Poets Series: at WordStage

While I wait for the sun to come back for photographing the rest of the paintings in my upcoming show at Q Space - which is next week, yikes - here's a little pencil sketch of Luciano while he was reading his gambolling poems last night (they are very strong poems). Really I should give up drawing at poetry readings - getting a likeness is awfully hard given that your subject is behind a microphone and often a podium and is certainly not still.

This little sketch was mostly drawn without looking at the paper. Though I did look at the paper while I was putting the dashes in to indicate the design on his shirt (which was actually black with gold slashes, but pencil and in ten minutes...)

Luciano Iacobelli @Toronto WordStage @Q Space 8 May 2013, Brenda Clews, 11" x 8.5", graphite on 130lb paper. He's younger and much better looking than my sketch, mostly drawn without looking at the paper, but I do recognize him, there is a strange resemblance to this man.

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Invitation to an Art Show Opening and Poetry Salon

A selection of Brenda Clews' poempaintings is on show from May 15 - June 15 at Q Space, a poetry cafe, 382 College St (near Bathurst St), Toronto. The Gallery Opening will be on Friday May 17th at 7pm. Come for open mic poetry readings, live music, good company, dancing. Early copies of my chapbook, 'the luminist poems,' will be available for purchase. Finger food (cheese and crackers) will be provided. Menu items, desserts and a cash bar available through Q Cafe. You are all cordially invited.

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Art Show in less than 2 weeks! Panic City!

Nine paintings done and ready to go! Of the last two, one needs some fussing, and one needs the breath-hold throw-the-paint treatment. Art show is in less than 2 weeks!!!!

May 15 - June 15 at Q Space, 382 College St., Toronto.

This one is large, 5' x 5', oils and charcoal, called 'Charcoal Poems.' The photo's not too bad, though the right side is a bit dark.

Taking photos of the paintings is the next assignment, and doing that properly is going to be almost as challenging as painting itself.

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Untitled2, 6th wash

She's gloved now. The forearms were 'not' meant to appear in the former versions of this painting, and so they weren't drawn with any particular care. But they appeared anyway (painting is like that, like it cares what the artist thinks) and it didn't work. So I thought I'd do my Venus with gloves. Don't yet know if it 'works.' This is still in rough. Likely take me the rest of the day and night to finish to my satisfaction.

Untitled2, 6th wash, Brenda Clews, 2013, daylight photo, 24" x 30", inks and oils on stretched canvas.

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Untitled2, 4th wash, with poem

This painting is developing into something that I find embarrassing. And yet, it's also ...not too bad. The poem fragment is from my 'Suite of Botticelli Venus Poems' and dang, I can see Renaissance and Pre-Raphaelite and something distinctly literary (a sense of a book plate coloured in instead of an etching or an ink drawing) and quite post-modern (the whiff of pastiche, and it's a little bit funny too, the butt). It's driving me a little mad, this painting. What emerges under one's brush is like the dreams we remember - where do they come from? They are a mystery. We simply try to understand them.

What I don't like - the background doesn't work all that well though I can now live with it, and the arms. I did not work on this part of her sketch, intending to darken them into background. Not sure what I'll do, tinker until they're better, or perhaps glove them. :)

Untitled2, 4th wash, daylight photo, 24" x 30", inks and oils on stretched canvas.

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Untitled2, 3rd wash, with poem

Really I am not sure what is happening to me. I am kind of falling apart.

For days in angst, torturing myself inwardly, trying to get myself to paint (show is in just over 2 weeks now), meditating, etc., and then today it was attack the damn canvas time. So I did. With permanent inks, oils, and so on. Hours of struggle bending over the painting, doing this, that. It's too pretty, no, now it is far less pretty and simply over-worked. Or maybe it's ok. I simply can't stand this state of mind. Tomorrow hopefully more work on it, at least re-doing the lettering of the poem, which got kind of mussed in this afternoon's trauma, the face, the arms, the shawl, the background, whatever I can do for the magic.

Untitled2, 3rd wash with poem, daylight photo, Brenda Clews, 2013, 24" x 30", ink and oils on stretched canvas.

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Untitled4, 1st wash

I must be running a temperature! This is so not like my normal style. A poem fragment will be written into this when it's closer to finished. Probably into the white spaces in the towel. Don't think I'll do much but darken the torso when the paint is dry. I'm kind of liking the simplicity here. 'Untitled4,' 1st wash, nighttime shot (colours are a bit brighter than they appear here), 2013. 24" x 30", oil on stretched canvas.

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