Saturday 20 April 2013

Spring Show 2013

My new annual spring studio show is coming up -


This show touches on various styles, media, and approaches to the landscape that I have taken over the years. The paintings are alive with colour and movement to usher in a new spring season.  For a preview click on the YouTube link below, and for an overview of my work click on the CCCA.CA link below.

Sunday 30 December 2012

Blue Tweed


We were on our way to the cottage last summer when the traffic backed up on the 417, we quickly got off at Parkdale in order to get to the Parkway. It was a beautiful sunny Saturday morning and though I was impatient to get to the cottage the Estate Sale sign by the side of the road diverted my attention. Though the location was a desired one, the house was a tiny post war two story two bedroom house. A friend of the deceased was helping get rid of the last remnants of the estate. On the second floor in a tiny bedroom on a single bed I found this blue tweed hat as if new , still stiff in its brim and unstained in its headband and crown, a hat I felt I could grow into. There was also a new pair of unlined leather gloves sitting beside it. I took them both at two dollars each.

Friday 19 October 2012

Summer Weave and Fish

This hat is a straw weave Stetson made in Canada that I bought at "Young Janes" a vintage shop in Ottawa. At a recent trip to New York a young waitor in a fish restaurant stuffed it down the sleeve of my jacket thinking it was a foldable which it is not. It took a month to lose its new creases. The other objects are a wooden fish and striker given to me by my niece and her South Korean husband.

Sunday 19 February 2012

Bubble Wrap Head

This blue baseball cap is sitting on the bubble wrap and cedar hat stand I made for my drawing set up. I bought this hat in Florence in September 2005, the sun was fierce. I had neglected to bring my Panama with me and did not want to buy another. It cost six Euros from a street vendor, much less then my brother's travelling Borsalino Fedora which he also bought in Florence that September.

Thursday 16 February 2012

Slightly Mouldy Amish

This hat I found in the Ottawa Market 15 or so years ago. Handwoven by the Amish and smelling slightly mouldy from years in a barn they were selling for ten dollars each. I bought it to replace a similar one with a higher crown. They are stiff and the brim very flat, with a striped T-shirt you look like a gondolier.

Wednesday 15 February 2012

Cannon Fodder

I always wanted one of these olive green army caps, I like their flat top and rigid curved bill, there is something more distinctive about them then a baseball cap and yet unfortunately they represent the collective stupidity of war because it is the cannon fodder that wears them. That being said I bought it at a cap wholesalers in New York City in Greenwich Village for five dollars, I could of had it for less if I had bought a case.

Tuesday 14 February 2012

Black Beaver Felt Stetson

Originally worn into the Yukon at the turn of the 20th century it was given to a grand daughter in Vancouver who lost it to her lover in a backgammon game, he brought it east where it was stolen from his apartment and years later ended up in Bernice's second hand clothing store where I purchased it in the late seventies.