Packed and Ready to Go!

Can't believe I'm done! Ready for installation at The Gladstone Hotel tomorrow! All my paintings are stacked, a coat of varnish now dry, corners stapled on for travelling; I put up a price list page at my website and emailed the info to Jacques, who's curating the show. The dog is walked. My walls look bereft and empty of their colourful paintings. As I get these paintings ready for transporting tomorrow, I wonder which ones will come home after, and which ones won't. Art sales in Toronto have not been good overall this year. It's been a tough year for Galleries. Yet I linger over my paintings with love and care. It'll be a terrific show! I can't wait to see everyone else's work! More pics will be coming.

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Life-drawing: Paris Black @ Hittite Gallery on Nuit Blanche 2013

Paris Black @ Hittite Gallery on Nuit Blanche 2013, 7.5"x9.5", mixed media on 130lb neutral pH 25% cotton paper.

I haven't done any life drawing in awhile, and was hankering to do some. Can't really assess the drawing since many artists from the Realist school draw and paint Paris and their work is marvelous. I don't aim for anything close to a photograph, but I do like some likeness to the model. It's if-y here - he's older than he appears in this drawing, and yet anyone who knows Paris and the many drawings and paintings of him floating around Toronto would know who this is.

In one year, since beginning his own group, the Epique Lounge artists group, he was chosen as a top International model by The Louvre and will be posing there at the end of October. And in China he was picked as top model of the year and flown there for drawing sessions.

He's a talented rock star, a brilliant man, an artist himself, and his focus, he says, during the exceptionally long sits of modelling is to focus on the artists doing the very best work they can.

He's a great guy, and a friend.



Paris Black Posing @Hittite Gallery Nuit Blanche 2013 -photo by Luis Arellano

Here's a cell phone pic of the life-drawing event. That's my hand in the lower right corner. :)

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Figure Sculpture, Week 2 (more photos)

Figure, 2013, 17" or 18", Week 2, rough draft, Klean Klay (I think) iPhone4 photo. First time I have ever sculpted a figure, so be gentle!



The last image, posted yesterday also, was photo manipulated with a filter.
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Sculpture of a Woman in-progress

I've never sculpted a figure before. This is the 2nd session, with maybe a dozen sessions to go. Hey, it's close to Halloween (those wire arms!). It's intriguing, this process of clay and sculpting from life, and very challenging. An iPhone pic that I used a filter on. She's about 17" or 18" tall (if she were to stand).

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Parchment Figures: Doubles, Doppelgängers, Clones, 2010-2013

Parchment Figures: Doubles, Doppelgängers, Clones, 2010-2013, 24" x 30", 61cm x 76.2cm, oil, acrylic, gold leaf on stretched canvas.

So much has been going on that I haven't written about in my blog. One whole wall of my living room is now a working studio, and as I was moving canvases I came across this one. And began working on it again. That's it for now... it's taken days, delicate work ...photo is best I can do at the moment - it was taken in direct late afternoon sun, colour not bad but not quite the shine you'd see if you looked at the painting.

Below, a slideshow of the past of this painting.



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5 by 5, a group art show at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto Oct 12-26

I woke up this morning remembering my mother...

I woke up this morning remembering my mother, who passed away a year ago today. I am glad she is not still in the nursing home going through what she was going through. She died at 89, after a long life - the way it's supposed to happen if we are lucky enough. The grieving through the last year has been different than for my Dad, who died too young at 62 of an illness he fought against as hard as he could. I am not haunted by the months of her dying the way I am still by my father's. She was ready to go. Surely to live long enough to reach a place of acceptance of one's natural death is an inestimable gift. Yet I have still grieved, and acutely at times. I think it is only this week that good restful sleep has begun to return. They say grieving is 4 seasons, a whole year, before you open again fully to the life you are living. It doesn't hurt so much; I can walk by the nursing home where she passed away peacefully on a beautiful warm, sunny day and feel grateful that she has escaped its confines. There is peace.
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