words by paula drawing by larry

Larry said let’s go to Starbucks and you’ll write about someone we see and I’ll draw them. And I said, yeah like that loud guy we always see there talking to someone new every time, we can do him. Then we got there and sure enough he was there. But I don’t think he’s a bum.

One time we were sitting down with him and talking to him and our twelve year old son Jacob was with us and he was warning Jacob to always listen to his parents, us, because he knew. And Jacob was buying a new cell phone from earning money from shovelling snow and he was telling Jacob which guy to talk to in the Rogers for any problems he might have. And then he noticed my cell phone and said, oh yeah, the little chocolate bar, which is a good way to describe it, it’s very thin, and that he used to have the same one. Then he showed us the cell phone he has now and then the other cell phone he also has now.

So I was ordering Larry and me our coffees and he left his chair and was beside me telling me how there’s e-bay cards on the internet for seven hundred dollars, how he couldn’t believe they were for seven hundred dollars, then he showed me his Paul McCartney Starbucks card and said he looked it up and it was only worth one dollar. Which didn’t seem right to him.

I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about. But I had to agree his Paul McCartney Starbucks card did look very nice. It was much more unique-looking than my Starbucks card. And feel sorry for Paul McCartney that his value was so low in whatever internet assessing plastic card world he was talking about.

But I didn’t ask him what he was talking about because I didn’t want to talk to him even though one time we had been sitting down together and the audiences of each other.

For once the pair of comfy soft purple chairs had become available – people were getting up and leaving them - and Larry grabbed them. What I said about their availability he responded to with more commentary.

I sneezed hard two times and he said bless you, you could tell it was bless you, but in a language I don’t know, it sounded like Yiddish, in his same loud voice that cut through the coffee shop and reverberated, two times too.

iggy and lilu

Our 2 kittens wished Paula a Happy Mothers Day.

i submit

So I've done a lot of drawings over the last 10 months since I lost my job as a teacher when the Art Institute of Toronto expired. This month I've put together a portfolio site and I'm going to send e-mails to galleries here in Toronto by way of submitting my work. I've never had representation before as an artist except as an illustrator and that had some positive aspects. Wish me luck please. Cheers all. The site address is www.larryeisenstein.com

baby kittens

We have 2 new kittens. Iggy and Lilu. Everything looks cute to me now. I've got cute colored lenses affixed to my glasses and am blinded to the truth that they're just big hairy cockroaches, scuffling in my dinner, sniffing for food everywhere, what mooches. Roachmoochies.

7 of 22

That's how many pages I've got drawn in my accordion book. It's from China and I bought it at Gwartzman's Art Supplies. It's got thick tough paper and took a beating. I've been going downtown to this art supply store since I was 15. That's 40 years. The same guy still owns and runs it. He's as crotchety and imperious as ever. His build is wiry, his features handsome, his speech laconic and he still scares me. Now I go to his son the dentist with my whole family. He makes cracks about his dad while he drills in my cavities.

wrinkle

I use the cheapest paper to work on. I hate to waste good paper. Since I always start every drawing believing it's destiny is abject failure only the crappiest . So my crappy paper goes gnarly and rippled the longer I paint. After 4 weeks of stroking this one has the geography of dessicated parchment. It aged with me so it's not Dorian Gray.

what you feed your mind

So now I understand that I've spent most of my life asking terrible questions. And that the answers my mind has come up with are only appropriate to the negative inquiry.

Now when i go to bed I feed a fresh batch of hopeful, happy questions into my brain and I wake up with excellent answers. Today I feel sure that everything is going to turn out well.
It's a great feeling.

love understands

My eldest son Eli is in northern Israel where he's volunteered to help out in the rear as the war with with Hamas widens. I hope he'll be safe. Eli's mother, my ex-wife, doesn't understand him and rejects his decision to participate in the operation.

He was just at the end of a vacation/tour when the war broke out. He decided to stay. A couple of months ago he met a young Israeli woman traveling here in Toronto. She had just finished her mandatory service in the Israeli Army. I think they're in love. Eli and Nofair are going to rendezvous in Israel in February. The ongoing conflict will be the backdrop. I guess there's a very romantic story there. I'm worried for him, but it's his time to be a young man in the world now.

happy sad

I must cry for 2008 though. It was the best year of my life. I'm a capricorn. We start out old and get younger. Each year of my life seems to be getting better lately. This last one was my favorite. So I grieve because it's over and I'm worried it will never be as good again. But so far 2009 is even better!

happy new year

2009 spurts of splorching gobs of joyous creamy love to you!

I've been away, in a depression. Now I'm feeling better. I'm sorry I dissappeared. I miss being here. Be safe and happy and healthy for the next 12 months and then we'll ask for the exact same thing again.

what?

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.