November 26th 2012

A couple of weekends ago a small group of us got together for a brunch.  This has become a bit of a semi-annual tradition with this little group; see here, here and here.

This time we decided to meet at a beautiful restaurant in Yorkville, La Société.  The restaurant was lovely; furnished in dark woods and deep leathers, and the food was decadent and beautiful.

It's always such a treat to meet up with these ladies.  They're all creative and so much fun to talk with.  We also had a new edition to the group this time; little baby Eloise!  It was such a great start to a new week.

November 20th 2012

Things have gotten very busy for me lately, and I'll have some new work up here to prove it soon enough.

In the meantime I wanted to share someone else's work.

Chris and I went to see the work of a talented young friend at a shop here in our neighbourhood.  We've been friends with Hannah for a while now, and she's come by to work with me in my studio.  She's currently exhibiting work at Of A Kind, a vintage and vinyl shop, which also acts as a venue for local artists to show.  You can view a profile of her work on their site, as well as more of her work on her blog.

This particular piece was my favourite; titled AND IT NEVER CAME OFF.  Hannah is sixteen, and her work is wrought with those raw emotions we all had at that age; she portrays these feelings with a deft hand.

If you're close by, I highly recommend a trip out to Of A Kind for a look.  Hannah's work will be up on display until December 15th.

November 7th 2012

While watching the very exciting US election coverage last night, I finished printing a new, small-scale silkscreen print.

I've been developing some ideas for prints for the last little while, and I finally settled on this.  I'm so happy with the way they turned out!  I wanted to experiment a little bit with my Print GOCCO using multiple colours per screen; (not only because I thought the effect would be nice, but also because of a shortage in GOCCO supplies these days).

Firstly, I applied a screen with white snow and a faint outline of the reindeer; it's difficult to see from this scanned image.  The next two screens were printed with 7 and 3 colours respectively.  It turned out just as I'd hoped!

They're 5" x 7" and printed on a lovely ivory hot press stock.

To order, please visit my website, here.

November 1st 2012

Happy November!  I hope everyone is having a great start to the new month.

I've been pretty terrible at keeping up with this blog lately.  I've been busy with a couple of things on the go, which I'll be excited to share when I'm able to.

Since my last post, Chris and I visited Montréal, where we attended a benefit auction of children's book illustrations to raise funds for the CCBC.  It was held at the beautiful Musée des Beaux Arts de Montréal, and was a pretty exciting event, (and nerve-wracking when it came to my piece).  I'd never been to an art auction before, so it was a treat.  Unfortunately, the trip was far too short, but it was a lovely one; just a quick day and a half trip out of Toronto.

Also, Nathan Jurevicius' show I recently did a painting for, and was scheduled to open last night, was postponed due to power outage at the gallery.  It's located in the lower half of Manhattan in the East Village, and got hit pretty hard by the hurricane.  They're hoping to have things restored and opened by the weekend, but updates will be made on their event page.

Lastly, I want to send my regards to everyone who was effected by the hurricane.  My thoughts are with you all.

October 11th 2012

I was recently asked by a friend, Nathan Jurevicius, to create a painting for a show he was curating.  Nathan is the artist behind Scarygirl, a series of illustrated stories, games and toys centred around the namesake main character.  He has been creating this series for the last 10 years, and wanted to have an anniversary show dedicated to other artist's interpretations of his set of characters.

I decided to tackle the main character, Scarygirl.  I wanted to make her look like a real little girl, which was a real challenge because so much about the character is highly stylized.  She has a stitched mouth and a hook for a hand.  The character also has a single bone where her hand should be, and I decided to leave that absent.  I think she started to look a bit like a little girl from a Japanese horror movie, but I'm happy with the direction it took.

The show is set to open at Underground Gallery in New York on Hallowe'en night; Wednesday, October 31st.  To view a few more pieces from the exhibition; which will display the work of over 100 artists, head over to Magic Pony's blog.