An old painting

Here is an odd one from last year.

Untitled
Oil on canvas board.

The Dreamer (A New Painting)

The Dreamer
Oil on canvas
2ft x 3ft

An Autumn Painting

An Autumn Landscape, Niagara
Oil on canvas
2 feet by 3 feet

New Art

Boom And Bust
Oil on linen
(a re-framing of an earlier painting)

The Generous Death

The Generous Death
Oil on canvas
18 by 26? inches (I'll measure it later)

Upcoming Show

It's not a poster it's an oil painting.

Here's to the upcoming show! 2016 at Mikreations in Virgil Ontario! Contact him! Look it up online!
Yes, it's a gruesome "poster"!
So, what is my position on the censuring of genitalia? I agree with certain Renaissance painters that the genitals should be avoided in a painting. The again, I like what Bahktin says about the grotesque. So, I guess that leaves me with just a sense of humour about it all . . .
I intend this to be the cover the the little retrospective pamphlet I want to produce before the show.

Found Painting

This has been laying around for a while as the start of a top to bottom landscape. Counter-clockwise I began to see it was in fact this left to right painting. A little work and presto:

Man Looking At His Hands
Oil on canvas
16 x 20 inches

Charity

I was given a canvas recently from Mike from someone I barely know and so I painted this picture for her. It's called "The Devil's Advocate" and I hope everyone listening knows just what that means when someone says it. Me? I never agreed with the whole concept of The Devil's Advocate. Here, in this painting I have comically suggested that it's as if a woman shows off her legs--but I hope that my painting suggests more than that . . .

Well, Mike, if you you get around to reading this then let's offer her this painting at cost. This is a canvas with it's root in Christian charity and a love of one's neighbour. So, a week on the easel thinking about it ($20) the idea that it would be "the devil's advocate" ($10) the first glimpse (the drawing) ($6) the painting (4 hours @ $25/hour [that includes meals throughout]). Total: $136. But if the wonderful woman who started all this doesn't want it then I think it's one of my better paintings and so, money will have it, Mike you will, I think concur, that it should be up in the half-a-grand range.

The Devil's Advocate
Oil on canvas
16x20 inches

A Little Painting

That's Enough T.V.
Oil on canvas
11in. by 14in.

A New Painting

almost finished

finished

Back Yard, Niagara-on-the-Lake, ONT
Oil on canvas
24 in. by 29 in.

A New Painting

Picnic Table
Oil on canvas
74cm x 60cm

After a conversation with Refik about my commission this piece (with no moose!) was the result.
This is the commissioned piece, commissioned by Refik Saskin.
But mostly this painting is an illustration of my conviction that the twisted tree by my drive-way is twisted in the way it is because that's the way the what? Indigenous? Native? Oh, for a native land . . . Well, I think it marks a trail and even such a smudge on a modern map might be worth noting. The picnic table I painted because it's the closest thing to a moose there days . . .



SOLD

NEW SHOW AT THE CIRCUS COFFEE HOUSE IN TORONTO (with running commentary)

NEW SHOW @
CIRCUS COFFEE HOUSE
7 Woodmount Ave. Toronto
Woodbine and Danforth Area
Proprietor: Ron Duffy

Thank-you Marnie Saskin for handling every aspect of this little big show. I have visited the Circus and ate a rice bowl and drank a juice. I picked up a copy of Inherent Vice to see if the book was true to the movie I had seen. A pleasant place. I was visiting my sister's and on the way back from Circus a neighbour called to her saying that he had seen the paintings. "This is the artist," she called back, indicating me, that I was there. So a bit of banter about a painting he liked, Bacchus's Theft of the Stars, a bit of banter, where I remember saying when he mentioned it was somehow a bit like Matisse, "I like Matisse" and he said, "me too."

The painting in the middle there is my Bacchus' Theft Of The Stars Over Toronto. As anyone who has been to Toronto for a night and also up north for a night I think will tell you is it's the number of stars they can see. This painting is one of two now and it is also one of my earlier ones, painted just after The Dreamers period; it's companion three-legged picture is now the much later painting, Woman As Precipice (see the earlier post).

Mike asked me what's with the three legs. Well, it's my hilarious notion of the leg as phallic symbol as ultimately impotence. "I hope I'll get a lot of laughs with it," says I.

I really like these paintings. On Progress and Lower Poseidon especially.

Well, uh, it's two or three or what a month of Sundays now. Not one has sold. I understand. You all think well how can I stand not having them all to myself! You've got it all wrong! I want the next one of you there at that cafe to say, I'd like that painting! And give her a bunch of bucks and it's yours! Isn't this the greatest sale ever?

Commission

2. Riverside 7:00 Facing East

1. Wind and River

A got a commission and painted this (for practice)

~29in. x 23in.
Oil on artboard

For Refik (unless he wants to wait for the real thing which may be worse. Bigger, but worse.)

New work

A Bridge To The U. S. A. As Seen From A Niagara-On-The-Lake Vineyard
Oil on board
2ft x 3ft.

New work

There's a particular name for the sort of carved out tributarian thing that we built roads into to go up the escarpment but I can't remember now what that's called so I'm waiting for someone to get back to me on this.
The Academic answer can be found in "Niagara Natural History" which is a seminal text to all who live here.
"With a few exceptions, everywhere a road goes up the escarpment it goes up an old river cut that was filled in by the Wisconsin or earlier glaciation" (J. C. Lewis, Brock University, 1991, p.37) 
Is there a native word, perhaps lost?

Oil on cardboard
28 x 20in.

New work

Rapids,Ontario
Oil and crayon on cardboard
23 x 17 in
This is probably the most abstract thing I've got; up-side down it's a pretty good painting of a storm. Actually it started out that way: a painting of a storm (up side down)

New work

Logging Road, up north, Ontario
Oil and crayon on cardboard
30 x 25 in.

New work

Dry Creek Bed
Oil on press-board
23.5in x 28.5in

2 Encaustic Pieces

Symparanekromenoi
Encaustic and oils on board
10in x 8in

Country House
Encaustic on board
10in x 8in

New work

Woman As Precipice
Oil on canvas
36 in. by 24 in.

New work

Field (Niagara)
Oil on cardboard
17in by 28.5in

Northern Landscape
Oil and crayon on cardboard
17in by 28.5in

Aged Ignorance
Ink and oil on linen

Woman with purse
Oil on canvas

Works in progress

Evisceration
Oil on canvas
24in by 48in

Scene from Theaetetus (The Platonic Dialogue)
Oil on canvas
48in by 36in