Sunday, 15 July 2012

Day 6 - Chinatown Heat

When you walk you see all that the world has to offer.  Small dramas. Interesting people. The  modern day peasants and workers -  The Fallaheen as Kerouac described them.   Ottawa has even enduring a heat wave for several weeks with plus 30 degree (Celsius) temperatures and little rain.  This Chinatown worker sought shade to get some relief from the heat.  I had eight more kilometres to walk to my destination -  home. 

Day 5 P-Town Bears

Provincetown, eccentric, physically remote, and heartbreakingly beautiful, has been amenable and intriguing to outsiders as long as it has existed. It is the only small town I know of where those who live unconventionally seem to outnumber those who live within the prescribed bounds of home and conventional marriage, respectable job, and biological children. It is one of the places in the world you can dissapear into. It is the Morocco of North America, the New Orleans of the north."
Michael Cunningham (Pulitzer Prize author of THE HOURS)

Wednesday, 4 July 2012

Day 4 - Memories of Cape Cod



“They commonly celebrate those beaches only which have a hotel on them....But I wished to see that seashore where man’s works are wrecks; to put up at the true Atlantic House, where the ocean is land-lord as well as sea-lord.” 
- Henry David Thoreau

Tuesday, 3 July 2012

Day 3 - The Art of Seeing

“The meaning of life is to see.” Hui Neng 


I was trying to decide on a subject to paint.  At first I struggled - I had a case of "monkey mind" where it was seemingly impossible to select just one thing to paint, so I decided to do a 27 minute sitting meditation or zazen. When my zen timer went off I realized I was looking right at my next subject.

Monday, 2 July 2012

Day 2 - "Reading in the Studio"


I was initially going to call this "The Artist Reading", but decided against it. Calling oneself an artist is arrogant and pretentious. Art is not my profession and it is certainly not a hobby. Art for me is a way of life, a passion, a practice.  In the past I really wanted to make art my career.  I even had a commercial studio/gallery for two years, which became a financial anchor.  Every time I went down the path of trying to make art my vocation, I became resentful that I was fulfilling someone else's requirements and not feeding my passion.  I now look at myself as someone who sketches, someone who paints.  It has become for me a practice - not at all unlike yoga or meditation.  This is who I am.

Sunday, 1 July 2012

Day 1 - Sunset, Westboro Beach

Sunset - Westboro Beach
Fat kid playing ball with his Dad
Bikini clad girl, looking hot, knee deep
sipping a tall boy
Pabst Blue Ribbon
Naked little bums building viaducts to a sandcastle
Frisbee throwing hipsters
kicking sand, not intentionally
Heavily muscled punks, looking out of place
looking for trouble
or not
Dog chasing ducks
too frightened of the water
Yuppies - roller blades and fixed gear bikes
sipping peach coloured drinks with umbrellas
at Moe's pizza emporium
Kayaks silhouetted 
flashes of silver on the paddle
Tall redhead, ivory skinned
treble clef tattoo lower back
Kids sneaking off to the reeds
to smoke a joint
Sitting on the grass hill 
playing guitar
enjoying the sunset