The Naked Silo

More selections from Sketchbook #14. That's  Elaine Secord , based on an unused photo taken during the shoot for  Squirm's Cold CD . The above doodle is apparently "based upon a dream," and, though I no longer recall the dream, this was shortly before I bought a few notebooks and dedicated one specifically to transcribe and dreams I remembered upon waking up. Sleep schedule and biological circumstances conspired to enable me to remember so many dreams at that time that I filled three of those books in about two years. A couple (of several) sketches (not the tree) done for the cover of a CD (A Taste of Heaven) by a guy named Konstantine who didn't end up using me as illustrator/designer. His music was like Yanni...and he had never heard of Mike Oldfield. I recently (and very briefly) tried searching for him online to no avail. NOTE: This post was meant to be "published" on September 5, but Blogger got all glitchy just after ...

11" x 13", watercolour, 1999, private collection Though not her first album, I became aware of Melanie Doane  and her music with Adam's Rib  in 1998. I was even at the venue on one of the two nights when she recorded the shows for her Melvin Live CD (a great show and a great live disc). I did another painting illustrating some lyrics from her song "Waiting for the Tide" featuring Doane and the moon, but the title ended up being used in this rather literal painting  featuring Elaine Secord who was currently with the band Squirm who released their album Cold the same year. If the perspective seems weird, it's because the photo I used for reference is actually a still from one of her videos where the camera's above her and she's looking up.

Some time in early 2001 I was talking with a gallery owner in Toronto (whose gallery closed about a year later) about exhibiting some of my watercolours in her gallery. Although she liked my paintings, she asked if I had anything in a larger scale (my largest watercolour was 30" x 22"), maybe something on canvas. At the time I was only painting in watercolours, not having much experience or proficiency in acrylics or oils, so the size of my paintings was limited to the paper available, but she told me of a special kind of gesso that behaves (i.e. is absorbent) like watercolour paper when applied properly to canvas. This excited me since I wanted to paint larger works, so I ordered some and gave it a shot once my expensive order came in more than six weeks later. I prepped two 36" x 36" canvases and began painting as I normally would with watercolours, by blocking in the shadows with violet. It didn't work and the paint just sat on the surface. I guess I di...

22" x 15", watercolour, 1998 Here'a Elaine once again, this time turning blue from the cold and with the water level rising like that, the tide better turn soon. Based on another photo from the extensive shoot for Squirm's "Cold" CD. The concept (and title) were inspired by "Waiting for the Tide" by Melanie Doane .

The cover. Wanting to evoke an impression of "coldness," the colour scheme had to be cool, so blues and white ruled. That interesting typeface was specifically chosen by Tim the guitarist. I shot the trees near my home (in early spring, unfortunately, since completely bare trees would have been better...but that's still a cold blue sky). I shot the singer Elaine in my studio and I went through three, maybe four rolls of film since I didn't have a clear design plan at the time of the shoot (see sketches at bottom). Some of those photos of Elaine provided me with reference for subsequent paintings (just click on the Elaine Secord "label" at the bottom of this post to see them). Opened cover with credits. Inside: band photos. I shot the band during one of their many performances around Toronto. I wasn't sure how Baron would respond to the blurry shot of him drumming, but it turned out he loved it, so into the design it went. I had Elaine...

15" x 22", watercolour, 2000 Elaine Secord makes her fourth and final appearance in the Sunflowers series here, and it's the first one of the series to feature a more naturalistic background, rather than one full of art nouveau graphic design.

15" x 22", watercolour, 2000 Once again, Elaine Secord is modelling here. The circular motifs around the sunflowers are heavily inspired by the designs of Alphonse Mucha , my favourite artist in the art nouveau style.

15" x 22", watercolour, 2000 Here's Elaine again from the same photo shoot that resulted in so many good pictures that weren't used on Squirm's " Cold " CD, but ended up as paintings. I wanted to give the halo a realistic glow, so I softened the edges around her hair and shoulder, trying to create a blooming effect , which is a photographic artefact I enjoy.

15" x 22", watercolour, 2000 I used a number of unused photos from a shoot I did with Elaine for her band's 1998 CD " Cold " as reference for a number of paintings, including my Sunflowers series. Balancing out the background matrix is a sideways "t" form that contains sunflowers...but it has the overall effect of looking (unintentionally) like a flag ( Sweden and Norway and Finland (maybe others...) come to mind). But that's okay with me; they're nice flags.

36" x 26", oil on canvas, 2002, private collection With the opening of my Field to Canvas show of local farmers portraits just over a month away, and since I'll be previewing that show during all of May with details and in-production images, I thought I'd wrap up April with the last full-image painting you'll see here until June. This portrait is of Elaine Secord, lead singer of Squirm, a five-piece Toronto band that played the clubs in the '90s and recorded one CD (for which I created the artwork) before disbanding by the year 2000 or thereabouts. I used to see them perform a lot; we were friends, but I also thought they were quite good and enjoyed each show (no matter how smoky the venue). I planned to paint more rock 'n' roll pictures with Squirm as my subjects, but I never got around to that. However, I took dozens of photos for the CD and decided to use many of the shots of Elaine in a whole bunch of paintings (like this one ) and possib...