The Naked Silo

Statuarial 4 22" x 15", watercolour, 2016 ________________________________________ Statuarial 5 15" x 22", watercolour, 2016 Statuarial Watercolours, Part 1 Statuarial Watercolours, Part 2

Statuarial 3 22" x 15", watercolour, 2016 ________________________________________ Statuarial 6 15" x 22", watercolour, 2016 Statuarial Watercolours, Part 1 Statuarial Watercolours, Part 3

Statuarial 2 15" x 22", watercolour, 2016 I've been collecting images of statues for many years now, and I'm finally using more of them in my paintings. There's just something about these ancient sculptures that I find fascinating; aesthetically, it's the smoothness of the materials (whether it's white stone or black marble or green, oxidized bronze) and the stunning accuracy of the figures and drapery. But there's something more...something about their permanence, their mythological connection, their idealized perfection...and their scale, too, often being much larger than life. I could paint these forever and still feel I haven't captured the amazingness of them; you'll just have to go to Italy and see these statues yourself. I had initially prepped these over a year ago with the intent to paint them using wine (like my experiments with Baco Noir about five years ago) for a solo show at Closson Chase winery  last year (for w...

17" x 11", photography and digital, 2016 Following up on the original Mister Forty-sixer poster from earlier this month, I figured, since another of my friends is turning 46 this year (today!), maybe he could be included in this weird fake movie. I grabbed a suitable pic from his Facebook images, but thought that Tony looking at his phone wasn't dramatic enough, so I incorporated Chris (the titular Mr. 46-er) as a hologram who's apparently just made Tony the Elf's hit list –which, I presume because of his thoroughness, will only be checked once (this caption, as the one in the previous poster, also doesn't make any sense either, as well). Wouldn't it be fun –in a weird way, I guess– to see a movie whose entire cast is 46 years old? HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TONY!

17" x 11", photography & digital, 2016 Back in 1999, I did some illustration and design for Markham Youth Theatre's production of  City of Angels , and among the materials I created was a t-shirt featuring a hard-boiled detective, a staple of the film noir genre. For the reference, I knew I had to call upon my friend Chris because of his particularly strong profile, so I put him in a jacket and hat, gave him my .45 caliber water pistol, then shot him with a strong backlight using my trusty 35mm  Minolta  SLR using black and white film stock. I used the source photo pretty much as is. The nice vignetting/spotlight was caused by my studio lamps when I shot Chris, but the weird snowy noise was probably caused by age (it suited the poster, co I didn't clean it up in Photoshop). This wasn't a regular 4" x 6" print, but a trimmed part from a contact sheet, so it was tiny. Still, I didn't scan the photo but instead I photographed it using ...

Back in January, in my previous progress report , I had attempted to sand down as much of this AMT/ERTL  Enterprise kit's brick-like "panelling" texture, and filled gaps and seam lines with Bondo. It went fairly well, and the faint remainder shouldn't bother me too much in the end. Clamped. The saucer section had some major gaps along the rim joining the top and bottom halves, but a fresh application of cement and lots of clamping fixed most of it. Primed. The primer phase revealed not only remaining gaps that still needed filling (expected, since the first primer application is usually where these shortcomings are made apparent), but also the rough texture left behind by my sanding of the bricky panels. I was fairly aggressive with my sanding, so it was no surprise. Luckily, this roughness was dealt with easily later on... Gaposis. I love Lou Dalmaso 's term as it's sort of a lighthearted way of complaining about the gaps left whe...