April 19th through 25th

Gaston Bachelard writes in his study 'The Poetics of Space', that "a house constitutes a body of images that give mankind proofs or illusions of stability.".

I ardently believe this.

Waiting for the tap water to turn from cold to warm, lost in thoughts of the day, my eyes fixed themselves on the counter. This is such a generic scene but by plucking it out of the messy kitchen, cropping it, painting it, we are asked to examine it as something more ... well phenomenal.

Simple print

I've been super super busy with printing larger prints and their respective editions this week... most of which I will print when they are finished and dried. Lots has changed with my kitchen series for prints, and each has taken on a new look and a more polished, finished look at that... I'll probably put those up sometime next week.  I also continue with a new-ish mezzotint which I'm much happier with than my first attempt... I'll probably even edition it too!  

In the meantime however, I had a little time to do a quick small print using just aquaforte and aquatint yesterday.  It was for a card that I was putting together and thus it had to be small and fast. It's about 2 inches x 2 inches and was also a total deviation from my usual style,... something I probably wouldn't do normally, but because of it's purpose it was fitting. That said, it's a little project that I thought was worth sharing. Enjoy!

April 12th through 18th

Most often I am painting in the evening. Sometime between tools down for the day and before the water boils for dinner. When dusk begins, white light gets replaced with blue light. In this moment I cannot read colour. My eyes work hard to try and adjust but they cannot. This is an involuntary break, where I am given a moment to consider the work before me. There have been some great developments born from this forced contemplation - this portrait suffered no exception. I am beginning to move past my frustration with the foundation of the portrait. I am beginning to see the personality of this man.

This photo was taken at dusk. One of the last of this weeks forced contemplations!

Everyday Superhero

A little nugget from my sketchbook this week.

April 5th through 11th

Toronto. I am hyper aware of even the smallest things embracing me back - the quality of light, stretching out my toes in my own bed, the water pressure in the morning shower. There is a window of time that I will be able to see and feel these warmth's before I am fully re-adjusted to my old routine and I am dutifully aware of how important this is to my work.


Although the break from this portrait was needed - to give perspective, to allow my frustrations to settle down - I am still quite nervous about it. But there are always pathways one can take that can start a slow brewing of confidence. In this case, I decided to literally ignore the mouth and chin (an area I feel is unsuccessful at this stage) by placing paper on top. I started working on different areas without the influence of the disaster lurking below.

Not As Planned

It's easy for us to tout our successes, but sometimes things don't go quite as planned and you end up with something you just don't feel great about no matter how hard you work at it.  After 3 tries... probably about 50+ hours of work... and a hell of a lot of strain on both my body and mind my first attempt at mezzotint turned out like this:

I'm trying to think of this as a learning experience rather than a complete failure, but nonetheless its definitely a tad disheartening to work so hard at something and not meet your expectations. Bummer!

Still smiling though and moving on to bigger and better things!... more mezzotint to come. (-_-)!