I haven’t shared anything on my blog in a few weeks because I’m knee deep in several complex paintings. I don’t know how some people have the time to share so much on social media. Every time I decide I should post on Instagram or Facebook it seems to take way longer than anticipated. I’d rather be painting.
Many of these Penguin Classics are the books that you should have read when you were in your teens, but probably wouldn’t have understood fully until you were in your thirties. It is available through the Elliott Fouts Gallery.
Giving these books a try early on in life is good but I have personally found that revisiting them later makes them way more relevant. These books are written by people who had a full spectrum of experiences and knowledge and I am only now finding that I understand where they come from. Read more
I found this book, The Way To Win, and had to add it to my little late 19th Century library of books that reveal the way our people were thinking just over 100 years ago. The book is a very detailed, very long self-help style book from a John T. Dale.
After browsing through the chapters, I’m left to wonder if anyone who picked up the book in 1891 found success as they went chapter by chapter and tried to structure a meaningful, successful life.
The thing that I find interesting is how this book reads and seems so much like modern-day self help. It’s all here, published 125 years ago. You can find all of this being self-published on countless blogs or YouTube channels today. I wonder if John T. Dale would have found an audience if he was one of those numbers today?
I’ve done a few more studies, although one could be seen as more of a reach back to around a decade ago when pencils seemed to figure frequently in my paintings.
These paintings will be included in the small works December exhibition at the Elliott Fouts Gallery.
I found a bunch of Penguin Classics that I’ll be featuring in some upcoming paintings — this painting is the first study.
Nineteen Eighty-Four is one of my favourite books. Although it is fascinating, I actually don’t fear that the world depicted in it is the one we live in. It’s more like the one we are afraid we live in, and the truth is we actually live in a Brave New World which seems equally as terrifying.
Climbing Higher – 30 x 30, oil on canvas. New work featuring vintage primary readers. Available through the Elliott Fouts Gallery in Sacramento, California.
These two new paintings are at the Elliott Fouts Gallery in Sacramento, California.
Oh, summer. You make it so hard to stay focussed in the studio. The lure of the sunny beaches and trails to explore. Please grant me a few overcast or rainy days so I can lock myself in the studio for a few hours to finish these paintings.
Once these two paintings are complete, they’ll be heading to the Elliott Fouts Gallery in Sacramento, California.
The blades are like flower pedals, the body color is a crisp electric blue. This painting of a vintage Electrohome fan is one of a dozen new paintings showing at the George Billis Gallery LA from May 21 – July 2, 2016.
These two paintings are about contrast. Above are three clocks; simple, orderly, tidy, Type A. Below are ten clocks; in a cluster, mingling, Type B. Everyone should know their comfort zone.
This will sound sentimental, but who cares. I like the thought of how exciting these cameras would have been to a kid who received it as a gift. Back when photography took time, it would have seemed magic. I like the thought that these lenses were the eyes on so many events.
And then there is the fact I can present these objects in such an orderly way. The four cameras are all 3/4 turned, facing to the right. These black cubes, such simple shapes, with the circular flash from the unique Spartus camera. The stack of ten cameras makes a small architectural structure, each with a different facade. The box cameras with their shining brass art deco designs, the different materials used. Composing the cameras this way adds a structure and order.
The materials, their designs, the history and story, their utility as image making tools, cameras are deserving of a portrait.
I have been painting cameras for well over a decade. You can see 40 paintings of cameras I’ve done on good old Flickr.
As with many of my recent paintings, the subjects were found at Everything Old in Brentwood Bay on Vancouver Island.