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

On the evening that this drawing was done, the assembled artists, myself included, were trying hard to impress the model with their wit.

She was not entirely amused. Her response to the artistic amateur wits was, "Just draw."

• Thomas Carlyle. (Humanities)
• 'Animal spirits', irrational economists, and the current economic crisis. (The New Republic)
• A Marcel Dzama/Patrick Daughters directed video for Department of Eagles. (via C-Monster)

It's been a busy weekend, and today's another busy day. I'll be back tomorrow with something new.

Squash and Orange
oil
30.5 x 21.6 cm (12" x 8.5")

Yesterday, I rescued this painting from a heap of discards.

It's a little phallic, isn't it? And just kind of weird. I wonder why I painted it?

• Lafcadio Hearn, traveller. (The Wall Street Journal)
• " Treason is a matter of dates." So thought Talleyrand, the consummate opportunist. (The Atlantic)

It's a busy day today. I'll be back tomorrow.

• Richard Holden's The Wildewood Suite opens tonight at 6:30 pm at the Ken Segal Gallery in Winnipeg.

Anne
ink and pastel
20.3 x 15.2 cm (8" x 6")

Anne is a friend and artist. She was trying to look pensive for this drawing. It was a struggle for her, but I think she pulled it off.

• Vancouver's hottest new artists? (CBC News)
• Alexander Hamilton and New York. (City Journal)
• Bad times for art dealers, good times for art lawyers. (edward_winkleman)

Henry Moore Sculpture
ink, charcoal, and pastel
22.9 x 15.2 cm (9" x 6")

This is a view of a Henry Moore sculpture as seen from above. It was on the main floor of the Winnipeg Art Gallery, and I was drawing almost directly above on the mezzanine. I'm not sure if there were any blues in the actual sculpture. Two blue pastels were the only colour I was carrying.

It might be difficult to tell what the drawing is of, at first. I think that I like it for that reason.

• Are there photographs which shouldn't be published and which shouldn't have been taken? (Amateur d'art - en français)
• I'm Henery the Eighth, I am! (History Today)

Seated
ink and watercolour
17.8 x 11.4 cm (7" x 4.5")

Just for a change and to see what I might come up with, I recently decided to do some smaller sized figure drawings with watercolour. This is one of them. It's done on an ordinary drawing paper, and it was done quite quickly. I don't mind the effect at all.

• If you're communist or Russian please do not read this article from The New Criterion.

Klaus Nomi - The Cold Song: from Purcell's opera King Arthur.

Klaus Nomi sung this aria in Munich six months before his death in 1983. He was visibly suffering from the effects of AIDS during the performance, including fatigue and shortness of breath. He was 39 when he died. Henry Purcell, the great English composer, was 36 when he died in 1695. (via C-Monster)

Montana
paper collage
(3.8" x 6.2")

This is my last collage from the ten week course I've been taking with Doug Melnyk at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Doug's been great. He was forever humouring me, by telling me that I was doing fine in the course.

I'm probably not a natural collagist. Bleak landscapes somehow are not the obvious subject for collage; but at least I've gotten away from my earlier efforts with red airplanes.

The image was part of a photograph included in a magazine article on Montana. Hence the title of the collage.

• The story of the 1990 Gardner Museum Heist. (Open Letters)
• This has been posted before, but it's well worth repeating. Two lessons for artists: first, how to approach a gallery (edward_winkleman), and second, how not to approach a gallery (Joanne Mattera Art Blog).

Street Lights
oil
61.0 x 91.4 cm (2' x 3') ■


This was done about two months ago in the heart of winter. I hope it conveys the feeling of a winter night.

The lights in scene are along Lyndale Drive in Winnipeg. You can see a bit of the Red River to one side.

• Regina Hackett of the Seattle P-I's now defunct art blog, Art To Go, has moved to the ArtsJournal with a new blog entitled Another Bouncing Ball.
• Seattle journalists lament the demise of the print edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. (Columbia Journalism Review) A positive spin on the development. (The Phoenix Principle)

• Lolita reconsidered, again. (Lapham's Quarterly)
• The real identity of the sitter of the new 'Shakespeare' portrait. (The Times)

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

An enterprising reader of the National Geographic decided to write ' You Suck ' on every second page of one issue. The words somehow seemed appropriate for this collage.

• You might want to think twice before deciding that you will loose ten pounds in eight weeks or that you will earn 12% more this year or give 10% of what you make to charity. (The Boston Globe)
• The love life and bank statements of Paul Valéry. (The Times)

Turban
ink, charcoal, and pastel
17.8 x 11.4 cm (7" x 4.5")

The model for this drawing was one of the artists that I regularly draw with. She donned a makeshift turban for the drawing.

• The true Dr. Strangelove, Terry Southern. (Dissident Voice)
• The ever erudite George Steiner. (The New York Times)

WAG Sculptures

ink, graphite, charcoal, and pastel
15.2 x 20.3 cm (6" x 8")

This drawing was done while waiting in the main floor gallery of the Winnipeg Art Gallery. The sculptures, a Henry Moore and a Jacques Lipchitz, I presume are from the WAG's permanent collection. In the background you can see part of the gift shop.

• Einstein wrong? Say it ain't so. (Scientific American)
• Redesigning Paris. We can wait. (The Guardian)
• Photos of Detroit's decline. (Time) (via C-Monster)
• You had better watch out if you don't come through for Mary Boone. (artnet) (via C-Monster)

Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu : Bapa

Green and Red Boy
charcoal and pastel
45.7 x 61 cm (18" x 24")

It would have been nice to have had a little more time for this drawing. It's not bad the way it is, but a few lighter areas might have helped.

• Boys and girls, did you know that Marc Chagall ended his life as an egotistical monster. As my mother always said, "If you're going to be a monster, best to be an egotistical one." (The New York Review of Books)
• Is China going up or down? Two differing opinions. (National Interest)

• Winnipeg Hydro, an exhibition by Ian August, opens tonight at 8:00 pm at the Urban Shaman Gallery in Winnipeg. (Things of Desire)

Joker
paper collage
12.2 x 17.5 cm (4.8" x 6.9")

It seems better to me not to be offering any explanation for any of these recent collages. In any case I only have a vague idea of what I'm doing with them.

With this collage I will say that I like the two fuzzy lighter patches in the black background quite a bit. They're not entirely accidental.

• How the Havard Business School destroyed the world. (The Times)
• Caravaggio invents the Polaroid. (The Telegraph)
• Little did we know that the decline of western civilization started with Andy Warhol. (There was always something suspicious about Warhol.) (The Guardian)

Thin Girl
ink, charcoal, and pastel
30.5 x 45.7 cm (12" x 18")

The model wasn't crazy about this drawing. It does have some problems: the raised leg is too short, even though it was foreshortened a bit, the nose may be overdone, and the upper arm looks a little weird. Despite these irritations I still like the drawing.

• John Cheever. (The New Criterion)
• Dealer Larry Gagosian is all in, as usual. (The New York Times)

Blue Boy
paper collage
9.4 x 14.0 cm (3.7" x 5.5")

This is one of my more successful collages. It's another minimalist effort, and I think that I may have liked it even better with only one figure, the blue boy.

• An explanation for everything. (The Weekly Standard)
• Down with Facebook. (The Weekly Standard)

Snow Storm on the Red River
oil
22.9 x 30.5 cm (9" x 12")

This is an imaginary winter snow storm on an imaginary Red River. Although the painting was done very quickly, it works for me.

• Beauty. (Prospect)
• Are men really funnier than women? At least we're funnier than Germaine Greer. (The Guardian)

• Women artists? Never heard of such a thing. Just ask director Pamela Tanner Boll. (The Globe and Mail)
• The Winnipeg Art Gallery isn't the only gallery fighting water leaks. Frank Gehry's newly renovated and redesigned Art Gallery of Ontario has its' own moisture problems. (The Globe and Mail)

Brown and White Boy
charcoal and gouache
30.5 x 22.9 cm (12" x 9")

The model was neither brown nor a boy, although that's the way I drew him. And I exaggerated his hair. It kind of stuck up in the air, but not as much as I've indicated.

• Leonardo da Vinci, the great procrastinator. (The Chronicle Review)
• David Hume versus Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the best two out of three falls. (The Barnes & Noble Review)

• Process, featuring the work of Krista Lawson, Kristen Lourie, Ryan Poworoznik, & Dustin Crawford, opens tonight at the cre8ery in Winnipeg. (Things of Desire)

Warehouse
oil
30.5 x 40.6 cm (12" x 16") ■

This painting was done last summer. I had tried scanning it before without much luck. The sky always came out quite blotchy. The problem was solved by spraying a coat of removable matte varnish on the painting, which evened out the sheen coming off of the sky. As a result the blotches more or less disappeared when the image was rescanned.

• Conrad Black on his daily life in prison. (The National Post)
• Are we about to relive the 1930's in art? (The Wall Street Journal)

Iron Cross
paper collage
13.5 x 16.8 cm (5.3" x 6.6")

This is another of the collages that I've been doing at the Winnipeg Art Gallery under the tutelage of the multi-talented Doug Melnyk.

This one is kind of a minimalist collage with only three added elements, and it might have been stronger yet with only two: the two planes.

What's it all about? It's only about what you see, nothing more.

Since our computer has been out of commission for a couple of weeks I'm behind in the news, but I couldn't resist this:

• Lucian Freud is moving up in the art world. He's now doing wine bottle labels. (Not that I wouldn't do the same thing.) (CBC News)

Back Lane at Night
oil
30.5 x 22.9 cm (12" x 9") ■


This back lane is behind our house in Winnipeg. There are usually a couple of cars parked somewhere in the lane. I left them out for no good reason.