Well. here is my idea for my summer mailer: "Heat Wave." Computer-generated. These three people are not smiling. As a side note, I would like to take issue with people who do not smile. Why not? I know many people who do not smile, ever, and name them as amongst my friends. In fact, I am drawn to people who do not smile. It's a confidence thing. Not smiling says, "I have power over you, I don't give a crap what you think about me, and I don't need to please you in any way under the sun." But I smile all the time, even (and especially) at strangers. Is it a meekness thing? Why do I want to appear friendly to every one I encounter? Harmless. Perhaps I aim to please the gods. If I smile enough at strangers, surely this will in turn tempt the gods to favour me. I am nice, therefore please respond in kind. Or do the powers-that-be bestow grace upon those who fight for their right? And not just to party, but to subjugate all those around them.

Well, thank-you for your patience with my self-cross-examination. As always, I remain your forever cyberspace friend.

p.s. added a more finished version above

It's Cryin' Time Again

JK Rowling got her inspiration from somewhere. Some people speak of muses- you know, those divine sprits that gave inspiration to the artist. The Greeks many years ago started out with only three but I guess competition for their favours grew, and they discovered a whole bunch more. What I don't understand, is that there doesn't seem to be one for the visual arts. Sure, comedy, tragedy, poetry, song, dance and memory all have their guardians. But what about painting, carving, sculpting? Were these considered lesser arts? Were they too much of the worldly sphere? So here I am, a so-called visual artist, without a muse, drawing JK Rowling, who could pick from amongst Clio, Mneme, and Polymnia, among others. No fair! Except I do have one, I am certain. And I don't want to piss her or him off, so I have to not criticize. My muse lately has been encouraging me to do work on the computer, so here you see a digital piece. If it sucks, blame my muse. Just kidding. I love you, muse. Don't leave me! As you can see, it's a tense relationship. As soon as I get a bit angry or frustrated, my muse is out the door. Sometimes he skips town entirely and doesn't come back for weeks. He doesn't even tell me where he goes, but comes back with a tan and smells of the sea, and I get the feeling he's been cheating. When Ray Charles says "Oh, it's cryin' time again, you're gonna leave me. I can see that far away look in your eyes," I'm pretty sure he was talking about his muse. I understand totally. They make us cry. But we always take them back.

Sorry for the long delay, cyberspace buddies. Internet outage. Here is the next piece for the salt fairy tale. I've jumped ahead a bit, as you can probably guess. What happens is the King chucks his youngest daughter out of the castle, and she becomes a maid, only to attend a ball where she meets and falls in love with a handsome prince. Yes, aligned stars and deserved fate at its finest. But I ask, does this ever really happen in real life? Probably not, that's why it's a fairy tale. And if it ever did happen in real life, we would never, ever recognize it for what it was. There's too much crap that happens in between. Say, an abused child escapes her family home and later finds true love. In what way are those two events connected? But these fairy tales say that it is so. And why is everyone so ready to forgive? And yet at other times there is no mercy or compassion shown to the old, ugly or infirm.

Any how, this piece shows the first dance between the prince and princess. I've used a handsome friend of mine as a model for the prince's face, which makes me laugh, because he would probably never have that expression on his face. But I enjoy basing the characters I draw on people in real life; it gives an extra dimension to the piece when I am creating it.

The Salt fairy tale. Perhaps even a true story.

This is the first in a series of illustrations that will depict the fairy tale called "Cap O Rushes." Because this story came my way via my Romanian friend, and was told to her by her Romanian grandparents, I cannot fathom this story taking any place anywhere except for Romania. But it is an almost universal fairy tale, with version coming from England, Germany, Italy, Scotland and India. Perhaps this reflects the universal need for copious amounts of salt on our food? Although my Romanian friend would argue vociferously for this (which is why she loves this story), I say no thanks, please do not pass the salt. I myself like my food on the bland side and always forget to add salt when cooking, thereby disgusting my friends and family when I prepare meals for them. Which is why I rarely do that. Well, one of the many reasons. But I digress. The story is fine, and I will try to put together some kind of narrative illustrations that depict it.

The scene shows the King asking his three daughters to tell them how much they love him (some may say this shows controlling behaviour, but what is a king if not power-hungry?). While the first two daughters respond with the most sycophantic and dutifully servile answers, the third and youngest replies that she loves him merely, "As much as salt."

Ah! You understand the problem then. Why salt, that most lowly, peasantly combination of sodium and chloride?

Oh yeah, and I forgot to put the salt in. There's a reason for that, though, I don't hate salt that much.

Why so homeless?

I am planning to do a project involving the homeless in Vancouver. This is a quick piece I did as sort of an experiment, which I will use as a guideline when it comes to doing the finals for the project. I want to capture the richness of Renaissance portraiture and the raw emotions of the German Expressionists. I say "want to" because I'm not sure if I can make that happen, but hell, why not shoot for the stars, right?

Slim in the Grass

These are just to prove that I'm doing work- experimenting with using digital and traditional media. I'm trying to get used to all the options available to me when using the computer. But I'm also trying not to abandon the qualities that I feel define my work. don't want to get swamped in technical effects, I just want computer technology to expedite the execution of my work. Very time consuming stuff. Some would say boring and tiresome, and yet I feel the need to inflict this upon all of you. My apologies. But not really.

Scenes: 2

Here are two paintings that I recently sold.