The Naked Silo

Ted Maczka 17" x 14", ink on Bristol board, 2019, private collection. This was a commission done as a house-warming gift and was based on my oil painting of Ted Maczka  (below), Prince Edward County's famous Fish Lake Garlic Man. The commissioner was aware that the recipient knew Ted well and missed him (Ted died in 2013), so I was more than happy to paint this one. Ted Maczka 36" x 24", oil on canvas, 2011, collection of the County of Prince Edward Public Library and Archives

County Coyote: Explorers 18" x 24", oil on wood panel, 2019 I always enjoy participating in the shows put on by Peter and Alice Mennacher at their Blizzmax Gallery in South Bay, here in Prince Edward County, and when I got the invitation for this year's County Coyote group show I quickly began brainstorming ideas. The main concept is that participating artists take Peter's drawing of a coyote and do whatever we wish with it. I decided to take the plentiful coyotes out of PEC and sent them out into the final frontier, exploring strange new worlds. The main background of mountains and a ringed gas giant in the sky was borrowed from a Robert McCall painting, the rocket is based on Hergé's design from his Tintin comics, and the hoodoos are based on photos I took in Alberta more than a decade ago (I was going for a sort of Roger Dean -inspired landscape, and the surreal (and unlikely) tripled hoodoos lend themselves to this notion). Naturally, these c...

CEV Phase 1 A 14" x 11", oil on canvas, 2019 In the winter of 2017-18 I kept seeing the first painting in this "full-bodied"  group of paintings I did in 2010 and, because I really liked how the glass was rendered, with all the distortions and reflections, I came up with an idea for a larger group of paintings that would feature clear glassware as the main subject. CEV Phase 1 B 20" x 10", oil on canvas, 2019 I felt painting those distortions and reflections convincingly would be a fun challenge, so I collected a few interesting glass items and photographed them in various lighting conditions, emphasizing the fact that they were all empty (more on that later). CEV Phase 1 C 20" x 10", oil on canvas, 2019 This group was shot at night with extreme lighting mainly coming from above, with additional light sources causing many of those highlights and interesting reflections.  CEV Phase 1 D 20" x 10", oil ...