August 14th 2013

I've found out about some pretty great contemporary artists through Beautiful Decay in the past, but one of their more recent posts found me falling in love with the work of painter Jeremy Miranda.  His work is some of my favourite that I've seen in a long, long time.

Seriously; look at this stuff:








Wowzers.

To view more of his beautiful work, (including watercolour studies- swoon!), visit his websiteblog or shop to buy originals and prints.

July 29th 2013

One of my favourite recurring illustration jobs in the last while has been a set of black and white portraits of chefs featured in The New York Times 'Eat' section of the magazine.  Some previous features have been done on chefs Juanjo López, Julie Sahni and Claudia Roden.

The two illustrations pictured below were published in the magazine in the past few months. The first, of Linda Lau Anusasananan, was featured in mid-May in an article called 'The Nomad's Kitchen', and the second of Edward Khechemyan was featured in this past weekend's article titled, 'This Armenian Life'.


July 24th 2013

Back in the early spring, I had a couple of visitors.  The one, Celine McKay, was an old friend from back home.  She now runs a beautiful publication, Pure Green Magazine.  The other was a local photographer, who's work I've admired for a while now; Rebecca Wood.  Celine had asked us to get together so they could do a feature on my workspace for the current issue of the magazine, Inspired Workspace.  

We met up at the Common, a favourite coffee shop of mine, had a nice chat, then headed back to my home/workspace for more photos.

It was so wonderful to catch up with Celine after so many years.  We'd been friends in high school, and as these things go sometimes, had lost touch over the years proceeding.  She now runs this magazine and has recently become a new mother, so we had a lot to catch up on!

Below are some photos from the feature, as well as some outtakes, all captured by Rebecca.  They were both so lovely to work with, and it was such a great day spent with two great women.
















All photos above ©Rebecca Wood

July 19th 2013

Here is a much needed update, and there will be lots more coming soon.

I've been so busy, (and overwhelmed by this heat wave we're having), that I haven't had much time to show what's been keeping me so busy.  Sometimes it can be quite hard finding a balance between working and showing my work.

Here's something to get the (rather large) ball rolling; I've been asked by The New York Times Magazine to do a weekly job with them.  I'm illustrating the final page of the magazine,for the Lives section.  I've done these jobs before, but it's nice to have something so regular!

Here are a few from the past month or so.


'I Was Too Clever to Quit Smoking', published June 16, 2013


'My Manhattan Fantasies Realized.  Sort of', published June 23, 2013


'How the Other Half Lives', published July 7, 2013


June 10th 2013


Another portrait for the business section of this month's issue of Southwest Airline's Spirit Magazine.  This month featured Karen Finerman, co-host of CNBC's Fast Money.

May 29th 2013


For a change, I'd like to post someone else's work that I've been admiring lately.  (Okay, admiring is putting it lightly; I'm a little obsessed with it).

A friend had told me to check out the Rose Bakery book, How to Boil an Egg, a little while ago because she thought I'd like the watercolour illustrations throughout it.  She wasn't kidding!  It's always nice to find new sources of inspiration, and this was quite the gem.

They're painted by British artist, Fiona Strickland.  She mainly paints highly realistic botanical illustrations, but made the most incredible, highly rendered paintings of food for this book.

Fiona, you're a marvel.







May 27th 2013



I was contacted by Brooke Manning a little while back to create signage for the shop she'll be opening here in Toronto a little later in the summer.

She sent me some pretty fantastic reference to go from; a 1928 cover of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, which I used to hand-letter the name of her shop, Likely General.  She also asked that her sweet Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Ellie, be included in the design.  I ended up having a ton of fun both painting and lettering this project for her, and was excited to see it all up on her new website, (even the favicon at the top!).

Above is the painting that she's using for her site, and below; the line drawing is what she's planning to use for her stamps.  I was really happy with the way everything came together.

Her sweet little Roncesvalles general store will be opening in August of this year, and I'm thrilled for her!  Yay, Brooke!

May 10th 2013

Today, it's rainy and grey, so I'll share a little painting I did of a husky recently that cheers me right up.

Also, in some great news for the art world; the MoMA is rethinking their plans to demolish the American Folk Art Museum in New York.

May 7th 2013





Posted above are a few more of the portraits I've done in the past few months for the business section of Southwest Airline's Spirit Magazine.

The first is of Marc Schoen, Ph.D.Assistant Clinical  Professor of Medicine at UCLA Geffen School of Medicine; the second, of John Mackeyco-CEO of Whole Foods Market, and the last is of Penn Jillette, of illusionist team Penn and Teller.

May 3rd 2013

Back in March I was asked to create a set of illustrations for The Walrus, for their 'Miscellany' section.  I've worked with the magazine for years, but have always wanted to do the illustrated treatment used for the beginning section of the magazine.

A favourite series of mine from years ago was done by my friend Lauchie, which you can view here.  He even won a gold medal at the National Magazine Awards for his work.

I was given the task of coming up with a theme that would run through the series of illustrations, and I thought it would be fun to illustrate a 'supermarket' theme.  I painted the type in the style of an Honest Ed's hand-painted sign, an editor's note on green organizations like Green Peace using green produce, the letter section as an envelope of coupons and the contributors section like a carton of eggs.








May 1st 2013

Happy May!

I'd like to share some unpublished work today.  I've been excited to post this for a while now.

It's from a job I completed at the end of the winter, and was unfortunately cancelled after it had been finished.  I was really happy with the way these little paintings turned out!  And the last image is of a pattern I was asked to make using pieces of the images below.