Sunday, August 23, 2015

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?

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

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.)