News — new art

Painting on old paper, on ‘ephemera’, is something I’ve been doing for a few years now. From envelopes and old cheques to yellowed old letterhead, postcards, and waybills......it’s all fodder for my watercolour brushes.   This new series grew out of this long standing interest in old paper and the fact a friend was tossing some old navigation charts that were out of date. He knew I painted on ephemera and asked if I’d like to have them....I said ‘yes’. And the rest is history.   The series here follows my penchant for all things ephemera - and it takes...

The truth is, I’m not sure where this latest fishing bobber art obsession has come from. True, they’ve been part of my life since I was a kid. I remember tagging along with my Dad and some of his friends and our neighbours when they headed out to the Lakelse, Kitsumkalum, Skeena, or Copper Rivers in Northern British Columbia to fish for whatever salmon was on the run.   Dad’s tackle box had some of those bobbers and, even today, I can remember being drawn to how bright and colourful they were. I especially remember thinking that they had to...

Classics of the Pacific North West As a kid in Terrace, BC in the early-to-mid 1960s, we learned to fish on the creeks in the area and on the Skeena River. For the most part, we used salmon roe and worms as bait, and the goal was cutthroat trout. They fought well, they ate well, and they looked tough with that slash of red just under the gills. We didn’t have lots of money when I was a kid, so whatever fishing gear I had was what I could buy from the money I got collecting beer bottles in the...

Genesis (the blog)   This seems like a useful and appropriate title for this blog on my artwork. For what it’s worth, I think there is generally a curiosity about where and how art comes about. It seems a useful way to get at what ‘begat’ what….in order to get to what you see here in this artwork. Begat is one of those ‘action’ words - a verb that hints at some rich and fecund connotations in my mind. So, in these blog entries I’ll say some things about the mix that has come together in this art - ingredients...