Painting!

Wonderfully ambiguous image. I don't have a poem or anything written about this one. I could read a lot into this picture and I could tell you... but I'll leave it up to you. How does this portrait make you feel?

Life Drawing at UVIC

Awesome model. She did some very unusual and difficult poses. Also, crazy thin and bony hips!
I thought this semester was going to feature male models. I could use some for Vulnerability. Oh well, time to set up the mirrors and pulleys! ha ha



Charcoal on newsprint.

She Used To Pine All Day and All Night

New version of this painting

Black atmosphere
dark storms return
like waves crashing into her mind
her memory plagues her
she can't let things go because they have fixed themselves
welded into her shadows
dark light eminating from within
sad and defeated
life is spent
empty and hollow
she gave so much to others in vain
withering
and shuddering
tremble
tremor in her heart
bleed into her stomach
and drowns her appetite
wasting, decaying
frozen in a loop
repeat
a grain of hope is enough to keep her there
trapped
as her world falls around her
she holds onto her pain
comforting now
bitter sweet

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.

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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.