Little Bird Big Dreams

Little Bird Big Dreams

My studio is open to the public this Saturday, Saturday, September 29 from 11 am to 4 pm at 16 Spring Street, Drayton.

There will be 107 works of my art on view and friends will join me for casual outbursts of music throughout the day…. pianists Heather Taves, PhilipMorehead, and composer/oboist Patricia Morehead.

The show is a broad arc of paintings and as with all my previous shows, there are several works on loan from private collectors.   I am working on getting my web designer to create an online gallery for the privately owned paintings. And slowly, I am getting all of the currently available works online.  

The newest painting, Little Bird BigDreams, was finished just a couple days ago up north at the log house.  This piece took years to complete… I had experimented with carving lines into the wooden panel, then painting in many layers of oil paint.  It didn’t blossom as I expected, seemed opaque and aloof, and over the years, I would add a layer or thrash away on it with a steel brush (didn’t change much), then one day, I picked up the Festool electric sander. This fine piece of equipment was in the house thanks to logbuilder David Rogers who used it in the restoration of my Dad’s log house last spring. Using a light touch with fine sandpaper, I smoothed the surface of the painting and something completely different emerged.  Atmospheric bursts and lines were revealed, and interesting concentrations of colour in some of the knife cuts. When I posted the results on FaceBook, one of my friends (thank you, Randy Rennie) noticed there was a hint of a bird in the lower centre.  There were actually two potential birds…. A streaking swallow or a dreaming cockatiel. I picked the dreamer.

And this is an active dream… it doesn’t represent longing or escape but rather, the kinetic panchromatic reality of the bird’s private spirit... 

big picture......................

and a closeup of the little bird...

and I was going to show this work-in-progress but the heavy white oil paint was too wet to move from the studio last week (oil on rough-sawn and cracked plank, ca. 14" x 50", called I Will Always Love You)

This is all part of Cultural Days Ontario. The other big event in Drayton will be tours of the magnificent DraytonFestival Theatre, three doors down from my place on Spring Street. You can easily fit in both visits. And we will have snacks from Drayton's A La Mode and River's Edge Goat Dairy.