when you can see the details – just click on the images to see them larger. Do you find these interesting? If so please let me know in the comments :-)

'Hearts Are Wild' is still on display at Renann Isaacs Contemporary Art in Guelph, Ontario, but it will soon be joining the substantial art collection of the Morrison family in England, where it will be in the company of Peter Blake, Picasso and countless other wonderful artists' works.

Needless to say I am right chuffed about it!







Acrylic on wood panel, 12' x 12", 2016.
This is the first time I've posted a complete view of the painting online. Click on the image to see a larger view.

Here is a detail from my new painting "Hearts are Wild" now showing in 'RED' an exhibition which opened yesterday (Saturday January 30) at Renann Isaacs Contemporary Art in Guelph, Ontario. 

'RED' is a group show of square-foot paintings by 50+ artists, all united by the colour red. 

Among the group are artists I know and admire such as Kal Honey, Cole Swanson and Seth as well as luminary Ron Shuebrook, so I'm in excellent company! 

If circumstances weren't preventing me, I would be working on more paintings in this vein (so to speak). I'll just have to figure out how I can keep thinking along these lines but in my sketchbook instead until I can get back into my studio.

If you have a chance to visit the show, please let me know what you think, whether in the comments below or via the contact form or on social media. It's worth the drive to Guelph!

This little painting is fresh off the... well, it wasn't painted on an easel, so I guess I have to say table. 

I'm too tired to be able to say much about it beyond what's in the caption, but it relates to my abiding interests in shape, colour relationships, layering and paint application.

I'd like to do more using the same process (one I've only dabbled in before), so we'll see what the schedule will allow. Hope you enjoy it :-)

Have you ever commissioned a portrait? If not of yourself or a family member, then maybe of a pet or even your house?

Most people haven’t. And I’m not surprised. It’s not because they’re expensive, they can be, but so can entertainment systems that become obsolete while the portrait remains just as valuable, just as meaningful, as ever. They can also be very affordable, depending on the artist, and bearing in mind that each portrait is a bespoke (custom-made) item, usually hand-made and often with tremendous skill as well.

But seriously, most people have either never thought of commissioning a portrait or ruled it out for some reason.

Now imagine that I show up in your Facebook newsfeed or your Twitter feed, asking you to tell me the name of one of your hero(ine)s, so that I can draw them. When I’m done, I’ll share it on social media, tagging you in the post and asking you to share it with your online friends (naming me as the artist) along with a little explanation of why you chose that person as your hero.

Doesn’t that sound and feel a little different?
Fun even?

That in a nutshell is my #dailyheroes online portraiture project, a way for me to create something positive on social media without sharing videos of cats I don’t have :-) 

While the portraits are far from daily, (I find I need to do them in bursts), they have become a key part of what I bring to my online life, because of what others have brought to it. 

First of all, others bring me names, and when they do some of them share why they chose that hero(ine). It’s like being given a double gift: I get to know my friend or contact a little better and I also get to know figures (past and present) whom I may never have heard of before, or I will learn more about in my research.

Secondly, others have brought me their enthusiasm, both when bringing names and when “receiving” the drawing, and sharing them, whether they were the original commissioner or not.

I love the conversation that’s resulted, and the nascent sense of community building around it, at least for me.

So, when the producer of Night Time (a late night Rogers TV talk show) approached me about appearing in their current season, I knew which project I wanted to talk about! The segment originally aired on Friday, December 4, and will repeat. I will see if I can get a recording of it to share online.

Meanwhile, if you have a hero(ine) you’d like to share, please do so in the comments below, or on Facebook or Twitter (those words are live links).

I am posting the results in an album on Flickr as well.

PS: The name #dailyheroes is what's called a hashtag. For anyone unfamiliar with how those work, you can search for them in the search bar on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram for example, (you must include the "#" which is the hashtag proper) and if anyone has used the term you enter (it has to be all one word), you will be able to see the posts where they used it.

Creativity is essentially about making unexpected connections. Working in mixed media is very stimulating precisely because it expands the opportunity for forming new connections, especially in contemporary approaches where the options for ingredients has cracked wide open.

Stitchery, whether as sewing, embroidery, needlepoint, cross-stitch or other needle arts, has taken on particular importance in recent years. Late great Canadian artist Joyce Wieland (one of my heroes) was a pioneer in bringing traditional women's arts, such as sewing and quilting for example, into "real" art, i.e. the kind that gets shown in galleries and museums.

Below is a work-in-progress I've scanned in, where I'm drawing-by-embroidering onto a close-up photo of mine of an old, rusty lawnmower.

​What interesting media combinations have you seen somewhere or tried yourself?