The Living Carry the Souls of the Dead

The Living Carry the Souls of the Dead, 2012, 21cm x 29cm, 8" x 11.5", charcoal and oils, Moleskine folio Sketchbook A4.


The spirits of the dead are held aloft by the living.

My grandmother's spirit was my father's memory of her in me and projected by me into a nurturing maternal spirit of safety.

Has she been with me all my life? Yes. But she resides in the energy of my understanding of her through my deceased father's memory.


The figure I have drawn, that I made from bones, who is an experiment in charcoal, seems not the narrator of the writing, and yet she is carrying the souls of the dead, look at her.

Notes on process: First I drew her skeleton, all her vertebrae are there, and her rib cage and sternum, clavicles and humeri, radiuses, and ulnas, femora, and bony pelvis. Then I drew her major muscles, her craniofacial muscles, pectorals, abdominals, femora, the wrap of arm muscles, tendons over the phalange of the fingers. I traced her body's outline with charcoal, and poured some sizing medium (Gak100, for the paper) over her, smudging and sweeping the charcoal with a brush. Red seemed to be her colour, so on my table of oil tubes, used paper towels, half a dozen water jars, a real mess, I searched through a box for the Alizarin Crimson, and began to dry brush it into the wet solution. I tried other colours, delicately, but she was insistent, and so I rubbed them out. After some indefinable time - the clock stops when you are working with a fast drying medium - a few sweeps of orange seemed permissible in her sheer dress, and the white highlights, composed of charcoal white, white oil pastel and Titanium White water-soluble oil paint. My son says she looks like she could be a cover for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

She is a bit scary, but she has fine bones, a good musculature. :)

She is somewhere between life and death, where the soul resides.

A Spring God, in-process

A Spring God, in-process, 24" x 30", 61cm x 76.2cm, mixed media on stretched canvas.

He is in oils, and when 'he' dries I'll use a whitewash to make him a wee bit less flesh and more statue. Fiddling with the background, added little references to spring flowers, but not sure if I'll continue in the direction I had thought to go in.

The Saluki Returns

Painted this more than a week back, and wasn't sure about the way it scanned, but then I took a photo in sunlight and the colours came up properly, so sharing now.

She was the smartest dog I ever met. The sketch underlying the painting was about her paws, which were almost like elongated hands with thick black fingernails.

The Saluki is an Egyptian desert dog, and often travelled with nomadic tribes across the Sahara.The Saluki is the oldest domesticated breed, representations of Saluki-like dogs can be found on Sumerian seals dating around 7,000BC, and they are depicted in the paintings on the walls of tombs of Pharohs from 2,250BC-1,650BC. Thousands of generations to now, an extraordinarily ancient and intelligent breed.

Painting of a Sleeping Saluki, 2012, 21cm x 29cm, 8" x 11.5", 2012, graphite, acrylic, India and acrylic inks, Moleskine folio Sketchbook A4.





Sketch of a Saluki, 21cm x 29cm, 8" x 11.5", 2012, graphite, Moleskine folio Sketchbook A4.

You remember this one from a bit back. I had intended to paint it also, but a few people, including the owner of the dog, who is considering a commission of it in a large size, asked me to leave it as a simple pencil sketch.

Seated Man (in progress), TSA March 30th

Seated Man, 2012, 16" x 20", 40.6cm x 50.8cm, graphite on stretched canvas.

Sketch from TSA Friday night in pencil on a small canvas, 16" x 20", that I will finish as an ink painting.

Seated Man, in-progress, 24" x 30", 61cm x 76.2cm, mixed media on stretched canvas.

When I go to TSA non-instructional, drop-in lifepainting sessions, I usually spend the first 3 hours working on a larger painting; then I leave it to dry for the last hour while I sketch the model on a smaller canvas. At the top of this post you see the sketch that will become an ink painting. Below is the larger painting I did first. At TSA, I use thin layers of acrylics - they dry fast. To the left is what I completed at TSA on Friday night. At home, I finish the painting with oils - oil sticks, oil pastels, oil paints.

On the left is where the painting is today. It's still unfinished.

I'm considering putting a figure in black line only behind him, and some purple crocuses at his feet. To me, he seems a spring god, the spring rains and sap greens around him, a garden god who represents the fertility of the onrush of Nature's awakening after the long winter months.

Before the light was gone, on my walk through my neighbourhood this evening, I saw yellow tulips, small star-shaped blue flowers (which are? not phlox, or asters, but...?), yellow forsythias, and small magnolia trees just beginning to blossom. I may go by in the next few days with my sketchbook and see if adding a spring fauna to this painting will give it a fullness.

'Labour of Love' Poetry Magazine published by Norman Cristofoli

On my second open mic reading ever, last November, after all the writers had read, when the lights came back on, a man came over and handed me a card and said, "I want to publish that poem."

This is how I met the Toronto poet and publisher, Norman Cristofoli.

The issue of Labour of Love with my poem is now out, and, since the story of how the magazine itself  came to be is so interesting, I thought I would interview Norman so you could hear it too.

Labour of Love publishes poetry, prose, short short stories, artwork and photographs. Norman formats it himself and prints it twice a year, each issue having a print run of 400. The magazine is given out freely. It is fully funded by Norman himself.

He has published 35 issues since 1994! Labour of Love publishes high quality work. Norman himself is not only a great poet, but is said to be one of the best editors around.

The interview takes place outside the Annex Live at Brunswick and Bloor, just before a spoken word reading, on Wednesday, March 21st 2012, and was recorded with my iPhone4.

To enquire about submissions to Labour of Love, or to request copies (he only asks that you provide postage), please go to Norman's website, labouroflovemagazine.com.

Direct link: 'Interview with Norman Cristofoli on 'Labour of Love'' (13:48min)

PLEASE NOTE: It is now July 2016, and Norman has published the last Labour of Love.

Woman Seated, Waiting

Woman Seated, Waiting, a small, strange painting. She reminds of me the Eight of Swords in the Rider-Waite deck, with thorns and sharp things all around her. She is fairly placid in the middle of it, though. Patiently waiting. It also echoes the Pre-Raphaelites to me somehow, and I'll have to ponder of which of those artists - maybe Hope by Watts, (1886)? , and Medieval mystic, nearly Byzantine, though of course very modern and abstract. This is one of those paintings that I cannot hang at the top of the stairs for people to see when they first come in. Nothing too pretty here. :smiling: And a series is beginning to emerge, which makes me happy.

Woman Seated, Waiting, 2012, 16" x 20", 40.6cm x 50.8cm, graphite, India and acrylic inks on stretched canvas.

Thanks for any kind comments, and I also enjoy more difficult responses that call upon strange inner metaphorical systems and obtuse aesthetics, too. :smiling:

An album with earlier versions of this ink painting as well as the other one I did at a non-instructional drop-in live model painting session at TSA last Friday night. (Click on any image in the slideshow to go to the album and a larger size.)

Ruminations on Mystical Consciousness

'Ruminations on Consciousness' (9:41min) as I prepare to write a prose poem to be called Colour of Near Death for a forthcoming videopoem.