resistance to persistence

Emily Carr: New Perspectives on a Canadian Icon

this saturday, the “Emily Carr: New Perspectives on a Canadian Icon” exposition opens at the Art Gallery of Ontario. I’ve been invited to a preview opening event this week. I really appreciate being invited to events like this. I’ll post some notes from the show later in the week.

Be sure to check out the exhibit before it closes on May 20, 2007.

Image property of Robert Vanderhorst.

I took a quick look at a gallery show down the street from my office on my lunch break. I saw it advertised last year, but never made it to there. Robert Vanderhorst is a surreal painter and has an exhibit called Two Artists at King & Jarvis. If you attend in the evening, there’s musical accompanyment by Nash the Slash. I really like surreal art and when I saw a review on this last year, I knew I couldn’t pass it up. The Canadian references in his paintings are nice to see and there are also some witty paintings such as “The Model Maker“, a homage to Vermeer’s painting style - a self portrait of Vanderhorst building a model airplane. The show is on for another couple of days…go see it. It’s free if you go during the day.

I’ve been a huge fan of Salvador Dali since the late 80’s when I started discovering oil painting. I’ve followed a lot of his work. In my 2nd last year of highschool I did a replica of one of his works and I spent 150 hours and it was my first oil painting. It still hangs in my house to this day and is my proudest painting. It’s Autumn Cannibalism and can be seen here.

This May on my honeymoon, my wife and I visited the Salvador Dali museum in Figures, Spain. Very interesting to see. I’d always dreamed of seeing it and I’m glad I did. Although I was disappointed with the number of works there. Not a lot of his very popular works are housed there. I believe most are in the Dali museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. I’ll have to make it there next. One of my favorites was there and it was a massive ceiling mural.

You can view many of his works here…Galleries of Salvador Dali Works

This weekend turned out pretty good. Friday night I went out for some drinks with the guyz. Came home and played some Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. I’m addicted to this game. It’s been seriously cutting into my sleeping time, but I’ve been toning it down lately. And I can’t believe how graphic the game is. I expected some mature themes, but there’s a part where you buy a movie studio and start making x rated films and there’s some off-camera action…let’s say it’s explicit. Anyways…Saturday we woke up, read the paper for a bit. We (Jenn & I) wandered around the “fashion district” of town in -20deg weather. It was freezing. We ended up buying a bunch of art supplies including another easel. We were out for the entire afternoon walking back & forth to the same stores repeatedly checking out prices. Went for some Thai food. Home for a couple hours to warm up before going to the movies. Chicago…not my cup of tea. I was suprised because I actually enjoyed Moulin Rouge and Romeo & Juliet when I didn’t think I would. But Chicago had too much singing without action. I actually took a couple naps between scenes. I did wake up to see Lucy Liu’s scene…couldn’t miss that.

Today (Sunday) was a day of art. Jenn & I set up at my place and painted from 3 till midnight. I finished my first painting since I completed my art course. I’m very impressed with the results. I’ll be hanging this one up for sure. Once I get my photos of the painting developed, I’ll be posting them on my portfolio page as well. Bedtime now…work tomorrow morning.
posted on 1/20/2003 12:39:00 AM