A lot of great Art and Artists in Elora next weekend, July 8 & 9. Cool downtown complete with The Elora Brew Pub to visit after the show if, perchance, you feel like imbibing a local brew or buying one for a (somewhat) local printmaker.
A few posts ago I had a sketch of some rock in the north end of the Georgian Bay; here’s a nine colour, 9×12 engraving from that sketch. Sit still long enough to sketch and birds come by, turtles, lizards and snakes poke their heads out from hiding and, usually, an enormous ant takes a bite of some bit of exposed butt cheek.
This barn, one of Ontario’s ubiquitous bank barns, was in the middle of a field on a sideroad way, way out in the country. It looked quite safe from developers’ bulldozers.
The print is one of a series of larger barn prints, this one is matted to 14×23. The barn was red, honest!
Most printmakers show progressive prints as a sort of educational/interest thing, I’m doing it just to get a bad pun out of my head and into the subject line.
It feels better already.
It must be February, the winter seems never ending so I haul out the sketchbooks and imagine myself doing lichen impressions on a rock in Georgian Bay or thereabouts. This is one such rock in one of my reflective moods.
This gallery contains 10 photos.
Georgian Bay conjures up visions of pines bent from the incessant wind but the very edge of the Bay is populated by tough little cedar trees that somehow defy some very nasty winter winds to grow in little or, seemingly, no earth.
A week camping and canoeing through the Georgian Bay archipelago brushes stress away like a broom through cobwebs. Perfect canoe weather with lots of sun and more sun and even more sun. 
If you’re around St Thomas between this Friday, November 27 and December 24th you can enjoy seeing the Group Show in Illuminé Gallery. If you’re there this Friday between 7:00 -9:00 pm. you’re welcome to drop in, meet the Artists and enjoy the Opening Night festivities.
After visiting the cheek to jowl State campgrounds in New York and Pennsylvania in August, it was a treat to canoe out into the peace and quiet of northern Georgian Bay’s archipelago.
At some point in the past some really, really, strong individuals arranged a few really, really, massive stones into a fireplace complete with seating with, of course, a wonderful view. The sketch was an attempt to capture the tangle of trees on the opposite shore.
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. .
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.
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.
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.
