For years I've known that are some wonderful Carl Rungius paintings archived in the Glenbow Museum and I've often expressed my desire to see them. So, as a birthday gift from the bewitching Michelle Grant, she arranged to have a private viewing in the depths of the Glenbow. What I expected and what I saw were light years apart. I thought I'd see 4 or 5 little field sketches and 2 or 3 bigger pieces with a few animals in it. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to see what I saw...

Saturday Afternoon. With brushes in tow, headed down to the Shamrock Hotel's Saturday Jam to paint. Now painting is hard enough but when you throw in neon lighting with crazy colours on stage in a dark bar, it makes for the most interesting painting experience ever. Toss in the fact it's a jam, and the bands change every three songs, along with the fact that the musicians are always rocking. You need to paint fast.

I have to say that there is an incredible energy you get from painting people making music in front of you. The whole live thing is so positive. I have painted in many bars and spoken to many musicians. They really dig the energy you bring to the place when you're painting them playing. It's two reciprocal art forms at work.

5th Annual Show & Sale 

Having a pile of outdoor plein air sketches kicking around the studio I decided this year to return to the successful 100 for 100 show at the Arthouse Gallery. I haven’t plein air painted for a few years but this summer was the return of the outdoor brush. I had forgot how much fun I had painting outdoors. The immediacy is exhilarating. The spontaneity and pure creativity is liberating. I have 15 new paintings in this Christmas show. Here are a few examples of the mini chibi paintings that are all around $100.

Recently I was Invited to work on a project for a hanging lamp. The Gallery wanted figure drawings to match the glass swirls within a lamp. The lamp, approx 30" across and about 36" in length, is an Italian design and never gets hot. The drawings are pen and ink, drawn in a loose swirly style to match the swirly glass. I've never done anything like this before and I really didn't know what to expect but I think it turned out way cool! The drawings almost radiate. I'd buy the light myself, because its so totally cool, but it wouldn't match the westerny decor of my home.

The light is on display at Gallery 218.

There are those who never realize the close and intimate relationship of art and the extension of your inner self. Like playing a piano solo, the pencil is like being on stage without the supporting orchestra. I try to describe with the pencil a world that has continuously lain parallel to every other world I have discovered, explored, and left . It is this world, of vision, created when black mixes with white, that has most influenced who I am and who I am becoming. It is a world of risk, of no turning back and a world that requires you to bare your soul in the most raw, vulnerable form to all those within eye shot. Yet all can discarded with a simple turn of the page. That is why I love the simplicity of drawing.