Friday, April 17, 2009

Spit of postage-sized yard

Moi, moi, and moi, ho hum. Bo-ring! BUT. Cleaning up the spit of postage-sized yard out back, fun! In the Summer, full shade due to a tree. Perhaps throw some seed for grasses or ground cover - all in all, it'll be a nice place to sit with morning coffee or on hot Summer evenings! Happy, happy.

My son, who actually helped, had gone by this time. And my daughter, who didn't, took the photos. I've included one of her in this group.

(click on photos for larger size)















My beauty. A sweetie unparalleled.





Shhh. This one. What's Photoshop for if you can't de-age? I had given myself
a bright fuscia pink face but found the muted sepia tone nicer.
C'mon, an "art shot" alright!


(pssst -> ... the original untouched one)

::laughing:: xo

Thursday, April 16, 2009

The Effects of the Recession

A restless night, too many of us in crisis. I feel myself falling into the flying apart.

My sleepless but drowsy concerns become like Surrealist images where components split apart, twisting in the distance.

A slow-motion spin of walls, wardrobes, kitchen drawers, bits of conversation, kalaidescope of images spanning years, remembered and loosened, geometric and organic, intersplicing in the distances between molecules.

It is a very tidy universe in magnified microcosm despite our messy realities.

Perhaps the holding together doesn't help; perhaps it's time to let go.

What is the mind if unfettered, uncomposed, freed of nervous culture?

No answers came, the warden was banished, the bars fell away.

In the tumbling of synapses firing randomly,

Was I freed?

Did I sleep? Fitfully, in relapses. When I woke the world was its illumined glossy enlightened place where warm sunlight spreads across bedspreads and there are hugs and warmth, French-press coffee and fresh bagels.

The world in its normal motion; everyone, fine.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Two Dascha Friedlova Photocollages



Dascha Friedlova, Photocollage, XXVIII Fallen Leaf

Dark, somber, like funeral flowers. A cold draft about the photograph. Feels like the funerary atmosphere of the death of a loved one, the passing of a life, the memories, even as flowers that will wilt and fade soon. One can almost feel the spirit that is looking back at life being here, in the viewpoint of the image. Though it is a warm, sunny Spring day outside, and my room is sunlit, this photograph definitely has a cold feel to it, as if I were in the house or funeral home where these flowers were laid.




Dascha Friedlova, Photocollage, XXXII Equinox Egg

What is being reborn out of what is dying?

It's disturbing, the human figure looks pale, perhaps dead, and the moth the way nature makes everything sustenance for everything else.

Or perhaps it is a surrealist image in which a moth is emerging from a face. The moth looks like its growing out of tendons in the face, that the skin has been stripped.

In the strange imagery of the dream, it is a rebirth?

What is being reborn out of what is dying?

__
Note: not meant in any way to be a discussion of Friedlova's oeuvre, only some impressions I had of two of her photocollages, neither of which are particularly representational of her work as a whole.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Pylon by Larry Carlson


PYLON from Larry Carlson on Vimeo.

Began exploring Larry Carlson's videos today. There is a driving simplicity to this one. Though there is an overlay of images, mainly we witness a pulsing, throbbing, multi-colored pylon. It's primal - that heartbeat. Powerful, technologized, loud, slicing the air with its sound wave, but steady, organic. A pulsing diamond in a scaffolding, a sacred geometry structure, a pyramid. The light is bright, luminous, visionary, the colours, rich, primary, vibrant, its beating, pulsing is hypnotizing, and encompasses opposites of calming and energizing. The man who holds the pyramid is still throughout. His steady holding of the pulsing, shifting, changing, transforming pylon works well as a framing to the vital energy of the heart-like beating. Something grounding in that steady hand.

Do I hear all of life's pounding pulse here? Even our sun has 'heartbeats' - maybe a dozen a century.

If the universe itself has a 'heartbeat,' it would sound and look like "Pylon."

A short, brilliant art video. A woman in negative appears near the end laughing. The light is an exploding dance of colour. It could become obsessive, beating in our ear like Poe's 'Tell Tale Heart.' Only the imagery in this film is expansive, visionary. The pylon goes through phases of beats, it's got a rhythm to its rich pulsing colours, returning to the simplicity of the original green screen occasionally; and the beat itself speeds up at one point, just like a real heart. It's like a highly-charged powered solar cell, this beating heart.

And what a gift to be able to download this! It's pulsing away in the corner of my iMac. "Pylon" is looped and playing endlessly. Like a bright eye: solar, oceanic; of crystal.

As I watch it, I think not only diamond, but exploding

atomic bomb.

Of the life force of the
seedpod.

_
direct link to Pylon

Thursday, April 09, 2009

Nitter Natter

I'm writing a script this month, as you know. I can't believe how hard it is! Perhaps because I discover what's next as I write, it's a laborious process that is slow at best. I'm trying to polish it as I go, so when it's finished I can send copies to friends. I'm drawing inspiration from Surrealist art, which is fascinating since none of this was pre-planned. Trying, in between realistic scenes, to get into 'that imaginative space,' that strange 'dream-space,' is challenging and often my brain hurts! It's easier to be logical, for sure. The 'strange logic' of the Surrealist image requires neurons to fire a different way! Silly, I know.

I have a Windsor & Newton 'deep edge' 24"x30" primed canvas ready to go (bought with some of the deposit sent for my little painting) - but seem to have pulled or torn some tendons in my right elbow and the doctor says to rest it... though with grocery shopping for me & my kids, walking a dog who is strong and pulls on the leash, and general housework, I'm finding it's not healing very fast if at all. I may decide not to care and work on the canvas soon... thinking floral... though I do love to do figures, but then I should go to a life drawing session for some new images... and should I continue the quick 'line' drawings of figures that I've taken to doing, or try something more conté crayon, though that would require longer poses? I really like leaving my artwork somewhere in the realm between drawing and painting, then the figures are like a script, though also painterly.



"Prostrations," page-sized, India ink & watercolour pencil
on archival watercolour paper, 2006 (click to enlarge)
,
the little painting that's sold.

Sunday, April 05, 2009

Granny's 86th Birthday



Granny's 86th birthday - My mother, Florence, is in the middle, behind her is my brother, Allan, and to the left my neice, Freya, and nephew, Shaman.

We were returning from a celebratory birthday brunch at Future Bakery.

Friday, April 03, 2009

My Son's 22nd Birthday



My sweet son turned 22 on April 2nd. My daughter, who's not in the image unfortunately, baked and iced the cake. We were unable to light some of the small candles in the middle, and it was one of those strange things - as I walked with the lit cake the unlit candles lit up! They were all burning! The cake itself was celebrating.

You can see my son, Adrian, my mother, Florence, and a bit of my brother, Raymond. And Keesha our dog. The image is a little distorted since I took it off my webcam, but it's still fun.

Self-Portrait with a Fascinator 2016

On Monday, I walked, buying frames from two stores in different parts of the city, then went to the Art Bar Poetry Series in the evening, ab...