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Showing posts from March, 2013

hey peter, i can see your house from up here

I had no idea it was Easter until Monday afternoon, when I overheard two people talking about Easter. What are you doing for Easter? one of them burped. Probably the strangest holiday. I wonder how many people have any real understanding of what it's (supposed to be) about. I mean, I think most people could offer up a basic famous-carpenter-on-the-cross scenario, but I bet a VAST MAJORITY could not tell you why it's called GOOD FRIDAY. And if you can think of ten people who will be in church this weekend (real people that you know, not the goddamn Pope) then please email me and call me Doubting Thomas. * * * * * proportional parts ; inks on paper (math text book), for ARIEL. * * * * * Another drawing for my project with ARIEL, done from this poem: How to Knit a Scarf Your hand clamped gently over his mouth. Your lifeline riding his tongue. * Make fibre from the faintest atmospheric pressure. From newsprint and g

gratuitous sex scene

gratuitous sex scene;  mixed media and collage on masonite board,  8 x 10 inches; in the shop * * * * * Been tearing through Season 5 of Mad Men , which is very difficult for C to watch, because it's a complete vindication of what I've always maintained, which is that Don Draper is a tragic figure , a victim of corrupting forces ranged against him, like Odysseus and the Sirens. And like Odysseus, our hero Don (shall we call him a hero? let's!) is only trying to get home, so to speak, via an epic yet humbling quest for meaning. In advertising. AND: when those siren calls and other spells can be kept at bay, our hero is more than capable of keeping it together. And in his pants. A TRUE AMERICAN HERO.

it's fine

Psychedelic Hallmark Calendar, 1970 - Front Cover * * * * * What do you do with stupid people? O God it's tough. I mean, not only is the stupid person a stupid person, but you in turn are stupified by their stupidity. Myself, I'm almost always caught off guard, and then nearly stunned; I'm expecting REACTION A but instead I get REACTION K or even REACTION W. And then I feel thoroughly stupid myself, trying to work out what else that person must mean, because they certainly can't mean what they just said. But no, they do, and what they said is the social equivalent of shitting on your shoes, and they don't know any better, and what's worse they're kind of ANGRY about it. So, again: what to do? The answer is, as with so many of these things, to IGNORE . Don't react, in fact don't say anything except maybe yeah , uh-huh and sounds good , and then just try to get away from them as soon as possible . For example, there's one perso

dying on mars

how do we meet there, in the grass and the woods ?; an original painting on canvas, mixed media, varnished; 8 x 8 inches. * * * * * I like this one. A bit different for me in that the figures are only roughed in, but there's so much movement within the layers that they become very much alive. And it's not like me to illustrate the sides, either. Yet a painting like this is ultimately more decorative than anything else, so it felt appropriate. Anyway, listen to me talk like some pretentious poff. * * * * * What I am trying to do -- always, with everything I create -- is to make a compelling object. This might sound strange considering that my trade is in images, both literal and figurative, but the flimsiness of images is precisely the point that I'm trying to transcend. Images are everywhere, all around us. We might be at the most visual moment in history. Too much so -- in fact we are drowning in imagery. Cheap, disposable, everywhere -- in adv

which witch is that?

a forest, and witches ; mixed media on canvas, 6 x 8 inches. * * * * * Wee snow storm last night, which always makes everyone a little crazy, but walking has put me on the other side of the divide, in that I don't really mind the snow, in fact I like it within reason, as snow days always have that certain warmth to them, everything greyed and contained and muted down, and there's no line for coffee and easy reasons for being late. As I always tell C, it's *rain* that's a fucking problem, especially the way it always comes in sideways. * * * * * Me and C got talking about Bowie the other day, and his new album, which C hates, leading to a more general discussion about certain persons who have achieved the kind of status where you cannot talk badly about them, full stop. An important point to make here is that it doesn't matter if there's actually something bad to say or not; you can only speak of them in half-retarded rapturous terms,

i don't understand what i'm doing to me

alphabestiary 5 (and 5x), for Ariel and our wee project * * * * * In a T E R R I B L E mood today, which is strange on one level, because I finally got some sleep last night, and my cold is getting better (at least I can talk), but completely understandable on another level, after another day of sitting in an office that is F R E E Z I N G. I'M WEARING LONGJOHNS AND PANTS AND TRACK PANTS AND A T-SHIRT AND A POLO SHIRT AND A SWEATER AND A BUNNY HUG . So I went to the library at lunch to draw. Which is where the two little monsters above come in. * * * * * Is it bad to be counting down the days until someone quits? Well, I guess I'm bad then. BIG SURPRISE.

down down down

and then misery made her a queen; inks and pencil on paper, 6 x 9.25 inches. In the shop . * * * * * BITTERLY cold day, as in bitter bitter wind, and of course my office, which is usually so hot that by the end of the day you feel CONFUSED , is as cold as a tomb. Of course. * * * * * Saw Dead Man Down , and it was actually a pretty good movie, even intelligent, right up to the last ten minutes, which were RIDICULOUS . As I said to C, anytime you drive a truck through a house, you're making certain artistic concessions. * * * * * Hey, fuck a duck, they got a new pope. GREAT. Talk about the biggest news story of the year which is actually the smallest news story of the year, because within a week the rest of the world will go back to only noticing the Catholic Church when it has to pay off another lawsuit. For you know what. Just to reiterate: I don't know anyone who goes to church, I don't know anyone who engages with religion in any

the internet is greedy

This weekend, out of the blue, I asked C if she'd ever seen the movie Wall Street . "Nope," she said, and then started telling me about all the other cultural touchstones that she'd missed. It's a long list, but at least half of it is irrelevant. I mean, seeing E.T. now isn't going to inform anybody about anything. Well, maybe Tom Green. ANYWAY -- I found the movie online ('found' meaning 'for free'), so I said we should watch it. "Did you find it on YouTube?" C asked. No, just the internet. "What do you mean the internet?" C asked. "Do you mean YouTube?" No. Just the internet. Some site on the internet. What does it matter? "Is that site called YouTube?" C asked. And so it went. She had a hard time understanding that the internet and YouTube -- while coexisting, albeit in a mutually-assured-destruction kind of way -- were not the same thing. Sort of like when Bud Fox struggles to understa

corrections

where do comets come from? ; inks on paper. * * * * * Some necessary corrections, lately: • That BAD-DOG/BAD-DOG thing I mentioned earlier in the week was not, in fact, written in chalk; it was spray-painted . Also, the arrows point directly at a house, not at each other. Which brings the level of bad-dog-ness to an entirely higher/lower plane altogether. • I am sick of Pope news. Who the fuck cares? What would be the tag line for this ... old white guy in charge of dying church? Dying iniquitous church? NOT NEWS. And I'm sick of it. I'm pooped. I'm pooped on the Pope. • For some byzantine reasons of stealth marketing, the Globe and Mail is determined to give us a free daily subscription right now. It's exhausting. Every morning, after tugging it out of the mailbox, and feeding the elastic to the cat, I go through it and spend about seven minutes being disappointed. I mean, at this point it's like a coaster with talking points. And it used to be

spring is in the air

and continues to mixed media on masonite board  layers of drawings 7 x 9 inches in the shop * * * * * I don't know what it's like in the clean neighbourhoods, out in the suburban hinterland, but down in the unwashed heart of the city there is no hiding the changing of the seasons. On our morning walk to 'school' (daycare), Oona and I see it happen, in degrees, day by day, mostly in the form of garbage. Yep, garbage. You see, suburban kids are made aware of changes in the season by big and obvious things, like different after-school sports, dirtier then clean again SUV's, fewer skiing weekends, and grandma starting to talk about the garden ( Christ ). But for downtown kids, who spend their lives trudging up and down the same treacherous sidewalks, the telltale signs are all about garbage. Some recent examples, from our own neighbourhood: the garbage pile dumped at the corner of Cherry and Pine, degrading grotesquely with every thaw, an

travels, prints

C and Oona took the train to Toronto this last weekend, to see a theatre production of the Wizard of Oz and stay at the Royal York and go to fancy restaurants and order room service and generally spend about a thousand million jillion dollars. Certain persons briefly came to believe they were rock stars. Meanwhile, I slaved away in my studio, only returning to the house late at night to clean and do laundry. As a treat I ate half a bag of marshmallows and watched Contagion , which had a weird docu-overview feel, despite Matt Damon trying to keep it real with some very bad hair. But Gwyneth Paltrow *did* have her head sawed open, which always earns an automatic star. I now have prints in the shop. So if you see something you like but you're paralyzed by low blood sugar and cheapness, then you can order the print.