Field to Canvas: Reception

Reception: June 2, 5-9pm

Exhibition runs through 2011

Angéline's Restaurant & Inn

433 Main St., Bloomfield,

Prince Edward County, ON

613.393.3301

Top photo: agent provocateur.

Bottom photo: "I hope there's no math tonight!"

Me and Krista in front of George Emlaw's portrait.

(this photo by Pat Hyduk (the rest are by Krista).
More of Pat's photos from the reception can be found on Facebook HERE)

George Emlaw and George Emlaw and me.

I heard he was so pleased with his portrait that he hovered near it the whole time he was there, almost...protectively? Everyone was saying how significant the addition of his farm at the bottom is; the farm is going by the wayside, and George is kind of sad about that. There's still another month or so until we hear if this painting gets in the Kingston Prize for Canadian Portraiture exhibition.

Small sampling of large crowd.

The turnout Thursday evening was simply amazing. The restaurant estimated about a hundred people turned up for the event, making this my largest art opening. But numbers aren't everything; being surrounded by many of our friends made it my happiest art opening, and I give immense thanks to everyone who came out last week.

Extra big thanks to Alex, Melanie, Monika, and the rest of Angéline's staff for hosting; Chef Michael Potters and his team for the great food; the seven (7!) wineries for their tasty tastings; Tammy Love for literal Field to Canvas artwork in the front bar area; and, of course, my lovely wife, Krista, who supported this endeavour by putting up with many late nights of painting, painting, painting.

This photo contains five farmers, and includes (from left to right), Nina-Marie Lister (Lukas's mom), Vicki Emlaw (featured in the painting on the left), Sandra Emlaw (George's wife), Ed Taylor, Tim Noxon (also featured in the painting on the left), George Emlaw standing in front of Ted Maczka's portrait, and, on the far right in the background is Lukas Lister-Stevens.

Here I am with Erika Mohssen-Beyk, who seemed quite amazed that her portrait was so much larger than life.

Here's Ed and Sandi Taylor, stripped of their winter clothes. Sandi reminded me the name of the dog in the painting is Socks (I had forgotten his name since the photo shoot, but I've since edited the blog post to fix this omission).

Me and Cody Vader. We look comfortable, but we're actually squatting so as to fit into this composition.

Partly making fun of the need to squat in the previous pic, and partly bored of "straight" posing for the paparazzi, Vicki, Tim, and I ham it up a bit.

Chef Potters came out of the kitchen briefly to say a few kind words about my paintings and the farmers in them. His team served up some delicious hors d'oeuvres all night long. Vicki, Michael, and I didn't plan it, but here we are all in co-ordinating white tops.

Stojan Fixing Combine

14" x 17", ink on paper, 2003, private collection

To fill out the space in the front entrance of the inn portion of Angéline's, Alex asked me to bring some other, thematically-related paintings. As well as a few cow paintings in ink, I brought these two pictures, and their inclusion makes me very proud, since, not only does this show celebrate local farming in Prince Edward County (some of it going back many generations), but it now includes my own family's farming heritage in Macedonia which also goes back several generations.

The painting above is based on a family photo of my father fixing a wheel on their combine harvester in Macedonia, probably in the 1960s (certainly before he emigrated to Canada in 1969). It's a fine illustration of my dad's formidable skills as a mechanic and, interestingly, is incredibly reminiscent of my very first blog post.

Combine

15" x 22", watercolour, 2003

This painting (of the same combine as in the ink painting) is based on another family photo, but this time one taken about 40 years later when my father and his brother (pictured, shirtless on the machine) visited Macedonia in 2002. I was trying for a very loose technique with this one, to the point where the combine looks almost abstract. I really like the sky in this one.

Axel Foley's Chevy Nova (1/25 scale model)

Multiple tributes, here. I remember first seeing Beverly Hills Cop on video at my friend Chris K's house, 'cause his family had a VCR and we'd watch tons of movies (and record music videos) together. The summer of 1984 was a special time for us (having created a strong bond in school since Grade 6 a few years before), going on biking adventures around the 'burbs and into the city, etc., and home video played an important role from then until I moved to the opposite end of Scarborough just before we started high school. We liked the movie a lot, both of us fans of Eddie Murphy from his Saturday Night Live days. I don't think I'd seen the movie since then (it would have been 1985, probably summer, since the movie came out in late 1984) and I became curious to see if it still held up. It did. It does. I found Murphy as charming as ever and the comedy (and even the action) holds up very well and its very re-watchable and very entertaining. Beverly Hi...

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I dreamed up the Small Pond Shipyard for my fanciful scratch-built sci-fi airship creations (which still only exist in sketch/Photoshop mock-up form (and boxes in my closet) for now), but more and more ideas kept coming ( this wind turbine , for example, will be part of a rather elaborate diorama I'll be working on this winter). But the Puppet Wagon was a sleeper surprise, to be sure. [Really, though, I don't know why I was so eager to build this right away since I was planning to slowly develop my modelling skills with simpler builds first and the work my way up to more complicated projects.] Not all parts were used/needed. Most of these ideas have come from watching modelling videos online, and when I saw a review of this sweet little Japanese "Ramen Shop" food truck by Aoshima (right-side drive!), my brain started making jokes about customizing it to the weird food truck ideas I'd been posting on Facebook. But the more I thought about what the co...

City of Angels

17" x 11", watercolour and digital, 1999 Ah, City of Angels . I thought I was getting cool film noir but got a cheesy musical instead (Google it if you must). Still, it was fun to make the poster and associated images, mostly because the research consisted of watching real films noir and buying a great book on movie posters of the genre. I made tons of sketches and a few digital mock-ups. For the final poster above, I made three separate watercolour paintings (one of the couple and one each of the two black and white heads) and composited them in Photoshop, where I also added the text. In true movie poster fashion, I wanted the actors names to be the top two names, but I lost that battle and had to use the characters' names instead. It looks fine, but it implies that "Kingsley and Stone" are the lead actors in the show. Oh, well...it's only community theatre... By making the "angel" above half black and white and half colour, th...

The Naked Silo

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