Early on in the year I did a B&W, 4.5 x 5, covid inspired print titled ‘Passing Storm’. As we know the ‘storm’ has been what the weather folks would call a ‘very slow moving disturbance.’
When effective vaccines were announced I did a more hopeful, 5.5 x 8 print I’ve titled ‘2012, the view from here.’
Hopefully a bright, cheerful addition will be warranted very soon :- )
I love the incredible solids that engraving allows and I have a ‘thing’ about prints showing falling objects. With this print I indulged myself on both accounts. I named it ‘Night Fall.’
Happy to show you ‘Phoenix,’ the latest work by Maria Moser, our favourite stained glass artist. The photo doesn’t begin to do the myriad of colours and textures justice.
It’s 27″ x 35.5″.
Opening up the economy around here involves wearing a mask in every store/bank/etc: No shirt, no shoes, no mask…no service.
A bit of lino, a t-shirt and now, as I ride off into the sunset I’ll no longer hear “Say, who was that masked man?”
Two engravings done with a multiple line tool on a sample of a material I found just before this lockdown. This one, ‘Passing Storm’ has become my covid-19 print. The other, ‘The Watchers’, is like so many kilometers of Georgian Bay shoreline.
Stretching up the east side of Georgian Bay is an archipelago called the ‘30,000 Islands’. I haven’t counted them but viewed from an airplane it seems there could be that many.
However, if you’re still out in a canoe after dusk the 30,000 become one large, never ending island and good luck finding the island you camped on. That meal you’re longing for is there just waiting to be cooked and eaten :- )
Something new for me. Rather than an engraving, a lithoprint using a ‘Pronto-plate’.
This was a 2 colour trial print titled ‘Shoreline’. Still lots and lots and lots to learn.
A favourite Christmas print, my youngest daughter’s first limited edition. She drew, dad engraved and we pulled a proof. She coloured it in, dad engraved plates for the colours then we printed.
Santa has grown chubbier since then; dad, not quite as much. She’s still quite cute!
It was all happening on paper inside while the cold and storm was happening outside!
One morning I canoed out into a thick fog and down a wide channel towards open water. When I left the channel and headed towards the shore islands slowly began to appear out of the fog. It was quite magical.
This is a 27×14.5 cm, five colour reduction print.
Apparently I’m not the only one who’d rather watch squirrels than mat prints. 
The Archipelago on the east side of Georgian Bay gets its share of rain. This past week we had lots of it and spent many hours under a tarp drawing. We even had a black bear stalk us, moving from island to island around us then sneaking into our camp from behind. My extensive repertoire of bear chasing noises had him leave in a hurry.
A friend told me that at my parents’ Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary he asked my dad what the secret was to being married that long. My dad said that it was ‘Easy, just get married and wait!’
Apparently having a cool newspaper is the same. I bought this fifty years ago (with my pre-kindergarten milk money…honest) and have moved it around all these years.
I can’t imagine thinking about 2019 when I bought it.
I called this ‘Out Of The Wind’ all the time I was working on it but, because I imagined the two people lost in their thoughts at the end of a day, but still very much together, it reminded me of a poem I’d read called ‘Two Solitudes.’
Without any explanation I presented both titles to a few people. They all disliked ‘Two Solitudes.’ I assume that it was a negative thing for them, the two people were angry at each other. Or something.
The poem reads: Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.
Long story short, by the time I got it into ‘Insights’ it was called ‘Out of the wind.’
It’s always a thrill to be accepted into INSIGHTS, a great juried exhibition of multidisciplinary works from many of the region’s best artists.
Opening Reception at The Wellington County Museum on Wednesday, June 19th between 7:00 to 9:00 P.M.
