Advanced Painting Group Show @ The Port Loggia Gallery

Ok ready..? Post number two!





My advanced painting class held an amazing group show November 18th at the Port Loggia Gallery. The show was of only site-specific work. Specific that is to the NSCAD Port campus. The result was some really interesting and provocative work.

My piece focused on the wood paneling that can be found throughout the building, as well as the light and shadows that are projected on them. I decided to replicate the strong light cast on the panels by the pot lights above them. I tried to make a painting that wasn't obviously a painting. I wanted the viewer to really have to look for it. I installed blue tape throughout the space to help conceal the painting itself and the result was successful. Many people needed to walk through the space several times before they spotted the large four by six foot panel. Others missed it entirely.

Check it out!














Talk to you soon!

At Long Last..!

Hello Everybody!

I have been awful... I have not updated this in over three months. Bad bad bad..! But I'm here now, and that's what counts. I think I'm going to put up a couple posts.. to make up for lost time.

The summer finished with a group show in the fourth floor studios at NSCAD, a heat wave and a hurricane! Altogether awesome! Below is the last painting I finished this summer..





Then school started.

The semester has been crazy, busy and exciting. Lots of painting and lots of trying to figure out what direction I'm going in. The first group of paintings I produced, (more explorations of the figure), I hated and still HATE. It was discouraging to say the least. I decided it was time to get focused. I put my portraits on the back burner and went head-first back into patterns. This is what I ended up with..





Afterward, I began work on a large abstract piece that has been challenging and is still a work in progress. I keep coming back to it and it's been refreshing been thrown so far out of my comfort zone.. pictures soon!

Ok. That's enough for this post!

Portraits and Vacations..

Having just gotten home after two glorious weeks off I am feeling rested and in a highly productive mood. Pre-vacation not so much..
The thing about painting things your not very familiar with, (for me that would be portraits), is that it's long, frustrating and you're not always satisfied with the result. I'm starting to get the hang of it.. I think. That being said, I will be taking a small break from faces and switching to inanimate objects, my preferred subject matters.

Here are some of my attempts at the faces..

















See you all soon..

The End of Spray. For Now.

Spray class is officially over. Above are the last few pieces I worked on. It was good while it lasted, but now...
...Now time for my own work. There are no assignments, no deadlines and no enforced guidelines. I have the entire rest of the summer to practice whatever I want. It's awesome.
I have begun working on a series of portraits. I am so far only painting from photographs, and these source images will be mainly pulled from fashion magazine editorials. I need to practice faces. Badly. The plan is to combine portrait studies with some of the techniques I learned in Spray.. but we'll see where this takes me.

I'm excited.

The garden sprayer has taken over my life..

New series I've started.. not quite sure how I'm feeling about it yet.

..but I do know one thing:

I'm in love with the garden sprayer. I'm slowly getting better at controlling it and it's definitely the one thing I will use as much as possible after Spray class is over. That and aerosol cans. Luckily neither of those two methods require any compressed air. Woohoo!

Numero Uno

So time to start a blog I guess..

For those of you that don't know me, I'm a painting student working, studying and living in downtown Halifax. I've decided I should start sharing my work with more people than my immediate family, teachers and classmates... and what better way than through the big black hole that is the internet. Here we go..

I'm currently taking one studio class this summer. It's called Spray and, like the name indicates, we're learning alternative methods for laying down paint.. No brushes allowed. So far I've gotten to play with garden sprayers, pneumatic spray guns, air-brushing and now, aerosol cans. The whole thing has been fun... and quite a leap from the oil paintings I've been working on lately.

The above are some images of stuff I came up with in spray.