An Artist Muses

Dublin Nocturne The Miriam Webster dictionary describes a nocturne as follows: a work of art dealing with evening or night, especially: a dreamy pensive composition for the piano. I can't speak much to the musical version of this definition, suffice to say some or my favorite classical pieces are nocturnes.  Perhaps my favorite of all is Ravel's 'Pavane for a Dead Princess", which I used as the score for a Youtube video... The person who coined the phrase "nocturne" in regards to painting was none other than James Abbott O'Neill Whistler.  Yes, him.  The guy that so famously painted his mother: He described the nocturne style as one that depicts scenes evocative of the night or subjects as they appear in a veil of light, in twilight, or in the absence of direct light.  More generally, the term can be applied to any painting of a night scene. Whistler not only named the style but was a master of it, as the following examples show: "Nocturne in Blue an...

 There's a famous sequence in the movie "Modern Times" where Charlie Chaplin, working a job on an assembly line, is driven to madness by the incessant and repetitive nature of his task, which is to tighten the same two bolts on successive pieces of metal as they roll by.   I think I've found the artistic equivalent of that. Cobblestones.  Yes, cobblestones.   Who'd have thought such an innocuous, steadfast, non-descript, literal building-block of our society could cause such mental anguish?  Certainly not me.  I must confess, as a lover of history, to be greatly fond of cobblestones.  Hell, once upon a time, I even laid a cobblestone path: If you're a painter of vintage street scenes, an encounter with cobblestones is an inevitability.  And what scene isn't automatically enhanced by their stony presence, which immediately brings forth an old-world charm to the piece?   By the Canal The Basket Women For my ten-painting Christma...

  My work painting historical scenes involves a lot of time researching archival sources on the internet.  Literally tens of thousands of black and white images have flashed before my eyes in the last 15 years.  Often I'll simply search something as simple as "street 1900" and that will lead to a wealth of interesting archival pics.  Sometimes when I go down that rabbit hole, clicking on whatever shot strikes my fancy, I can stray very far from my original search, and lose complete track of where I am in cyberspace.  During one such search, the following image came up: There were a few things I liked about it right out of the gate.  The straight-up presentation of the two main buildings and the shiny rain-soaked reflection on the street were two of them.  But also, the scene seemed typically Toronto, in fact East-end Toronto.  Believe it or not, the street lamp attached to the telephone pole was also a clue, as I had seen that type of fixture befo...

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....