An Artist Muses

Early in the year 2017, I was approached by the Don Valley Art Club to be the guest speaker for their regular Friday night member's meeting.  I was requested to fill an hour and a half of airtime, with a discussion about my techniques followed by a live demonstration. Now for me, filling an hour an a half with aimless blather is a no-brainer when it comes to griping about politics, or generally pontificating about how shit the world is.  Conducting a class is a different kettle of fish, and I wanted to make sure the group had a good experience for having entrusted me with their weekly meeting.  I thought long and hard about what it was that I could offer them.  Having spent a decade painting snowy winter nights, I've developed certain functional skills for depicting lights, snow, mist, steam, reflections, and all the various atmospheric elements that make up such scenes.  And so I decided to title my talk "Smoke and Mirrors: Special Effects Painting"....

I've long been an admirer of book cover art, particularly from the mid Twentieth Century era.  Little did I know that one day I too would join the ranks of those whose art graces multiple books.   It didn't happen by any great design on my part.  Still, I'm both amused and flattered at the same time.   There is one book cover that features my art where that was the actual intent.  It's "Lady MacBeth Afraid of the Stairs" which was a collaboration between me and my life long buddy, the author Thom Barker. Lady MacBeth is the only book there is where I am the official cover artist.  But there are now many more unofficial ones, thanks to the fact that I've licensed my art through various stock image companies, to be used for creative endeavors worldwide.  Using Google's reverse image search function, I've been able to track some of them down.   It came as no great surprise that several books of the "Film Noir/Detective" ilk turned up....