An Artist Muses

Along the boardwalk at Kew Beach in Toronto, an amazing...and amazingly  democratic art installation is taking shape.  It's simply known as the "Rock Snake", and it's the brain child of a seven-year-old boy, Lucas Walker, who was sufficiently Covid-bored to start the project.   It was launched modestly enough, with a few painted rocks and a sign that invited others to join in on the fun.   I'm just a rock snake, here to make you smile Paint a rock, add it to my body Help me grow a mile The hope, as expressed in the sign, was that the idea would catch the public's fancy and the rock snake would soon stretch to gigantic proportions.  Boy, did it ever succeed. The snake, perfectly positioned mere inches from the popular boardwalk and stretching along its length, was an immediate hit.  Others enthusiastically joined in, augmenting the modest cluster of rocks that Lucas and family had placed to start the project rolling.  Social media and the local news gav...

  It was in 2018, when I was a wee lad of 55 years old, that I finally found my way to Ireland.  I had been to England and Scotland much earlier, back in the middle 80's, but for one reason or another the Emerald Isle remained for me untrodden ground. I finally got to rectify that in 2018.  My wife Siobhan and I flew to Dublin in June to link up with her Aunt Breda and Uncle Colin.  We stayed in an AirB&B that had a lovely breakfast nook that overlooked the River Liffey, and our mornings would start from this vantage point...having coffee and watching Dubliners make their way to work.   I knew that this trip, in addition to being an absolute joy due to the presence of my three travelling companions, would also surely provide great fodder and inspiration for future paintings.   Dublin, the river, and the many bridges that cross it became a topic for one such piece, "Dublin Nocturne". That painting ultimately went on to be the cover of an editio...

  "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" is arguably my defining mantra, so keen an environmentalist am I... ...actually that's complete bullshit.  I'm no better or worse on the environmental front than the average humanoid I'd say.  But with my latest work, I did find a way to recycle some old parts that were hanging around, and as such probably saved the world from the manufacturing and shipping of at least one standard-sized canvas.  Baby steps. The piece is entitled "On the Noir Train", and it is a composite of about ten or so of my previous paintings.  I had always felt that I had enough elements from my various works, plus the requisite skills in Photoshop, to create a completely new (digital) painting from scratch.  And so I set off... First and foremost, I knew the dominant element of the new piece would be the train, and that everything else would need to be built around that.  So I started with the painting "Newmarket Station". I cut out the train ...