Poempaintings Opening Reception @ Urban Gallery 9th JAN (49 photos)

Some photographs of my beautiful friends at the Opening Reception of my Poempaintings show at Urban Gallery in Toronto last night. Many thanks to all who came out - you made it a great evening and I am hugely appreciative!

I am very grateful to Calvin Hambrook, Gallery Manager, and Allen Shugar, the Curator, and Kaspara Albertsen for hosting a meticulously prepared and warm and friendly Opening at their Gallery.

I've added some names to the photos that you can see in the Picasa album.

Wow, there's already a review of the show in a local, on-line Toronto newspaper: Newz4u! 

Split Mask, face close-up

Split Mask, 5'x5', mixed media on canvas. It is almost impossible to photograph either in daylight or with lights at night (the latter here) - the lines of the hair are dark like the shadows in the upper right, which are a charcoal grey-black, for instance. The photo is not too bad, but the painting is better weighted in reality. Yes, I've left a lot of canvas bare. It works.

Up top, a close-up.

Unfortunately, I had to spray the painting with a fine art fixative in my small apartment. It's too big to take outside easily, and there is snow, slush and salt everywhere. I opened the two small windows and had a fan. My chest hurt for quite awhile, but it's ok now. My pets hung out right by the open windows, wisely. The metal leaf is 85% copper and 15% zinc and will eventually oxidize unless sealed properly, which I have done since taking the photo. The sealant has evened out the lustre of the metal leaf to a flatter, brighter hue that, frankly, I'm not as in love with as the richer tones of the unsealed metal leaf. But, sealing it is very important, so that's that.

A coat of Gamvar tomorrow is the final stage. Oh, and two sides, which I am simply painting with gesso - I had picked up some 'Goldfinger' - a metallic substance in a tube that you can rub on frames to 'antique' them - to perhaps do the sides with, but decided that the hunk of gold with a little silver in the middle is like the luminist sun shining on a snowbank and ought to be the only gold in the painting.

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Split Mask, 3rd session, work-in-progress

Split Mask, 3rd session, work-in-progress, 2014, mixed media.

Since it's largely charcoal, I need to go out to try to find a fixative you can spray indoors. It's almost finished, though I'm not quite sure where I'm taking it (what I'm going to do next).


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Split Mask painting in-process

No idea if I'll get it finished by 9am Monday morning, in time for the pick-up of my paintings and the installation of my show at Urban Gallery, but I am working on a painting I've been thinking of doing for 4 months or so. There have been so many intervening crises that I was not able to get to it before New Year's Day. Floods, and family upheavals, and the power failure resulting from the ice storm (I had power and was refuge for family members along with an extra cat and a bunny) kept me busy and only staring at the empty canvas. I'm rushing through it now, no idea if I'll make it.

This is an iPhone pic, shot at night, not good quality, but posting gives it a reality I'm not feeling working away listening to a piano music channel (can't get into the wireless external hard drive with Glen Gould, which is who I would like to be listening to nonstop tonight). Never mind. Back to work.

I had begun a loose prosepoem called Split Mask last Summer, but it hasn't quite come together either. Still, the poem and the painting are part of the same creative process, the same concepts, just different vantages or mediums.

Later in the evening:

Here's the Opening Invitation, too, which I will no doubt be posting at least one more time. The show opens one week from now!

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Happy New Year's!

Love y'all! Love ON!

 Whether you're with family, friends, lovers, strangers, or alone (I've done them all) - and every New Year's is beautiful. Wishing you reflection and anticipation, reappraisal and accomplishment in the coming year. With a heap o' inspiration and fruition!

     

DANCEONLOVEONDANCEONLOVEONDANCEONLOVEONDANCEONLOVEON

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It was a year of...

It was a year of tender beauties and fragile fires of becoming. Of being ravaged by torn things, by facing duplicity and seeing clearly the multiplicities of truth. It was a year of floods and sinkholes. Of shows and learning to withstand jealousy and pettiness without caving. I hung my work in public twice, a tremendous amount of work and perhaps a fearful act. I learnt to brace myself against those who trivialize others, their work, their lives. I didn't hide. I got a used clip-on mic and start dance performing during poetry events where I was featured. I masqued myself so that I could reveal myself. It was a year where I found myself dealing with what is inessential by relegating it to the margins. I distanced myself from insincerity and understood more preciously those who are clear with the truth of loving impartially and generously. I made my way gingerly through seething places of anger, sadness, remorse, pity, retribution and survived. I was of help to those I love. It was a year when I learned to hold fast to my values and not waver. I think it was a break-out year. Inner strength manifested. There were milestones. LyricalMyrical Press published my chapbook, ‘the luminist poems,’ and I signed a contract with Guernica Editions for a full-length book of poetry, ‘Tidal Fury,’ which was gratifying after the years of writing and re-writing as I honed my craft and vision. As I became less of a recluse and more of a public poet and artist, I found a voice I didn’t know I had. It was a watershed year, tumultuous, just when I thought I landed it all broke apart and then I landed somewhere else and it was good. I remain in awe of existence, the way our lives manifest through the years, our interconnections with each other, the way we share who we are through what we give of our knowledge and talents and how we all grow through this process, of the creativity of our very being. May 2014 be not a meek but a strong year for each of us.

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