Gallery M in Cambridge
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THIS THURSDAY!!! July 23 at Gallery M in Cambridge there’s a great opening. Wonderful Gallery, nice people, great Art. You’re invited.In Flanders Fields
One hundred years ago one of Guelph’s better known sons, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, a soldier, physician and poet wrote ‘In Flanders Fields.
As part of exhibitions marking the occasion the Guelph Museum is hosting a juried exhibition of related artworks. My print ‘The Survivors’ was one of the artworks chosen.
To me the war conjures up visions of more than poppies and crosses. I envision the other casualties of war, of the long lines of refugees and of wounded soldiers returning to their homes. I see the shells of buildings and a landscape badly scarred.
My print was for those people who, having survived, were now ready to move forward towards a sparse landscape but one with a promise of better things to come.
The poem reads as follows:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields. .
Sentinel
At the moment, what I like about this print is the total absence of snow. Perhaps even more is that it reminds me of a sunny afternoon sitting on a huge rock with a friend drawing rocks and trees and water and rocks and trees and water, but mostly enjoying the sun.
Snow at Starkey’s
Outside the wind chill makes it feel like -30C. I’m back inside now, huddled over my mac for warmth and wondering why my ancestors paid good money for passage from England to this frozen real estate when they could have just stolen a loaf of bread and been given a free trip to warm, sunny Australia.
I spent a (much warmer) day last March wandering around a bush near here sketching the aftermath of a snow storm. This three colour print is from one of the sketches.
Northern Morning
No matter how nice an air mattress I drag along when I’m camping I wake up about 4:30 – 5:00 am then turn from side to side to side like a rotisserie, trying to get comfortable. I never do so I get up. The upside is that I have lots of drawings done in the early morning calm. I liked the tree in this sketch and so, pining for the north, so to speak, engraved it. It’s 6.5×9 with five tones of grey ink on Stonehenge paper.
Backyard
There’s a voyeur aspect to train riding that I like; mile after mile after mile of backyards. If you were on the right train you’d see mine. I did the drawing last summer but changed it to a winter scene to cover up all the stuff that was scattered about and to spare me the pain of engraving tree leaves. The lazy way to clean up a yard.
Cedars and rocks and cedars and…
As you move away from the mainland to the edge of eastern Georgian Bay the pines give way to cedars and vast expanses of rock ground smooth by glaciers. I spent a few days canoeing, enjoying the sun, doing ink washes of cedars and trying not to scratch multiple spider bites.
Outer Fox islands
A quick oil as the sun was going down. This was in The Outer Fox Islands, a beautiful collection of islands on Georgian Bay.
Love the name ‘Outer Fox Islands.’
Ball
One of a number of ‘falling’ shapes that I’ve engraved. This image on this one is 15×22, printed in three colours on Stonehenge paper.
…almost show time.
All set up and ready for Saturday’s opening. This show is a mix of Abstract and landscape, the abstracts being the larger portion, and size.
Summer storm
This is one of the only engravings I’ve done from a photo; it
shows my brother watching the rain when we were supposed to be bringing in hay. I was working on it 19 years ago today then I took my daughter trick or treating, got sick and stayed off work for a week. I remember all of this because 1: I thought I’d use that stay at home time to finish the engraving and screwed it up so badly I started over and 2: I quit smoking.
It’s a good thing I dated it, I’d forgotten how long it’d been:-)
Dusk on the French River
As it happens, I have better luck sitting beside rivers drawing than sitting beside rivers fishing. I always end up with a drawing. The evening I drew this was incredibly quiet but for the sound of large hungry fish jumping out of, and splashing back into, the river. Alas, alack, I had no fishing pole, only a sketch pad.
This is a monoprint, not really a print; more like painting with a printing press.
Foggy Island
I canoed out into a foggy waterway some years ago and have made a couple of attempts at making a print of the experience. The best I seem to do is to show one frame of what should be a movie. It looks foggy but nothing is emerging out of, nor disappearing into, the mist.
New Day
After a couple days of warm Spring weather it is snowing again. I posted this as a reminder that warm weather is on its way.
From inside this heavily shaded woods the sunlight pouring through the trees seemed absolutely brilliant. And warm:-)
The ‘black’ is actually violet but looks more naturally black than black ink did; a trick I borrowed from oil painters.
The Walls we build
‘The Walls we build’ was an observation; it seemed so clear when I saw it in someone else. After it was all done I started to realize that that my walls were just as high but, apparently, harder to see from this side.
clive lewis, printmaker 