More from Emergency 2011:

Emergency # 18

It's been eons since I've posted anything new, as school has been keeping me busy.. here's some photography.

These are images I took of my friend Jenn Cole performing her piece 'Je Vous Salut Marie' at the Emergency dance festival in Peterborough, ON in April. This is a sister piece to another one she performed of which I also took photographs, two or three festivals ago. If I remember, I'll post these in the near future.
These are just the raw pics. I like the various light gradations and how only parts of her are outlined in some images where in others the light hits straight on. Another set of images from a different dance piece I took from reflections in the plexiglass beside my seat, which actually offered a better perspective and vantage point then from head- on to the stage. These too I'll post at a later date!

QWAC and Cabbagetown festival

Two of my paintings will be up (at the toronto school of art booth) at the Queen West Art Crawl and Cabbagetown festival in Toronto this sept. The Cabbagetown fest is this weekend..the 11th and 12th of september, and the QWAC is the 18th to the 20th. This makes me very happy but at the same time I'm in the midst of starting a Collections Conservation and Management degree in Peterborough so I have to race home and prep the artwork!

I'm glad these two got in to the show because they actually depict the city :)

hand sketches....

my hands, to be specific. I used to hate drawing hands but after I did these, I had a bit more confidence.. normally I'm not big on drawing from life but it's good to know you can still 'do' it.

Tree painting (ancient Oak)

A painting I'm working on based on a photo I took of an ancient oak tree from Sherwood forest in the UK a few years ago. Yes, robin hood-times tree! It was huge and I've always wanted to paint it.

It's oil, 24x30 inches..

"Of all the trees that grow so fair, / Old England to adorn, / Greater are none beneath the Sun, / Than Oak and Ash and Thorn."- Rudyard Kipling

A piece I did in the last few days.. it's been a long time since I've used a pen to sketch.

More Old Sketches.. Pre Art School

I just found these recently.. they're at least 5-8 years old, if not older. It's weird comparing how I drew then to how I draw now. Almost feel like my style was more my own then it is now, since being in school. I guess that can bring up the whole issue of the role of school in artistic development. The technical aspect has helped me hugely in terms of composition, spacing, material use and so forth but the creativity and personal side was harder to tap into. Getting pieces done in a set timeframe has always been a challenge because I don't *always* feel creative, some months there's nothing and other times it's a crazy wave of ideas within like 2 or 3 days.
The middle piece I remember doing based on a man I saw on the bus when I first moved to TO (10 years ago..holy mother) who I thought looked like a dwarf. I then drew the guy from memory and put him at a table because I couldn't remember what the bus seats looked like. I was also reading a lot of urban fantasy/Charles De Lint and Terry Windling-type books then.