A warm house for me and my friends

I've been thinking about hermitting. A warm little house in a dark place. This is from yesterday, first real snowfall of the season.

Animals live here too

There are mice in our apartment but not in our food. Jeff wants to set traps, but can't we all just get along?

Holiday Cards

On sale as a fundraiser for Angel Chen's PAL-SAC. The next letter writing event take place on Monday December 13 at Naco Gallery Cafe, 1665 Dundas St. Write home everyone, your parents will love it.

Giant Bison Romps Among the Dead Flowers in High Park

There are bison in the zoo in High Park. Isn't that amazing and depressing?

This one's in progress. It's giant, about 4' by 5'. There's a puddle of graphite powder on the floor underneath it.

Another One for the Baby

My niece's first birthday was last week. The occasion called for something extremely lovable.

The graphite and charcoal drawing mounted on a wood panel.

Post-wax pour (beeswax with a little damar). I think the wax confused the camera. The final image is much less blurry in real life.

A fuzzy blurry blob that in real life resembles a tiny adorable animal with a big head. Just like my niece.

By the time I finished the whole thing I realized that I've been thoroughly Disnified. Clover was the obvious choice when I was deciding what greenery to nestle the creature in. Let me break it down for you:

purple clover + rabbit = Bambi learning about The Meadow.

I guess that means I drew a baby Thumper, or preferably the baby version of that really sexy rabbit with the long ears who seduces him later on. She's a fox. I mean a rabbit.

Mutant Bears

I've left the many five year olds in my life to their own devices for the month of August, but can't seem to get them out of my head. April tells the kids stories about a group of Mutant Bears who live in High Park. I'm doing a series of illustrations inspired by the boys, and thought that was as good a place to start as any.

Art on the Move is finally moving

Graham sent over a photo of Brian's truck being wrapped with the final artwork. It looks rad.

on the car

here are some stuff

a mockup in a crazy formation but it's getting closer...all the pieces are in order and i spent a lot of time transcribing interviews this afternoon. here are some samples of text that will be in the piece as well:

"My father played the piano by ear and I play it by ear, we all play the Mozart and we just love music. My sister sang a lot in church, but when you get older your voice drops down, just like everything else.

"It's very difficult being a grandmother. At first I thought it was easy but it's hard because the grandparent has lots of experience, and wants to influence the younger generation. But at the same time it causes conflict, because the experience of the youth is not the same as the experience of the older person."

adina

karen asked me to draw a picture of adina for Jacob's 60th birthday. happy birthday saba, hope you like it.

draw draw draw

thanks, friends, for getting nude and sitting still.


check out andre's drawings on his blog

and hanna's on hers.

Mercedes, Amanda

Mercedes

Amanda

I think I just hit on the proper paper/pen combo with Amanda.

Oscarina

oops the pen dripped right in the middle of the drawing. we'll see what I can do with the magic of photoshop. This is another one for Art on the Move.

Art on the Move Process work

The layout, more or less

The concept. My ink portraits (this is Nubia), the paintings framed in speech and thought bubbles, and words and stories woven throughout.

The first portrait: Tereza

It's March break so I have some time in the studio to work on Art on the Move. Art on the Move is cool. Arts Etobicoke and Lakeshore Arts are in charge; they match artists with community groups and with local business owners. The artist (in this case, me) conducts a series of workshops with the community group (the Senior's art group at the DPNC), takes the resultant art work, mashes it up, and turns it into a cohesive work of art to be printed on the local business owner's vehicle (the truck Brian uses for his contracting business).

We finished our painting workshops a couple weeks ago and I'm now working on bringing it all together. The theme we were working with was story telling and personal histories. I'll be combining their paintings with my own portraits of the participants themselves, and with banners woven through of words and stories recorded during the seven sessions.

I'm still working on the technique for the portraits. Feedback?

Black and White and Gray all over (grey? gray?)

I haven't had too much time to paint recently, so when I had a few hours in the studio this week I decided to just paint without thinking anything through too much. I have some larger projects in mind, but these are just games I'm playing with found images. I was angry painting on Monday so her face got a little abused, but aside from the aggression I was taking out on the wood panel, I've been thinking about how to dissolve the figure into the background, or rather into the painted space around it. Draw attention to the illusionness of figurative painting- it is just paint, gooey luscious oil paint (try to refrain from tasting it). So the just paintness of it.

These will get further abuse (or love) with wax and glazing once they're totally dry. I'm hesitant to pour the beeswax on before that oil film has really set- I think the shifting oil and wood could probably crack it. microcrystalline would work but it's not what i'm going for here.


I was at the Artist Project last night with my mom and I ran into Zane Turner. Listening to him talk about how pivotal Susan Scott's class was and the discovery of Tony Scherman's work was funny, it was so similar to my own narrative (although his painting is INSANE).

We were down there to see Tamara Weller, a super impressive young sculptor in the emerging artist section. Check her out this weekend if you get a chance, she was already getting chatted up by gallery types on opening night.

And another one from our weekly drawing session:

Our laziest studio drawing session yet.

Encaustic Monotypes

Liz's monotypes

My examples done for Tuesday's encaustic class

The fancy new hotplate (fantastic birthday gift from the parentals).

Custom counters (bathed in heavenly light) built by yours truly, with lots of help from Mike MacCormack. Mike, you should know that Hanna was impressed by your patient carpentry teaching methods. Also on the topic of teacher reviews, the five-year-olds I work with told me this week that I'm becoming very charming. Just bragging.

Liz was here at the studio a couple nights ago working on some encaustic monotypes. The process goes a little something like this:

1. Paint directly onto the hotplate with cakes of encaustic paint, or melt the encaustic paints in tins and paint onto the plate with a brush.
2. Draw into the wash of paint using oil sticks or oil pastels.
3. Press your paper (any medium weight paper suitable for printmaking) onto the mess of pigment and hot wax.

Tada!

If you clean off the hotplate and lay your print on the hotplate face up, I bet you could manipulate the wax on the warm paper , and add some new layers as well (just a hypothesis, we haven't tried that yet).

Nice work, Liz.

New Session at La Muse

From top to bottom: 'The Dead Flower' by Lindsey, 'Untitled' by Emma, 'Funky Animals' by Poppy.

We're starting a new session this week at La Muse Art Studio on College St. W. The class is Painting and Drawing, for 7-12 year olds.

I'm really excited about these kids. The last pieces they did were Nick di Genova-inspired mutant animal ink drawings. Wow.

This session we'll be continuing with ink into comic books, then jumping off of comics to pop art and graf.

The deets:
Painting and Drawing
3:45-5:15
Thursday afternoons
La Muse Art Studio, College at Dovercourt

Email me if you know a creative kid who'd like to join the class!

Wrapping up Art on the Move

Tomorrow is my last day working with the Senior's Art Group at the DPNC for Art on the Move. This has been an amazing experience. I'll write more about it and post some photos as I work on the final piece over the next few weeks. For now you can check out the Art on the Move website.

babies and other beasts

more from the blue sketchbook. A day spent in Manic coffee, a pink spotted creature, and Adina asleep.

badly photographed figure drawings

we've been getting together in the studio once a week to draw each other. it's awesome, and open to everybody and free, so come join us if you don't mind taking your turn and standing still for ten minutes. we promise to draw very flattering pictures of you.

Group Show at Whippersnapper Gallery. Act now, offer ends February 26!

Three of my paintings are on view at Whippersnapper this month, until February 26. They're from last spring, when I was thinking a lot about the dynamics of a close relationship - at times wanting to be enclosed by and defined by the other person, and struggling against those constraints at other times. so.

go see it! 16 other talented newbies too, including the always awesome Hanna Hur.

Where else do you need to be late at night anyway?

Late Night in the Bedroom is a really sweet online art show brought to you (I believe) by the folks at Whippersnapper Gallery. The last episode, filmed in our building here in Chinatown, featured an interview with the spectacular Laurie Kang (also known on blogto as the hot server from that hot restaurant) (also known for being a great photographer and also my studiomate, although probably I'm known as her studiomate since she's so much famouser than I am) (Laurie don't be mad that I said you were known for being the hot server - I just report the facts). There's also a beautiful little segment with Evening Hymns playing a song on the roof.

The taping was really fun, so you should try to get invited to the next one, taking place this wednesday at Show and Tell Gallery. I think Everything All The Time will be playing. Go to the Late Night website for the deets.

My Artist's Statement

Things I'm looking at right now