• Oddly enough, the award for the best new tall building in the Americas for 2009 goes to a Winnipeg building. The envelope please. (CTBUH)
• Two sculptures have recently gone missing in eastern Canada: one stolen in Saint-André-d'Argenteuil (CBC News), and the other spirited away by aliens in New Brunswick (CBC News). For more Canadian mysteries click here.

Young Woman
charcoal and pastel
25.4 x 45.7 cm (10" x 18")

This particular young woman is a writer, poetess, and artist in addition to being an excellent model.

• The perils of self esteem. Example: Sarah Palin. (The Wall Street Journal)
• A great interview with Gay Talese. (The Paris Review) (via C-Monster)

Woman Reclining
charcoal, pastel, and oil
61 x 45.7 cm (24" x 18")

The first version of Woman Reclining was originally posted on March 31, 2009. I decided to rework the drawing by going over some parts with oil paint. It's an improvement.

The first Woman Reclining has been reposted below.

Danse Ruse : read by William Carlos Williams. (via UbuWeb)

Partial Portrait
graphite and gouache
34.8 x 26.4 cm (13.7" x 10.4")

Why is there only half a head in this portrait? I can't remember why I painted this like it is, but I kind of like it.

• Vladimir Tatlin and his tower . (The Literary Review)
• The Casual Optimist, a blog about books and the book trade.

Untitled No. 6
watercolour
26.7 x 19.1 cm (10.5" x 7.5")

The only thing to say about this painting is that it is quite an old work.

• The ARTnews top 200 collectors. (ARTnews)
• A cautionary note for artists: plastics are not forever. (Slate) (via C-Monster)

• The anatomy of an affair. (The Guardian)

Pixie
ink, charcoal, and pastel
40.6 x 22.9 cm (16" x 9")

I am neither happy nor unhappy with this imaginary drawing. It's just a study, and an unfinished study at that.

• Leo Mol, a Ukrainian born Canadian sculptor, died Saturday in Winnipeg at the age of 94. (CBC News) (The Winnipeg Free Press)

Black and Grey
ink and acrylic
29.2 x 40.6 cm (11.5" x 16")

This is an older drawing. It was done on some kind of synthetic canvas, which I can't say that I enjoyed working on.

• The former head of finance for Dutch national arts funding is missing along with € 15.5 . (The Art Newspaper) (via C-Monster)
• The world of art blogs. (Deutsche Bank Art Mag) (via C-Monster)
• Barack Obama, philosopher. (The Chronicle Review)

Pull My Daisy (The Beat Generation) (1959): Directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie. Written and narrated by Jack Kerouac. (via UbuWeb)

Here's a part of the description of the film in Wikipedia:

Pull My Daisy is a short film that typifies the Beat Generation. Directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, Daisy was adapted by Jack Kerouac from the third act of a stage play he never finished entitled Beat Generation. Kerouac also provided improvised narration. It starred Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Larry Rivers, Peter Orlovsky, David Amram, Richard Bellamy, Alice Neel, Sally Gross and Pablo Frank, Robert Frank's then-infant son.

Based on an incident in the life of Neal Cassady and his wife Carolyn, Daisy tells the story of a railway brakeman whose painter wife invites a respectable bishop over for dinner. However, the brakeman's bohemian friends crash the party, with comic results.

The Beat philosophy emphasized spontaneity, and the film conveyed the quality of having been thrown together or even improvised. Pull My Daisy was accordingly praised for years as an improvisational masterpiece, until Leslie revealed in a November 28, 1968 article in the Village Voice that the film was actually carefully planned, rehearsed, and directed by him and Frank, who shot the film on a professionally lit studio set.

I wish that I knew who to credit for this great history, but I don't. It comes via C-Monster amongst others.

• J.W. Waterhouse's work is currently showing at the Royal Academy in London. 'A pleasant void' says Richard Dorment (The Telegraph). For some examples from Waterhouse's void please click here.
• Art Baloney, a blog devoted to the not so fine art of writing about fine art (via C-Monster). And David Apatoff at Illustration Art has some thoughts of his own on art baloney and artistic pretension (Illustration Art).

You Suck
paper collage
23.9 x 18.3 cm (9.4" x 7.2")

This is another reworked collage. The collage was originally done at the Winnipeg Art Gallery under the tutelage of Doug Melnyk (who, by the way, is an outstanding artist - one of Winnipeg's best).

I was never satisfied with the original. This reworking is closer to my intended non-meaning.

The original was first published on March 18, 2009.