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Showing posts from 2007

soar (I guess ... and happy new year)

This illo's meant for Chapter 8 of my novella (in progress), but it fits nicely with both the IF theme and New Year's wishes. * * * * * Can you hear me? , mixed media on canvas, 60 x 20 inches (I think). This is C's Christmas present, a painting for the spot over her desk in her office, meant more as a narrative piece than a decorative one. Below are two details. On Christmas Day we walked down to my studio to pick it up. Since she let me take her picture, I also gave her a wee tiger. * * * * * My friend Kristal , who recently ran off to LALA land so she could bump into Robert Downey Jr and wear fabulous buttons. * * * * * The Commonwealth Broadcasting Association sent me a complimentary copy of Commonwealth Short Stories 2007-2008 (the anthology of winning stories sent to radio stations for broadcast across the Commonwealth). The reading of my own story ( Scissors ), by Peter Marinker, was a bit more dramatic than I was expecting (one always hears their own vo

Happy Christmas

Our tree, which I decorated single-handedly, while C drank late at the local Legion. Happy Christmas!

flying backwards ... the cinders and ashes

the cinders and ashes ; mixed media on canvas, 5x7 inches. notwithstandingthemeanness ; mixed media on canvas, 5x7 inches. and dared not ; mixed media on canvas, 5x7 inches. Three more pirates I was going to take to Montreal this weekend, so my sister could sell them at her vendor's table ... that is, until we got over 30 cm of snow . So I stayed home to shovel. A lot . Winter is magic! not so rude and uncivil ; mixed media on canvas, 6x6 inches. When it was too dark to shovel anymore (and there is a point where one just quits , you know?), I did lose two more hours of my life to the Survivor China finale. The girl who should have won it (Amanda) suffered a complete collapse of focus when she weakly/defensively tried to parade both cunning gamesmanship and unbloodied humanity. As a student of the game, she should have known that juries of the victimized are not exactly receptive to tortured nuance. What they do like are people who admit to (or take credit for) everything and apo

very patiently

very patiently ; mixed media on canvas, 5x7 inches ... This is the first of a few wee ones I'll take to my sister Rachel (of Stella fame) in Montreal, so she can include them on her vendor's table at this sale below (not my artwork, btw) ... And now for something completely different ... x} We had rain here last night, and wind this morning, which made things nice and glazed for the (long) walk in. There are all these little muscles that you forget about, until you spend a good forty minutes navigating ice ... x} Lynn Crosbie had an unfortunate column in the Globe and Mail yesterday – unfortunate in that she went to some lengths to disparage the very existence of (get ready for it) The Two Coreys . Of course it was all couched in horror/disgust at the downmarket monster of reality television in general (and a peculiar loathing for Corey Haim in particular), but the whole thing felt a bit like a highschool essay explaining why Nazis are bad. I'm sure even the two Coreys hav

for illo friday ... {little things}

On the bulletin board in my studio, from top-left moving clockwise: an old (fading now) watercolour of the Three Kings or Wise Men (or Magi , as certain people who believe in ghosts like to say); a wee mixed-media drawing on paper of a man in a long coat with a house on his head; a pen-and-ink self-portrait by my friend Jeannette (currently starving in Japan ) in which she says "By the time you get this I'll already be dead. Just kidding." ; a colour print of a drawing in I did in design school, of a yearning woman against a prairie landscape; a drawing by my nephew Landon, when he was four or five (I think), of King Kong, with an inscription that I probably suck at the computer game of the same name; a sweet note from my friend Connie Pierson, concerning an art trade we did; a drawing on a paper bag, by Jeannette, testifying to an emerging psychosis; a mixed media piece by my brother Jon; a drawing of some nice German boys lost in the woods; another Jeannette piece, thi

a life in wreckage

I once had a roommate who never unpacked. He set up his box spring and mattress on the floor, dumped his boxes around the room, dug out a pillow and blanket ... and proceeded with the rest of the school year. I bring this up only because it reminds me of the way I'm living right now . We had our upstairs – bedroom and den – painted this week, which was bad enough (because of the roughly million books I had to remove from up there), but then C sprung it on me that they were doing the kitchen as well. Nice! She's very slick with the art of information slide you see, telling you x , and getting you to agree to that, when in fact she's been intending to run with x + 1 all along. Or maybe, as she likes to claim, it just 'happened'. Either way you find yourself in a fait accompli because you're already half-way into whatever it is, and it hardly makes sense to turn around now (like most men, I have a low threshold when it comes to giving up and just turning into a

I'm only happy when I'm looting

I'm only happy when I'm looting ; mixed media on canvas, 12 x 12 inches.

one time too many ... sold

This is the painting I sold on the weekend (sorry, Susan). The buyer came and saw and went away and thought about it and came back and chose this one, so I know it's going to a good home.

In the Kingdom of Chicken

Remember this lovely couple? Anyway, the story they belong to came out yesterday, in the latest (fall) issue of The Puritan .

Uncle Ulysses

This optimistic fellow is Uncle Ulysses, from part five of my long story .

life as a viking

Since IF and IFN have been so atrocious lately (hackery in extremis , why don't we just call it Illustration Photoshop Filter Friday already?), I've decided to forego their pleasures this week. Instead this is my nephew Shawn , who turns two on December 3rd. Like most of us, he likes to ram things into his mouth, throw fits and hit people. Children are our future!

Gawker Artists

Gawker { daily Manhattan media news and gossip, reporting live from the center of the universe } has made me one of their Gawker Artists : essentially, you get a page in their gallery , and occasional exposure when your artwork appears in the place of ads. Amazingly, they do it simply because they can. C, who loves her celebrity trash as dearly as cats and red wine, should especially appreciate this.

2007 Commonwealth Short Story Competition

Yesterday they announced Ellen Banda-Aaku of Zambia as the winner of the 2007 Commonwealth Short Story Competition . Her story Sozi's Box was selected as the best story from the Africa region of the Commonwealth and as the winning story from more than two thousand entries. Twenty five other writers from across the Commonwealth have also won prizes in the 2007 competition. I was one of them, for my short story Scissors . The Commonwealth Short Story Competition exists to increase understanding between and appreciation of different Commonwealth cultures, to showcase the rich diversity of the Commonwealth and to support rising literary talents. The competition has been held each year since 1996, administered by the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association on behalf of the Commonwealth Foundation. Each year the competition identifies around 25 outstanding short stories and records them for radio broadcast around the Commonwealth. Five regional winners are chosen, for Africa, Asia, Carib

charlie

This fellow's for a story about gangs, loneliness and the end of the world.

for illo friday ... {superstition}

Nuns and rulers, rulers and nuns, and all the craziness in-between. But I could just as easily put up a monk, mullah, witch or Brahmin priest.

because girls love horseys

I drew this to use in a flyer for my sister Rachel's birthday. I'll probably dump it over on Illustration Friday Night as well, just to add to the general confusion.

for illo friday ... {scale}

Congratulations, Penelope; this one actually made me think (I'm still bracing myself for the theme of "elves" or "Rudolph" at Christmas, however).

every day escapes me

It really does. Every day is full of ideas and notes and plans and tasks that form battalions and charge my mind and then just full-on gallop away from me. It's as if they have their own campaign to get on with, and all I can do is try to play catch-up (which, by mid-afternoon especially, when my brain has the consistency of canned ham, is usually a lost cause). Anyway, some random bits ... x} This (above) is the work of Joseph Cornell . He was a genius in the art of assemblage. My friend Susan likes him, too. This illo's for the chapter I took to writing group last night, the second part of a long story (or a short novella). It went over okay, although some people had trouble with its alternate universe angle, and of course C took the opportunity to hammer me, which she always does, and then denies it on the way home. Sporting! This fun, lovely painting is called 'Spun', by Cathy Nichols . I have a print of it in my studio. x} A few weeks ago my friend Jeannette wen

time for bed, please

time for bed, please ; mixed media on canvas, 8 x 8 inches; the string series continues. Oh dear, oh dear.

red queen always wins

red queen always wins ; mixed media on canvas, 8 x 8 inches; the string series continues. Thought (at the time) that my digital camera had done much better than this, so excuse the slight crappiness in quality ... the smaller you go, the harder it is to work with (I think I saw that on a t-shirt somewhere). Anyway, I'll need to scan it at some point.

for illo friday ... {the mad hatter}

The real theme is 'hats' but wtf? Anyway, this reminds me of an awesome (that one's for you, C) computer game I played quite a few years ago, called, quite simply, Alice .

little big man

Ha! IFN this week has given me yet another excuse to put up a picture of Custer.

there's still time to play

there's still time to play ; mixed media on canvas, 24 x 20 inches. Also: check out the wee story on Litbits today; it's rather good.

Montreal

Me and C went to Montreal last weekend, so I could visit Stella and Rachel while C stayed with her friend Kara. Rachel showed us her studio where she creates furniture (like these two chairs, below), tooks us to the new Drawn and Quarterly store, and made a pasta with beef and a cream sauce. And while I was supposed to babysit, Rachel ended up not going out because she was still a bit wrecked from the night before ... which was just as well, because the heavy guns were necessary when a certain somebody didn't want to go to bed. And, just because, here's a wee video about grapefruit.

for illo friday ... {trick or treat}

Unsurprisingly, the theme on IF this week is 'trick or treat'. Maybe for the third week in December we'll do 'Santa'.