News — painting

The view from the parking lot near the top of the famous Idaho Peak! Stunning!   I’m not sure when it dawned on me that there were things called ‘wildflowers’, but I can bet my Mother had something to do with it. She was forever pointing out beautiful things in the world - and at 90 years old, she continues to do so today.   When I was a kid and we lived in Terrace BC on the picturesque Skeena River, my brothers and I used to hike in the surrounding hills - generally looking for good trout fishing spots...

Recently, I got a phone call from a friend asking if we could meet to chat about a commission he would like me to think about. For a while now, I’ve been painting on old paper and he had some old paper that he wanted like to talk about.   This old paper stock I’ve been using is broadly called ‘ephemera’, and it includes everything from letterhead and maps, to accounting paper, envelopes and more. For the most part, this is bond paper and more often than not it takes watercolour well and doesn’t bleed through - unlike the shiny...

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...