Inner Critic

Here is an old painting I did probably back in early 2000's when I was using the capital letters for a signature. The scene is an imaginary art gallery containing paintings and sculptures and a character (Colonel Sanders?) who is criticizing the work by saying "Learn how to paint, because Steve Hanks you ain't!". Steve Hanks is a great watercolour painter, he specializes in photo-realism portraits of women and children, and he wrote an article in a watercolour magazine describing how to paint realistic looking skin tones. That article was very useful, I often employ the technique to depict skin tones, as discussed in previous blogs.

10x30" hot press (300lbs), watercolour, 2001?

Programmed to Paint

"Programmed to Paint" is a recent doodleism-style painting made from the doodles done in my notes taken during work, but I swear I was paying attention at the meetings!The title describes one reason why I paint, because I am programmed to paint. If I do not paint for a few days I feel a kind of sadness or the sense of missing something. Perhaps it is better described as an addiction, when you are missing it you feel bad, when you are having it you are feeling normal. Many people say that art is relaxing, a peaceful hobby, but in fact it is quite agitating at times, like feeding a compulsion. When I finish a painting it is more like, ahhh, okay I am good for a few days now.

The technical idea behind this painting was to use a lot of red. Every component except for the tree tops contains red in the colour mixture. Most of it is done as a single layer of paint with accents on top, except for the shadow on the mountain and the honeycomb-like structure on the bottom right, which are done using glazing techniques that I learned from the great book Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Watercolour edited by Appellof. Most watercolour artists have been more traditional in their subjects, my work uses very traditional methods but with surrealist themes. I also paint landscapes when opportunity presents.

15 x 22 " cold press, watercolour, 2015

Never Done (No Idea)

Here is another doodleism painting done from notebook doodles. I called this one "Never Done (No Idea)" for two reasons: because this phrase was in the notebooks- probably in reference to a very long meeting that seemed like it would never end, and because I never seem to be done with the doodleism style. An element of this theme is the broken hourglass that is constantly being filled with sand. My goal is to catch up to the doodles... for instance this painting was done recently in 2015, but the doodles are from 2014. I am making doodles faster than I can turn them into works of art!

The compositions of the doodleism paintings are usually created as the painting is being done, rather than being planned in advance. That is why the horizon line is often disjointed- here you can see a mountain and skyline on the left middle, which turns into a desert as you move right, and then becomes split into two, in fact the perspective changes completely at the top right and bottom right. This occurs because I don't plan it in advance, and because the notebook doodles are independent and have their own compositions, so when I mash them together they appear to be disjointed. Anyways, by now the broken horizon is part of the style, just like the random pine tree and shrubberies. The first instance of doodleism was "The Master of the Margin" which sold in early 2000's, and I suppose "Chem 451 Caged Mind, Lab book #1" would be the first doodleism that was a composite of many doodles, done perhaps in the late 90's and still in my collection.


22x30" cold press, watercolour 2015

Kingston, KOA

Camping means different things to different people, in this camp site just north of Kingston, the size of the RV seems to matter a lot. Many of the RV's were lined up in a field for storage, the colours and shapes made for an interesting  composition. This painting is reminiscent of one I did back in the 90's where there were a row of canoes lined up on the shore in Algonquin park.

Painting on location brings about many risks and rewards. The risk is that you have very little time, and need to capture the scene all in one sitting. Unless of course you plan to come back to the same scene as Monet did with some of his landscapes, or if you plan to use photos and finish the work in the studio. Working outdoors allows you to properly see the colours especially in the shadows, and it gives the 'vibe' of the location which ends up filtering into the painting.

5x8" cold press, watercolour, 2015

Three Small Doodleism Studies

These three paintings were done on a small format, each one is about the size of a postcard. They are based on some doodles from notebooks that I keep at work, these notebooks are filled with a blend of doodles and work-related information such as lab records, ideas, notes from conferences or faculty meetings. The first doodleism paintings done in the early 2000's were based on doodles from my undergradute class notes (for example the very first one called 'Master of the Margin'), and when those doodles ran out I used drawings from my lab books kept as a graduate student, now it is the notes made at the University as a professor (in the sciences though, not fine arts !). They are all 5x7 " Watercolour, 180lbs cold press, 2015. Here are the other two:

Floral Impressions

This was done some time ago, after I had moved out of the student residence and into a shared house where I had the chance to set up a studio in a spare room, and then later in the basement. The 13 impression are the 12 small paintings-within-the-painting, and then the one in the background which makes a bakers dozen of images. It was a transition time when I was moving away from painting florals which had been the mainstay in my early career, and then moving towards the abstract style. Around this time I also painted 'Art vs. Science' which was perhaps the first real abstract-surrealist painting I did, at least that was the one that got it going. There is a similar painting I did more in green hues, and one in red hues, both with 11 impressions and a clean design:

Together, the paintings completed the impressions series. Looking at them now maybe it would be cool to do some new ones.

22x30" watercolour, 300lbs cold pressed, 1996 (?)

The Joker

A few times music has entered my artwork, usually in the form of lyrics of songs that I was listening to at the time. In this painting I was listening to Nirvana and some Beatles... these bands seems miles apart at least in terms of generation, but both bands sung about similar kinds of angst, and of course, love. The drawing was based on doodles from the little notebooks I bring to meetings, probably from 2014 or so. I have started putting the year on the paintings, the number 2015 shows up near the three legged character at the bottom. The meaning of the painting has something to do with that time in my life when I was painting a lot and doing the graduate degree at Western, or maybe high school, I kind of view myself as the joker because I joked a lot and painted all the time, and played lots of Ultimate frisbee.

22x15" watercolour, cold press, 2015