Art Season at Granville Island

It’s been a busy art season for me, extending from fall into winter. I’ve had a nice run of works in a series of juried group shows in Vancouver at the Federation Gallery. It’s a prime spot gallery located on Granville Island, one of the must-see and stay awhile tourist spots in Vancouver for its on-the-water location, its public market of fresh local products (veggies, fish, meats, and much more), its art, its art school, all its many interesting shops and restaurants, and its buskers, of course. They are of all varieties (acrobats, magicians, street performers, all kinds of musicians), and they are good.They compete for spots on the island! 

Granville Island is a madhouse in the summer, when most of the tourists come. It gets a bit calmer in the winter, but still draws many people. I shop there for food and for art supplies. I’ve heard that Van Gogh occasionally ate his paint (which, believe me, I can understand sensually), but there are more edible treats all around the market than eating yellow. And there’s music.

Among all the lively buskers there, I especially like a male singer who often performs there, always chiquely clad in tux (and wintertime scarf). He sings vintage French songs accompanied by a guitar and sometimes a soft soundtrack.  Buy a hot-from-the-oven baguette at the Belgian-French bakery and sit with it steaming in the cold air as he serenades you. So cooooly mellow! But there's also rock and jazz and fusion and panpipes and banjo and on an ever on.

I've had little time to write much because of all the shows and the get-readies for them. After getting back from nearly a year away in Europe, the fall season started out with a bang of an international juried show called Painting on the Edge! that had my painting, LittleAdolf in it. Then, White Pitcher, one of my still life oils, was in a juried show called (can you guess) Still Life (uh-hmmn). This was followed by an Autumn Salon  exhibit , in which I placed Art Lover, a painting I like because I think the concept and composition work together well. Click on these paintings if you'd like to see them on my website.

Somewhere in the midst of these shows came the Culture Crawl which was a total blast! I’m also working several consulting jobs, so it’s a juggle. But I promised this as a newsletter for those who want to know what I’m exhibiting. So, here’s the roster so far in 2012:

January show of Works on Paper: a life drawing I did in carbone of Cléa, an elegantly lithe young nude sitting so still and self-contained, she seemed eternal.

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Then there's a charcoal I did, Recalling Judith, that references that Renaissance bad-boy, Caravaggio and, more pointedly, focuses in on chiaroscuro. I literally wanted to riff on this “light comes from dark” theme by starting off with a densely charcoal-rubbed paper. Then, I used an artist’s eraser to make the form come into light, … into life. That’s it.

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February ushered in a new juried collection of Abstracts (on display NOW at the Federation Gallery), and here’s my Ariadne’s Compass:

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No sooner will the Abstract exhibit finish than another called Landscape goes up this February! I’m fortunate to have Birdland  in this show.

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Some exciting art works keep company in these shows. Check out the Federation Gallery website to see them.

In the meantime, happy times to you, wherever you are. 

 
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