LE STUDIO

TURKEY DAY, SHMURKEY DAY

Amongst the delicious gluttony that this weekend allows and invites, I want to offer some humble words of thanks in amongst the crapulent voracity, canned cranberries and second helpings.

I have to preface this by saying that this is about Canadian Thanksgiving. For my American kin, I realize that you have your day later in the year and it involves more floats than we usually use. I can assure you its the same day/ritual schematic; Mom makes the bird and you watch football and have the same fight with your father that you always have and you get bored waiting for dinner and you get bored watching football so you drink some more and find yourself telling your brother in law why nobody in the family likes him. The house smells great but you teeter on that psychotic razor edge that is I've had enough to drink, thank you and one more sip and I am going to throw the gravy boat through the television.
Besides being what can be described as a veritable harvest of hurt feelings. Thanksgiving is also the slut of the Holidays. With her secular roots and buckle shoes she teases us with promises of breasts , legs and thighs. And butter soft sweet nothings serenading us about handmade stuffing, not to mention the half-a-chub we get by the mere suggestion of that fowl menage a trois, the turducken.

And even a blind man knows that sometimes pie means more than 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164.

Thanksgiving is the only day off that dares you to unbutton your pants. In fact Thanksgiving is hurt if you don't. Even Valentines Day makes you buy it a box of chocolates first.

Wait...what was my point?

junus raro stomachus vulgaria temnit as old Horace said

EXHIBIT A

I woke up, not only aware of, but wondering if today, 10 10 10, had any significant numerical uh, significance. I'm sure its lucky for the Chinese in some way. I love their food.

Perhaps unbeknownst to us this date, 10 10 10 is a key that's about to set off a chain of events that eventually leads to the end of days. No wait I think 2012 has the rights on that story.

(clunky segue)

And 2012 is all terrifying and all but strictly if you look at it from a Gregorian point of view. I mean today is always today...maybe except for tomorrow when its yesterday. But the Mayan today, their October 10 2010 is Long Count = 12.19.17.13.17; tzolkin = 7 Caban; haab = 10 Yax. Try finding that shitter on a Hallmark card.

And the Julian calender; a sexy little number first introduced by Julius Ceaser (of salad fame) after deep consultation with astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria suggests its the 27th of September 2010. Of course we can forgive the Romans for a few lost weekends, amid all the road building, orgies and knifing sometimes day turns into night, and besides, what happens in Gaul, stays in Gaul.

Ab urbe condita

...wait what were we talking about?

I figure something I could do was start a painting and show you its progress. Maybe I can update with photos....And you thought watching a pot boil was boring. But here....we go....here is the painting. I have what at best can be described as a working title but its still so green that I want to hold onto it for one more day.
This is the canvas hanging on my studio wall.

Now what?

This painting will be evidence of this process so I am going to start with the idea of it being an Exhibit A.

To be continued...

(cue music)

end credits.

THE F WORD

I am a meander-er. I thought that was probably pretty important to let you know considering what this blog is ostensibly about. And just what is a meander-er I don't hear you ask? Beyond Webster's ubiquitous ...it's a circuitous journey with no fixed blah blah blah...a meander-er is like a procrastinator but with purpose. Whereas the procrastinator puts off today what he doesn't want to do tomorrow. A meander-er will get it done...eventually. (Get used to that word) It's just that first the meander-er wants to make a sandwich and hear that particular Thomas Dolby song, which will then make said meander-er think of Sean Browning, and then call Sean Browning and then talk to Sean Browning for 30 minutes about how awesome they and Thomas Dolby all are. (This happens more than you know.)

This could be pure speculation and forgive the sweeping generalization but I believe meander-ers probably own a lot of shoes.

To put it another way a procrastinator is the Rolling Stones, a meander-er is the Beatles. Sub referencing that; Paul would be the procrastinator and John would be the meander-er. Still don't understand?

(I could be the walrus...I'd still have to bum rides off people) Does that help at all?


Fornication under consent of the King.

Which reminds me...I sometimes work blue and have been accused of swearing like a sailor, which is fitting considering, like a sailor, I'm always drunk and riddled with syphilis.

If this blog were rated like the movie system, at worst I might be a strong NC-17 and at best a PG-13. Which means that you might see nudity but it will artfully shot.

I can promise you that this blog will never be brought to you by Disney.

These are the jokes, folks.

I'M A LENGTHY MONOLOGUE

One could suppose that an introduction is probably in order. Something explaining most if not all of the top 5; the who, what, where, when and why. I should at least open with a joke or a salutation or most likely a proverbial olive branch. We could just do the old name, rank and serial number routine and let the work speak for me. In the very least you should know that my first name is pronounced Ian.

If you insisted I would tell you that I am a father a painter and a hockey goalie. (In that order) And that there is a very big part of me that is more than a little

heartbroken that I wont play in the NHL someday. You should also know that I have seen David Bowie in concert 5 times and that I have travelled so much that I have been drunk on five continents. For example, I could tell you how to get to Kazinczy Ter from Wesselenyi Utca even after too many Unicum. (Perhaps you had to be there.) I have slept on beaches all night. Felt the cold embrace of the wrath of grapes and walked on the grass even when the sign said not to. I have crawled out of windows and have placed my hand on a hundred different burners just to see if it still burns. I also prefer the first Bond and have inhaled. I know all the words to most Duran Duran songs. And that the women I have fallen in love with (you know who you are) have all been amazing broads. Also that I have crashed with both bangs and whimpers.
I should probably tell you that my work comes from a very instinctual place. That I barely take myself seriously but that my work is heart attack serious. You should also know that since I am the Artist-In-Residence at the Susan Kristjansson Gallery, I have a very working class approach to my work. The fact is that I come to the gallery to work every day (cough cough). And I know what you are thinking, "Man it must be hard to wake up at 11 o'clock in the morning everyday."
Let me tell you....it really isn't.
But work I do. Anyone who visited the gallery this summer would have found me on the back patio, elbow deep in Krylon, my Ipod on random, a hint of White Widow in the air, SPF 60 on my face and my work on my work table or three different easel's or on the patio itself ("I swear that hot pink spraypaint was already on the deck when I got here this morning Susan.")

Perhaps I should set the (immediate) scene for you. Let you know that I am in the main room of the gallery, my computer on my knees, sitting beside the seven foot windows. Which, at the moment, are being pelted by the spastic tap dance of angry rain. If I were so inclined I would turn up the Iggy Pop on my IPOD, perhaps press the save now button here on this MENAGE A UN post and take my paintings down.

The works of Dave Amos and Ian MacLean (to the right and left of me on the exhibition card respectively) were already taken down by my gallerist/therapist/bartender Susan Kristjansson. But her love of a particular kind of tea (the very deep and strong Menghai Gong Ting Pu Erh) means that I am left alone as she hunts for that particular Yunnan Province delicacy. (As she had run out.) And in the quiet of the empty gallery, as Iggy Pop turns into Bebel Gilberto in my ears, and all that is left of Facades; Outside/In is my work., I must tell you - I feel just fine.

MOTEL 40 (2010)

EVERYTHING GOOD HAS ALREADY HAPPENED (2010)

THE PESSISMIST MANIFESTO

Art and I`m talking in a non-literal, rhetorical sense (of course) has to work like compost; instinctive and automatic. Simply put, it doesn`t work when its all elbows and knees. the shit has to be left alone and allowed to fester.

And even though I believe we (the collective unconscious we) can learn anything; how to milk a cobra or the Rubik's Cube being two examples, I ultimately believe the art artist schematic is in the marrow. Encoded deep in the DNA like male pattern baldness, homosexuality or Catholicism. It`s the right side of the brains heaviest hitter. A force of nature as inevitable as a strong wind or a sudden downpour.

Art is the insistence of leaves.

And now with the ability to gratify every transient whim, no matter how lustful or greedy, a mere click away, its never been more important for art to make people think something they hadn`t thought before.

I think a lot about what I am trying to say in any particular piece. With me it's never just about making pretty pictures. I feel a strong desire to push the envelope; artistically and personally. Trying to figure out what the role of the artist is in today`s society. The old message v response debate and more importantly the fine line that seperates instant gratification vs further viewing.

Influences: Picasso, the 1970's, Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Bowie, Cafe racers, TV, Polaroid pictures, slogans written on the backs of jeans jackets worn by infidels, punk rock footwear, Beckett Hellion and Knox Bruce-Lee, New Wave album covers, Japanese gangster clichés, tattoo bossa nova Galaxy 500 nunchucks, Francis Bacon, Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, Robots in disguise (or otherwise), comic books, Chuck Close, big hair, Soft Core European Pornography from the 1970`s, Asian advertising and packaging, the flow of Hunter S Thompson prose, Monty Python, Flying Mexican Airlines, Birdie Num Nums, New York City, Blaxspoitation, Kung Fu, afro sheen, Brasilia 70, analogue, Kiss, Disco, sparkly, I heart calculators, muscle cars, the first Bond, spray paint, unbeatable kung fu, poppin and lockin, soft focus, dim sum, shiny, Toronto, Apres Ski, Air Jamaica, pruno recipes, Benny Hill dream sequences, air synthesizer

Do you believe in love at first sight or should I walk by again?