Interior of Souris Valley

Hang Mans Hut

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Creek Bed in Souris Valley

More Landscapes of the Churchill River!

"Little Stanley Rapids" acrylic on wood

"Morning View from Love Island" acrylic on wood

"Robertson Falls" acrylic on wood


Please keep reading and commenting on the Oil Sands Debate below...

Little Landscapes

Its strange to be back in the world of fast food, fast cars, and fast living. I must admit (and how surprised are you really?) that I was more than happy to disapear for awhile. Leave all of this non-sense behind, and commune with nature, to simply enjoy the vast land and silence. It was nice to tend only to immediate needs, to use basic survival skills, to not have a roundabout way of obtaining what is necessary. The one thing I completely despise about our culture is how we are forced to work at jobs we don't really enjoy in order to feed and clothe ourselves. It is true that the lives we lead in Canadian cities are relatively safe and easy and fun, as compared to hunting and gathering all day every day. And I must also admit that I so very much appreciate hot water from the tap and a flushing toilet. After spending almost a week in a tent, I have really come to appreciate the comforts of home. Certainly when I fell ill in the second week I was grateful to be staying in a cabin. I often wonder, though, if something isn't lost when we distance ourselves from the real and chaotic natural world. I just read three thought provoking essays on the subject of Nature by Aldous Huxley. He discusses how often we look to nature as a place to renew our spiritual selves, but he also states that as we personify, humanize, and organize nature through spirituality, religion, and science we forget that the world is not united under human innovation, but is seperate, diverse, and chaotic. "Our direct intuitions of Nature tell us that the world is bottomlessly strange: alien, even when it is kind and beautiful; having innumerable modes of being that are not our modes; always mysteriously not personal,not conscious, not moral; often hostile and sinister;sometimes even unimaginably, because inhumanely, evil." He goes on to state that we need to leave the wildness in nature , to not try to make nature conform to human rules and regulations. Instead we must embrace the "Jekyll-Hyde of nature", and because we are of nature, also of ourselves. I believe that we learned this lesson during the last few days of our trip, when we were confronted with the threat of monstrous thunder storms. It made me think how often some people rely on dumb luck to get us through to the next day. Could you survive if the comforts and relatively easy living of city life were taken away? How would you eat? How would you keep warm? What if you were sick? This is why we live in cities with electricity, grocery stores, hospitals, and people who specialize. In the city it is easy to get help,especially if you have the money. Whereas, in the wild money is useless except as kindling to get a fire started.

Anyway, here are a few "Little Landscapes" that i painted while up north.

"Love Island" acrylic on wood, 5in X 7in, 2007

"Green Rapids", acrylic on wood, 5in X 5in, 2007

"Fisher Rapids", acrylic on wood, 5in X 7in, 2007

aren't you a part of society?

i wish not. but here i am using wireless internet from somewhere nearby to make a blogpost. im a slave to blogging. enjoy these pictures of our canoe trip thus far. heading back out august 1 for five more days!

From my sketch book...

I went to Moose Jaw and Saskatoon today, with my fellow Dunlop co-workers, to visit some of the other fine art galleries in Saskatchewan. It was very interesting, and I discovered that I would really like to work at the Mendel. It is a beautiful gallery, and has many great programs for the public. Anyway, on the way back home I did some sketches of the landscape, this one is my favorite.

Rooster in Flight

Since I started on this rooster commission I've become aware of the various barnyard animal decor available- and there's a lot of it. It's like this weird barnyard decorating cult. Cows, pigs, sheep,and roosters are the four most common animals. You can buy almost anything imaginable with the barnyard animal of your choosing stamped or painted, or molded into the shape of it. I draw the line at barnyard themed wallpaper... thats just unforgivable. Well, I guess this is my contribution to the fine art of Rooster Portraiture. Actually, I would really like to have a real rooster as a pet, along with a few hens, they are pretty interesting creatures. Or maybe I'll just get some of those rooster and hen lawn ornaments instead, with the solar light panels so they light up at night. yeah!

Its a triptych, so here is the left side

middle

rightside

Dream of Losing my Right Eye

In my dream I woke up one day with painfully infected eyes. The skin around my eyes was dark, discolored, and puffy. I examined my eyes in a mirror, opening my eye wider by pulling the top lid up and the bottom lid down with my right thumb and finger. My eye socket became the sole object of focus, and became a cavernous cave. There was horrible brown stringy goop in my cave like eye. When I leaned in to look closer, my right eye fell out into my hand. I was very scared at this point and asked Rob to take me to the hospital. Somehow we were transported there immediately. While waiting for a doctor to look at my eye, I decided that I didn't want my eye to dry out, so i put it in my mouth for safe keeping. Apparently that wasn't a safe place as it squashed in my mouth, pushing out a yellow goo that kinda tasted like egg yolk. I gagged slightly, spit it out, and then it was forgotten. Even though I no longer had a right eye I could still see. My perspective was a little flattened, yet sharper and brighter. The doctor finally looked at the empty eye socket and determined I had gotten some sort of bacterial infection in it. We determined I had picked it up at Regina Beach in the sand.

what the hell? is this supposed to mean something? or is it just a really weird dream...

photos of the storm at mom and dads

the colours of the photographs are real. it was an amazing storm that happened as the sun was setting.

meditation in the park

every sunday (i accidentally wrote sinday, is that a freudian slip?)there is this group of people meditating in vic park. i like to draw them, cuz they sit still for long periods of time and they don't notice that they are being drawn. hee hee hee.

blogger is dead

Hello? lo? lo? lo?

well --
i do believe the blog-o-sphere has been abandoned. where did everybody go? poor old blogger, left for dead, as we chase the latest online fad. but i have not yet given you up. hip-hip- hooray! here are some images of Meenos and Jane, and a site-specific painting!

Souris Valley

Psychedelic Trees...

Picnic in Souris Valley

A fun time was had by all!
Note the "Toxic Twizzlers" in the foreground of the last pic... Six disgusting mushy flavours: Tainted Tuna, Putrid Purple, Sultry Salmon, Gangreen Green, Citris Pee (AKA Vitamin P), Radioactive Orange (AKA Racist Halloween)...

pile of pups, a gang of cocks, and one duck

here are some sketches/commissions that i am doing for other people. Aunt Alva enjoyed the sketch of Jayjay so she asked me to do one of Freddy (thats Jayjays ass-end in the pic). Also working on some Rooster portraits, so here are some preliminary sketches for the commission...




in other news, came home today and found a duck on the front lawn. pretty cool, it's not everyday you find a duck chillin out on your front lawn. there were also some kids running around so i gave them some bread to feed the duck. I think they scared the poor duck more than anything.
and, yes i did say a gang of cocks...

Happy Be-lated Earth Day!

OH how could i forget! But really everyday should be Earth day!

So in honour of Earth day I would like to urge everyone to do SOMETHING to help out the earth. Pick up some garbage, start composting, have a meat free day (cow farms produce a huge amount of greenhouse gasses), take the transit, carpool, foot-it, plant a tree and just talk to others about how they can make a difference. Lets get some dialogue going.

here is a topic that you can talk about around the water cooler...
Inform people about bottled water. ITS A FARCE! DON"T BUY IT!

Bottled water, although often advertised as glacier or spring fresh is more often just reprocessed municipal water. Basically it is water transformed into... water! Advertising campaigns of bottled water use fear tactics to sell you their purified water, promising that their water is cleaner than tap water. This is just not true. Tap water must go through multiple purifying systems to make it suitable for human consumption and it is constantly tested and monitored. There is nothing wrong with your tap water. There is evidence that bottled water has contained such things as pesticides, arsenic, and mercury. Bottled water companies do not go through the same rigorous testing that municipal water does.

Have you ever heard the idea that you should drink at least 8 glasses of water a day? I thought this was true until I saw it in a bottled water add telling me that this product (aquafina) was a good way to reach that goal. Think about this, you pay much less for tap water than bottled water, but sadly the bottling companies pay even less for access to your municipal water. Why then is a bottle of water upwards of $2.00?
Bottled water is a lucrative business that tries to convince the consumer that bottled water is environmentally friendly and good for you. (Take the Healthy choice,as Culligan water says)

Bottle water companies are taking your water away from you and increasing the price drastically for the same water. Access to clean water should be a universal human right. Speaking of which, Coca-cola extracts about 1.5 million liters of water a day from groundwater in Planchimada, Kerala from which the local farmers and citizens use. Nestle is responsible for drying up the Magnesiana in Brazil.

The bottles themselves are a threat to our environment. The waste produced by the bottles is staggering and they are ending up in our landfills. Yes you can recycle the bottles, but why make them when they are not necessary in the first place? Recycling is not the end solution to the problem of excess waste, it is just one answer. Also the trucks needed to drive the product to the consumer are not environmentally friendly.

I was trying to find out the names of water bottling plants around Regina, I was told there are many, but I could not receive a list of them. I will keep trying.Be aware that there are companies bottling our municipal water.

Most of this information I gleaned from a book called "Inside the Bottle: An Expose of the Bottled water Industry" found at the RPL. If you Google Bottled Water, though you will find many sites dedicated to informing citizens about the Bottled Water Industry.

here are some to get you started
http://www.polarisinstitute.org
http://www.snopes.com/medical/myths/8glasses.asp

A Weekend Trip to Winnipeg...

Hey all,
here is a sketch I did of my Aunt Alva's extremely adorable dog JayJay. Sigh, tomorrow is the last day of our trip, and i have to say it was quite fun but far too short. Today I saw the coolest marsh creature that had the whole family stumped. It looked like a really long, skinny worm. It was about 16 inches long, and really most people would mistake it for a piece of dark grass, but i happened to catch it moving. it had no discernable head and no segments. just one looooong wormy thing, but not squishy like a worm. very odd, i shall be researching this further...
AHA! i did a little research, and it didn't take long to find out that it is called a Horsehair Worm.
it is a kind of nematode which is harmless to humans. it's only parasitic to small creatures such as crickets.

Winnipeg's downtown is probably the most interesting city center I have seen in all my travels, architecture wise. (I have to say that Times Square in NY was the most terrifying. Koln, Germany the most romantic and mythic.) Rob and I had a great day exploring downtown Winnipeg, visiting some of our favourite Winnipeg stores... but it wasn't quite the same without staying at the Roslyn apartments and having Mark be our personal tourguide:) But instead of staying with Mark we stayed at my big brothers house. Spent a lot of time with my brother Aaron and his two beautiful girls; which entails being bossed around by a 4 year old, but really how can i resist?

Also Went to the WAG and experienced baroque paintings. very dramatic paintings, they use a lot of symbolism and vanitas/still life imagery. but the painting style was very inspiring. A combination of realism and the added touch of a few choice areas being really painterly, so that you could see the movement of the artists paintbrush (it wasn't all slick with thin transparent coats of paint like most dutch paintings).

this isn't the best example of what i am trying to explain, but i did really enjoy this painting. the monks clothing was amazing.

But alas, its back to work (if you can call it that) on monday. and also how did that dress-as-an-emokid party go? sorry i missed it!! (i'm secretly an emo kid)

Up North

Meenos

BUGS!

I have just discovered the most amazing site ever www.whatsthatbug.com. the bug pictured above is called a sun spider, and "is harmless unless you are a small arthropod". This humorous and informative site has amazing photos of crazy critters, bug love, and unnecesary carnage. At first you may feel a bit squeamish, but after looking at bugs for awhile you may start to appreciate their buggy beauty.

I recently read a book about earthworms. fascinating creatures that seem so delicate and weak, but over hundreds of years can change the face of the planet. Also did you know that there are no worms native to canada? All worms are introduced species (hitching rides in potted plants and bottoms of shoes)
Apparently Darwin believed that worms had a certain amount of intelligence. He tested them on their ability to bring paper triangles into their burrows. Strange but true. i am starting to read his paper now, and you too can read it here The Formation Of Vegetable Mould Darwin is pretty easy to read, so give it a go and you too may be sucked into the vastly interesting topic of worms.

A lesson is to be learned here. just because bugs look frightening, does not mean you should squish them. most bugs are harmless to humans. learn to appreciate them and a whole new world will open up to you.

In Memory of Pearson

I'm sorry to say that I must share some sad sad news. Our family dog, Pearson, was hit by a car on the highway and died. Such a silly yellow dingo dog, I remember bringing him home when he was just a puppy from the neighboring farm, all ears and tail. He always greeted me when I came home with a hop and a perpetual wagging tail. Even after I left home, Mom would say that Pearson would wait at the driveway for the school bus to stop, and was confused when it just drove by. You were a great lovable friendly grinning dog, and we will all miss you.
Rest in peace, pup.

Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high

Reading Rainbow!! todays reading rainbow book is...

Inventing the Future: Reflections on Science, Technology and Nature by David Suzuki

In this book, Suzuki discusses issues such as ethics and morals in science, animal rights, genetics and society, pros and cons of technology, science and military (which he calls an “unholy alliance”), the war between economics and ecology, environmental issues (de-forestation being a large topic), politics and the environment, science education in elementary to university, and alternate world views such as aboriginal ideology.

Obviously he is speaking through his bias as an environmentalist, but Dr. Suzuki is also a scientist (geneticist), and an educator. He understands that we have become complicit in our destruction. We are stuck in a cycle of mass consumerism and mass waste, unable and possibly unwilling to change because we have already invested so much of our life in a certain path. He talks about the subtle relationships found within many issues but he also states that often economics and politics are blind to these subtleties and only ask what is profitable.

He proposes that change must be made in the way we view our relationship to nature, in that we are not above it, but part of the Earth and its symbiotic cycles. We must realize that clean air, water, forests, and wildlife is priceless and cannot be reduced to monetary value as economics would like us to believe. (I love the part when he talks about breaking down humans into base components, and that we could be sold for a few hundred dollars each. Is that really all human life is worth? The answer is no.) He has hope that if we teach our children to love nature (bugs included), rather than fear or abhor nature,then the future leaders of our world will choose technologies that will not harm the Earth- if there is anything left.

this is a grossly condensed blurb of the book, don't take my word for it, read it yourself! Its an easy read, but it is smart, funny, and thought provoking. If you like to read his newspaper column, you'll enjoy this book as it is in the same writing style.


I found this book at the Regina Public Library, and right now it is on the display shelf in front of the Dunlop Art Gallery. One of the best perks of my job is the time to read and stock the display shelf with books that pertain to the show (this show is about economics and ecology). Right now I am stocking it with books about global warming (pro and con), environmental issues, how to save the planet, books about reducing, reusing, and recycling, books about environmentally friendly products, eco heroes, and on and on and on. If nothing else, this is a way for me to spread the word, that we can make changes to our life styles that really isn't much of an effort.

Ice & Fire Carnival

Hey all
As you may or may not know, I participated in this years Ice & Fire Carnival. Myself, and two colleagues Chad and Fazail, created a fabulous sherbert snow fort for the people to enjoy. Apparently over 7,000 people attended the event which is an amazing turnout for Regina. I hope that I will be invited back to carve next year as it was a great experience, even if our sculpture turned out to be a pastel floral bunker. oh well, the kids sure enjoyed climbing on it!

pictures of carnival

Katzenauge