our kiss

our kiss lingers
lip marks bruise on pale and unexposed skin
bite marks on my breast plate

remembrance and memory
fading more everyday, like a fog
lifting
shifting
bending to whatever shape eases my heart

but I can feel your teeth and tongue on my psyche
I can taste you in the deepest darks of my senses
your sweat and saliva and juices
nourishing the obsession that lurks behind my eyes

Summit Park

"Lonesome fools make lonesome walls to cry behind and to hide behind... but I'm not one.
I'm hurting babe but I can't hide... cuz I'm not one."

Garry Oaks meadow, Summit Park, Victoria, BC
Pen and ink

New Painting

She Used to Pine All Day and All Night

The lastest canvas in the Vulnerability series (which will be exhibited in October in Qualicum Beach). In the new year, there will be male models to draw from so I hope to include some male figures into the series: we're Vulnerable too lol... and not just me!

Patience is a Virtue 02

Brought the image into colour. 1st version was too abstract. 2nd version was too benign.3rd (and final) version using palette knife application of oils and graphite chunk to incise the lines.
Potential? Not sure yet... this is one of those ones that I won't see its merit until a few months later.

She sits and waits
blood boiling, lips quivvering
white knucled hand clutching hope
what is to come?
will it come?
godammit! when will it come!

Patience is a Virtue

Working title for a new piece I'm working on.

 Makes me think of the song "Better Man" by Pearl Jam about a woman who lies awake at night waiting for her lover to come home. He stumbles in at 4am and she's gearing herself up to let him have it... but she internalizes it because she's afraid to be alone.
Is patience a virtue? Or is it a curse?

Artist Statement In Progress

What: A series of paintings on the theme of emotional fragility.
An obsession pertaining to the tragic when it comes to love. Memories set into the sand in hopes that the sea of time will wash them away. Fragments of the turbulent time of letting go of a love that burned so brightly but was cut short. Hopes and dreams mourned. Remembrance and reverie of happy times, the guilt of the path not taken, brutal attacks on self-image/concept. A glimmer of redemption in the knowledge that everything happens for a reason.
Who: Figures from: life, imagined, photographed, magazine ads, and invented.
Poses used to re-enact the memories. Found images that gave shape to ideas slowly congealing in the darkness.
When: Over the past year, life changes have precipitated self-reflection and introspection.
Solitude brings the inner voice to the forefront.
Where: The figures are interwoven into the flat or shallow space of the picture plane.
The scene in which the figures exist are imagined and remembered: they do not really exist, they are ghosts. They do not live and breathe so they are in a shallow space.
Why: I was compelled to create these works for two reasons: a) therapeutic and cathartic to tell the story of the loss of a great love and b) intrigued by the play of positive and negative forms created by overlapping lines.
My intention was to release these memories to ease the pain but found that the theme is timeless and universal.
How: Charcoal contour lines are combined with patches of oil colour applied with a brush and palette knife.

306

I haven't been keeping regular posts for quite a while now. I would like to start doing this again. Now that I've got a new place to live, I can start making more artwork and have new work to post. This new place symbolizes my new chapter: P's Path to Provence. I liken my move to this new city to that of Paris. I've got a flat downtown and the side streets are great for flanneuring. My flat is one bedroom and cute with a nice kitchen. There's enough space for me to set up my easle. I'll have to work out a storage area for the mountain of paintings I have. I should get on having an art sale and make a few bucks for moving costs etc.

More on vulnerability

she's slipped out of my grasp
but i had to loosen my grip
or i would have lost us both
my hands are strong
but my grip was too tight, too soon

if i could do it again
i'd have let go... long ago
that way i could see if she'd come back

now she only stays, tolerates my company
inertia, comfort, support
familiar is all i am to her now

and on my behalf
its been a struggle not to marvel in her loveliness
and spritely being all day, everyday
i have to hold my heart close to my chest
lest it get burned
the body i'd worship
has little tenderness for me
just a cheap thrill now

wilted oriental lily
cut too short at the stem
drank the vase dry
and when there was no chance to get more
it dried

Vulnerability

Detail of a new painting of mine.
Working title is "Taking Place Among the Shadows"
I don't have a good full length photo of it but I think that it might be the poster child of my series about vulnerability.
I've been learning alot about art since i've been studying art history. My art is not political, avant guard, socially conscious, iconoclastic or shocking. What it represents are small fragments of the conditions of my life. Some of these are universal... I'm the kind of artist that represent the mundane in a new and interesting way. I bend the language of art to express my daily life. Sometimes I'm successful and other times, it's like a bad hair day in paint (thanks for the analogy Chip Kidd). But I'm always encouraged by my efforts and the ones who love me. I will keep digging.

touch wood

another chapter begins
going to be packing up from ladysmith and nanaimo
and heading out to victoria
where i’m going to start my fabulous new job as a book designer
quit my remedial print shop job (although it paid the bills)
leaving behind a few friends but hopefully they’ll come along too
it’s sad and reflective
and full of hope and fear
uncertainty and expectation
it’s growth

apple and rice medley

having left over dinner
in the cafeteria
alone

this doesn't faze me (okay maybe a little)
i've been here many times
at various stages in life

i know that this is forward motion
even if it feels, looks, and tastes like loneliness

i can overhear young people
talking about their young troubles
cellphones, boys, random subject class assignment
spirited monologues about the night before or the drama at so-and-s0's party
could be only one person talking for all i know

i try to participate in socializing
at least try to look up
and smile (a dead giveaway of the alone)

i don't "belong" here
i don't fit in
but i'll endure it because art study is my life blood!

Post Coital Hum

your skin glows
and velvet
grainy aura
diffuse
aura exhales nimbus cloud
from every pore
sweet smell
giddy, dizzy, complete
lazy sleep
slipping in and out
brought back by your voice

feb 09

Oil Pastel and turps on paper.
and some graphite
12" by 18"

Nurture

I’m feeling the need to return to my core.

Someone I hold in high esteem said to me that I’m an old master. There is a stillness to my work. Like the figures are posing.. The fact that my figures seem to be still is unnerving to me actually. I want my figures to have that latent energy/tension as in Michelangelo’s or Rodin’s sculpture. Studies of Rodin? Perhaps when I get proper training in contemporary or abstract art, I’ll be able to go in that direction more convincingly… or perhaps my old master methods can be applied in a contemporary way

 

I’m noticing something about myself. The more I get away from naturalism, the more I want to return to it.

 

I’m also experience a return to myself brought on by circumstantial solitude. I went for a walk on the seawall last night and watched the Gabriola ferry come into port. I felt like Pete again… or refreshed or nourished or something. Standing there, leaning on the railing, I thought about how blessed I am. I thought about the friends that I walked here two summer’s ago. I had a lot of fun going for my weekly walks with my dancer friend. Summer afternoon walks with my best friend. Enchanted my sweetheart here. I thought about how great it is to be here on the island and not desperately alone in Brandon. My life has changed so much in these past few years… i can hardly keep up. My heart gets so full at times.

“My good heart”.

 

Art History thoughts

In my art history night class we are learning about the High Renaissance. I've never really been all that into Renaissance art simply because it seems to decadent. This distaste is probably more attributed to the complex and intellectual visual language being used. I'm naturally more attracted to expressionism. Simpler images with more psychological impact.
But when my prof showed us the slide of Michelangelo's "David" I was blown away. At first glance, I was blaze... another beautiful male nude yap yap... but look at the building tension in his muscles (hmmm) notice the weight shift to the one leg (ahh) look at the furrowed brow on our biblical hero (maybe not so confident, concerned to saythe least) look at the veins in his hands (marble is given flesh-like qualities, holy crap). And the coolest thing is that David implies Goliath. You are expecting to see this huge 40 ft man in armour down the hall or something. Quite a revelation.



It was good to hear a non-sinister explanation of the Mona Lisa too. Although I gotta say that Leonardo is kind of a charletan! An artist doesn't just come up with ideas (albeit ideas of the genius variety) but also sees the work through to completion. Not finishing it and saying that you lack the ability to complete is just letting yourself off the hook! If this were true or absolute, no art would ever get made. You are a master today. Today is the only day your work gets done. Oversimplified? Yes. Perhaps this is because my art unfolds through trial and error and lots of perserverance so I can relate more to Michelangelo more than Leonardo. Maybe this is observation is telling me that I need more inspired ideas... or that my art lacks that spark... but has all the perserverance of a glacier.



Is my art boring?
Yikes!
I'm going to go crawl under my table and hide now.

Ebb and Flow

the final piece.
a mere dabble in the world of abstraction.
decent success... perhaps later on i'll be able to revisit.

for now, i'm knee deep in colour study for my night class... work in progress



oil pastels: bright luminous colour caused by the complementary shading technique?
adding green for shadows to a red blocking in of colour (in the case of an apple). creates interesting greys and browns. accentuate with colour echoes from the surrounding objects, a little blue in the deepest/most receding part of the forms. playful use of green and blues.
van gogh, cezanne
warm and cool modelling of form...
should be an interesting symester.

The Pain of Growth

Growing pains.
The idea that your old habits and thoughts no longer fit into who you are now or who you've become. The lament for your older self: you're brighter, more energetic, everyone loves you self. The self with a light hearted happy go lucky sense of possibility.
But our memory fails us... time and time again. Always thinking that the past was always more fun and easy. It was just as hard then as it is now.
That's the paradox that we all must face. The tragic comedy of life.
If you're not growing however, you must be dieing. And which is worse? Which is better?
Hopefully, you can say to yourself with truth and clarity that you've found happiness and laughed and loved... even for a short while.

On hold

Looks like I'll have to put the Tides series on hold for awhile. Taking a few night classes at VIU in drawing and art history = not a lot of extra time to squeeze in some art making. I guess we'll see... but for now au revoir.