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flic

more visitors campaign

Over the next little while I am shamelessly going to introduce more sex and violence to my postings in an effort to solicit more visits and (especially) comments. We hope our regular visitors (Pennies, Orange and Sinister - I love you) will not be disappointed.

on the beach

They studied their grandchildren, a little boy and a little girl, playing in the surf. The parents of these toddlers walked hand in hand along the beach, their dog took refuge from the sun under a giant driftwood log. as they lay on a blanket in the sand, laughing and cuddling. The grandparents pointed at and chatted about every aspect of the behavior of the little ones. Proud and vigilant they watched over their treasure. The young mother of the children told me she loved my portrait of her parents.

They all walked off up and over the dunes to their campsite. We stayed till the end of the day. We love it at the Pinery. We love the beach. Jacob rode the waves to the sunset.

lotsa coffee

Paula and I are really into drinking coffee this year. We never drank it before. It always messed me up. Now we love it. It's kind of crazy.

kidney bean head and baby bean head

Pulled a proof of my first soft ground etching on Tuesday. I'm going to aquatint some portions next class. I hope I don't ruin it. Paula said my sometimes verbose writing style does not appeal to her tastes. She likes my dense visual textures though.

pose

This girl, Sierra, was such a sweetheart. Her parents watched in smiles as she fawned over the drawings in my sketch journal. They beamed as she and I spent time chatting.

dots and spots

I woke up at 5 am and tossed and turned for 20 minutes. I couldn't stop thinking about drawing. About adding more color to all my black and white drawings. This one had a weenie bit of color
from some watercolor pencils. I couldn't stop thinking about adding some water to a brush and liquefying the dry watercolor marks. So I got up and did this for about 4 hours. It was nice to crawl back into bed and spoon with Paula knowing I had done it.

turqoise intestine clouds

Finished this yesterday. What the hell is it? It's not agrophobia, the horror of empty spaces. I believe I'm kind of compelled by horror vacui Horror_vacui , a theory initially proposed by Aristotle stating that nature “fears” empty space. Therefore empty space would always be trying to suck in gas or liquids to avoid being empty.

In visual art, horror vacui ( also known as cenophobia) is the filling of the entire surface of an artwork with ornamental details, figures, shapes, lines and anything else the artist might envision. I'm always coming back to my work and finding more to do.

raymond

Raymond sat down across from me at the Second Cup near Dufferin and Wilson. He had warm innocent eyes. When I saw him enter the coffee shop he was bent way over and one hand fumbled with the change in the other. It was a long process. The first thing I noticed when he sat with me was the arthritic disfigurement of his left hand. I smiled and began to chat with him as I drew another guy, in a dress shirt and yarmulke, working on a laptop.


I bought Raymond a French Vanilla latte and asked if I could draw him the next time we meet here. He was good with that. He looked excited. Raymond told me how he lost 50 pounds since coming to Toronto from Windsor and taking therapy at a new facility with great machines. Before leaving he worked on the strap of his fanny pack for about 20 minutes to tighten it one notch because of his new improved girth. He was fighting the limitations of a claw hand without ever complaining. He handles his disability amazingly, I admire his will. He is the Olympian god of cerebral palsy sufferers. I'll buy him coffee, in homage, whenever we meet. He walks a long way for his coffee, for the exercise and the treat.

little drawing journal

I have a new little sketch book made by Fabriano. It's from Italy and has textured tinted paper. The pages are divided into sections of color. 16 pages of cream yellow paper followed by 16 of grey, repeated 5 more times. I bought it in New York and I think it's grand.

etching class

I'm taking etching at the Open Studio, a printmaking studio in Toronto. My teacher is Emma Nishimura. She's an excellent instructor. There are 8 students taking the course and they are all really into it. I'm finding it tremendously exciting. I love the actual etching of course. It's just drawing with new tools. But all the many physical aspects of the process right down to the elaborate clean up rituals are very satisfying as well. It's nice to come out of my head and get down and dirty with all the mess involved!

I'm pleased with the results so far. I can't wait to get more plates to etch, and try lithography and screen printing next. I love this stuff and it's so nice to be in a room full of other artists. I like the feedback. I like watching them create. It's not so lonely. Paula's been very encouraging. She likes the textures in the prints. She said she likes them better than my abstract ink drawings on paper. I can see why. The textures are incredibly sensual and exotic in the prints, compared to the flatter high contrast black on white of the drawings.

today I have a cold

I hate being sick. I blame myself for taking such poor care of myself. I took some Sudafed, which I never do and then I got high in a wierd way and got scared I'd suffocate in my sleep because my nostrils are plugged. I took it because my Mom demanded I suck it up and come to the Sukkot dinner at Leon's. I took it and practically passed out at the table.

Paula is teaching me self-pity. How getting sick is the right time to slow down and feel sorry for your self. Not to beat yourself up some more. So, I'm buying in. Poor me! WAhhhh.

That felt good. WAaaaHhhhhhhh!

bad coffee

Yesterday Paula and I went to a coffee shop in the art district on Queen St West. T.A.N. Coffee. They sell Fair Trade organic coffee in biodegradable cups. The woman who owns it is awesome. It was great coffee and guilt free, important to us in the wake of Yom Kippur. Now we can't go to Starbucks without feeling like cowards and traitors.

Everything's political. Even the dozen bagels we bought on the way home. Twister or regular? Paula fought North American excess by chosing regular size poppy seed and sesame seed over the big fat honking Twisters.

big fat ego envy

Yom Kippur is over. I had an atonement thought, walking with Paula from the Yummy Market as the sun went down, carrying bags of breaking the fast goodies like lox and pomegranate, as the high holy day was about to end. That's all I could muster. A short swift musing. I apologized for being a jerk. I can be mean when I'm hurt and mad. And I do have some hubris. But I actually need more, so I didn't apologize for that.

art mall

Today I went to the 2008 Toronto International Art Fair at the Metro Toronto Convention Center. There was so much art it made me dizzy. I'm going to submit my new work to some of the galleries I thought were right for me. I don't really believe I'll get picked up but I have to try again. I've never had my art represented by a private gallery, or been accepted to show at a public space. I once rented a gallery. In 2003.

I often have this feeling that when anyone sees my name on a proposal that they will receive a some subliminal command to deny me any access or recognition, this on pain of a terrifying horrible death to the violator. I really believe it sometimes. I guess that's part an emotional and mental sickness that possesses part of me.

after knowing you

We watched Aftermath: Life After People, about what would happen to everything man-made if humans disappeared. In the movie, nature takes back everything. So Jacob saw me doing this drawing in my studio and said that it looked like the world in the movie after the people were gone, because he saw the column in the right corner.

I'd like to go to where it's after relationships. They're gone, and all traces of them have been taken back. If I could survive there, I'd live there.

Now I'm worried it might happen.

sparkle

Went through a month of not blogging. But I kept drawing. Lots of drawing. When I get depressed I can still draw. That's new for me. I hope it's forever, because I can handle some depression and anxiety if I can still draw.

obsessive

I don't really know what obsessive means as it pertains to drawing. It can't be about my art. Drawing or not drawing doesn't fundamentally interfere with my family life. I can do and think about many other things besides draw. I do function fairly well. But I wonder if maybe that would change if I stopped drawing completely. As it is I spend a lot of time on these small sheets of paper. It seems to keep me calm and feeling secure.

I don't ever feel they're finished and I am full of anxiety while they're in process. My practice is nervous self loathing and hallucinatory paranoia. And I'm always driving towards spiritual and emotional catharsis plus I like exploring intellectual paradigms with bite. When the tally is in I've spent a lot of hours on them. Does that qualify as obsessive?

I wonder if I can live without doing them. It's not like I go into an autistic freak out or anything clinical if deprived of pencil. But I collect them obsessively, like pennies on the ground that mustn't be passed by but be pocketed. I feel that way about pencils. I imagine the concentration camps of my family and wonder what I would give for a pencil. Probably my bread.

The drawing does relax me and I'd love to have a career making them. Make some money. But I can't find a gallery in Toronto to take on my work. That's what I obsess on. Am I any good? Why does no one want my work? What's wrong with me as a person. Why am I cursed? What did I do? How can I survive as an artist and hide from criticism. That's when I need help. My anxiety always eventually leads to feeling depressed.


I'm confused. I've been told to get out of Toronto and find a mentor by one of the most respected curators in North America. That Toronto will never work for me. Maybe it's true. I feel lost here.

And very alone. But now that I'm healing from the wounds of my early childhood and youth, I've finally found the love of drawing again so I know that even if no one ever finds my work I have this, I love to make it.

squinchy faced in new york city

After much online price comparing, we booked the hotel reservations for our trip to NYC on Hotwire.com. Then we got ready. We drove up to Huntsville Ontario and picked up Jacob at his summer sports camp. He had done lots of sailing, windsurfing, canoing and kayaking and looked very handsome and strong when we found him in the crowd of parents and departing campers. We wisked him home for a night in his own bed and then drove 5 1/2 hours to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown NY. What a lovely drive through the farmland and mountains. Cooperstown is a pleasant and quaint, expensive though.

We ate breakfast in this little diner was the cheapest and the friendliest. It was packed with locals. The Hall of Fame was crowded. The exhibits of old stuff are the best. My favorite were the antique games. In the museum shop we bought hats and t-shirts and tank tops and a cell phone holder with the Hall's logo for Jacob .

We bought a fitted minor league team hat for Eli but it was small on him when he tried it on back in Toronto, so Jacob inherited that one too! Jacob is a clothes horse of the first order. The store had tons of hats. Jacob wanted a Japanese club hat but that was the only thing they did not stock.

I love to draw Paula when she snoozes, here she is doing it again at our Holiday Inn Midtown Manhattan. I think she's so beautiful. Jacob is sick. As soon as we arrived he got sick. We were really mad at him when he wasn't looking or listening. Maybe we should have gone alone. But he loves to travel.

We had an outdoor pool on the rooftop of our hotel. It was a nice size and and full of people. Almost no one spoke English. Lots of northern Europeans. It was a refreshing dip but gave Jacob ear troubles for the rest of the trip. He was such a trooper when I pushed him to walk to Chelsea and then the Empire State Building, only about 90 blocks, then Paula got him to stand in 1 1/2 hours of lineups to get to the observation deck level of the Empire State Building. We sound like crazy parents no? It was a great view though. The city at night all lit up. Needless to say we took the subway back to the hotel. We flopped on the beds, our legs and feet were aching. Jacob woke up hallucinating and sleepwalking. We heard this thumping sound. He was trying to open the door to the hallway but it was catching on the night latch. Thump! bang. Thump! bang.

Paula tried to comfort him but it wasn't working. I held him and shouted at him, then shook him a bit but it escalated and then he was screaming. I covered his mouth. I was worried that the neighbours would call security or worse the cops might show up. I plopped him in the shower and tried to calm him down and wake him up. It worked and he came out of it. He calmed down and we all went to bed. He barely remembered any of it the next morning.

I had fevered hallucinations as a kid. I hated it worst than anything. I wish someone could have snapped me out of them. My mom just comforted me too as I went slowly crazy in my fever. Sooner or later a doctor would show up at the house and give me a shot. My older son Eli had something similar. I remember when he peed in the oven. We found out when we tried to bake something. What a smell.

We went underground to ride the Manhattan Subway system to Yankee Stadium too. It's hard to draw when you have your family with you. I didn't want to shut them out but I managed to sneak a few sketches in. It helped that I bought a small Fabriano drawing book at Lee's after we visited the New York Artist's League. It was much easier to whip that baby out and bang away with the pencil and eraser. Ok that sounds silly but I'm trying to invent some inspiring drawing speak to give me bigger public journaling balls.

This guy and his wife studied their bibles intently on our ride on the D train to the B train. Another rider, a middle aged black woman, loved my drawing of this man. She just loved it.

We scalped tickets to the Yankees Game. It was the 18th last game before they tear down the historic stadium. There were no tickets anywhere except upper deck at 150 per ticket from the scalpers. Every scalper I met I said "bleachers" to. They turned up their noses and walked away. Until finally one guy said OK at 50 bucks a piece. I stalled a bit and he came back with 40 a pop.

Behind our seats were a couple from north of Denver who paid 90 bucks in advance. We got a nice deal! The scalper walked us right through the ticket turnstile and then practically to our seats where I flipped him the $120. Sweet!

But it was raining and there was a major chance the postponement could turn into an outright rainout. We all waited for about an hour and then hurray! They rolled off the tarp and soon it was 'play ball'. We knew when we bought the tickets that if it rained the money was down the toilet. We were leaving the next day and couldn't use a rain check. I chatted with everyone. It was an alcohol free zone and almost everyone behaved civilly. There were lots of Yankee fans making the pilgrimage to see the hollowed ground of their baseball idols.

On the way back to the hotel on the subway I tried to draw again. The trains move so fast and rock so bad that it's practically impossible to get anything looking right. Plus these New Yorkers, man, they are way too alert and hard to get a long look at. Everyone's eyes are darting around like something bad's going to happen, but maybe I'd get used to it and hey, maybe they don't mean anything by it. It's a very tolerant place and artists are pretty harmless right? Plus they see them all the time. Maybe it was just me.

We wandered through Central Park and listened to a band under a platform. They were fantastic and made me cry. It was magical. This guy sat and listened too. It was the best moment of the trip. Jacob gave them some money as they packed up to go. I wish they played longer.

On our last day we went back to the lower east side. We ate at Kampuchea and everyone shared their food, passing forkfuls and spoonfuls to each other like we were feeding babies. Jacob bought an electric guitar, a cheap knockoff of a stratocaster. It had a classy English name, Washburn, made somewhere in China. He played it on the drive all the way home to Toronto.

We got him a book from which he taught himself chords. We stopped at Economy Candy, a giant candy store and loaded up on chocolate and gum, plus we had to get cupcakes for the road at Sugar Sweet Sunshine. We drove home in 8 1/2 hours. It was liking driving down the street. We floated back to Toronto.

abstracty personalties

Tomorrow Paula and I go up to Huntsville to pick up number 2 son Jacob at camp. He's finished his week of waterfront sports. He sailed. Number 1 son Eli is up near Ottawa, infantry training. 2 months of learning to be a leader. But he injured his back carrying a machine gun and a belt of ammo through a swamp at night in the rain. He fell. Now he's on pain killers and muscle relaxants hoping to heal up, not get drummed out of the course. There's lots of poison ivy cases, some severe enough for hospitalization. He calls a lot to talk. It's nice. Paula and I are here in Toronto. I''m doing abstract drawings and falling in love with her all over again.

a beautiful young girl on the train

The winter in Toronto has it's share of despair. People appear defeated, resigned to zombie apathy, a behavior they despise in others. You have to work hard to feel good here. You don't wake up December through March with the gift of feeling good because of the glorious weather or environment. You have to earn it. And it doesn't come cheap.

The morning faces wear dread and the evening ones appear pummeled. It's not what I'm trying to depict. But what I remember looking through my subway drawing journals. Mostly I feel joy as I draw standing in the crowds of commuters. fighting for balance and elbow room . I'm smiling like crazy inside. But what I see when I look at these pages a half year later just seems lonely and sad.

finished at the art institute of toronto

My tenure as an instructor at the Art Institute of Toronto is over. They've closed the doors of the Graphic Design department and the rest of the school is soon to follow. I've had some wonderful students during the 4 and a half years there. So many really great young men and women. I wish I had done drawings of them all. I really do.

I learned a lot about teaching and I'd like to continue to teach, but with less classes, and focused more on drawing and creativity. I like web design and graphic design but I don't love them. I want to draw as much as possible for the rest of my life.

tear

I started this a little while ago. Now it's finished. The center is a tear drop. Some grief, some joy, some irritated eye.

women sleep less

Men sleep on subway trains. They sprawl and snore. Women catnap with an eye open because it's a dangerous place for females to drop their guard. That's true of any public place isn't it?

Big fat women sleep on subways, they're invulnerable and generally undesirable to the average predatory male. Old women sleep too, they're just overwhelmed and exhausted by the trial and effort of commuting. But most young girls and women are targets, and there are lots of bad men.

paula's hands

My wife has beautiful hands and feet. I love looking at them and caressing them. This is a constant source of pleasure for me.

art practice

What about my studio? The space. The music. The light. No one told me I'd make more art surrounded by strangers in strange places. My teachers never mentioned it. No one said that alone there'd be so much noise inside me, and out in the din of the city there'd be this safe quiet. It's hard to accept.