This Painting Is Good

Horned Lizard acrylic on canvas 12 x 12 x 1.5 inches 2016

My painting of a Horned Lizard (featured above) will be making it's American debut soon!

bG Gallery

3009 Ocean Park Blvd, Santa Monica CA 90404

Opening Reception: Saturday, April 14, 2018

Show will be up until May, more info at http://www.santamonica.bgartdealings.com

I hope to go so maybe I see you there.

When I'm not painting I work as a community visiting nurse in the downtown core of Toronto, ON. I work part time and I just hit my 3 year mark, small pickles when you consider I've been painting for 10+. However, when I'm not working on priceless original works of art I'm saving lives, solving problems, meeting interesting characters, gathering ideas and looking for parking spots! It's something to be proud about and I should give myself more credit. 

On the art front I'm hard at work here in the temporary studio art residency while my own studio apartment's getting some much needed renovations. My favourite thing to do when I come home from painting break is getting right back into painting. Here I am filling out some 3rd and 4th coats to the giant goose painting, you can see I've started adding some shadows and textures as well.

I've been getting weird dreams about my life being scattered about, maybe to do with living between 2 places right now. I worked the evening today so in the afternoon I power napped and dreamt all my belongings were scattered about on Spadina Ave. I was running late for work (as always in my dreams) and worried about making sure no one steals my precious things. Although I'm not sure why anyone would want my nursing scrubs, very disorienting.

Here's a framed print of my Flamingos In The Bathroom Painting someone bought. People at work really like to talk about my artwork. Like when I show up at the group meeting or the office, everyone's always asking how the painting's going and passing my emails around, it really catches me off guard sometimes because I'm there to stock up on medical supplies, sort out client problems and cash in my expense reports and in that moment I kind of forget this whole other self until I am definitely reminded of again. Aw everyone's so supportive, we really are a TEAM. Sometimes I'll arrive to a patient's home and that'll ask about my painting to which I reply, "SOMEBODY'S been gossiping about me"..

Anyway, below is the original, I don't know what it is with flamingos but every month (at least) somebody somewhere brings up this painting in my everyday conversation. I painted it in 2014 when I was looking for my first nursing gig which was sort of a hard time for me, I don't like job hunting, I don't deal with uncertainty well. Anyway and there it sat in the corner of my room with a pile of stuff and I wondered whether or not I was wasting my time until someone bought it for auction 2 years later. Now I've sold prints and towels and shower curtains of this thing and people love to bring it up. Whoever has it is a very lucky, lucky person. My only regret, I didn't take more pics before we parted. I wish you could know how could a painting is while you were painting it. Regardless, painting it was a terribly fun time. I love the shades of grey and white and how the pink and blue stand out from it and the use of light and shadow. I'm a big fan of the Vermeer dutch golden age on top of Magritte surrealism. 

Did you know? It took 200 years for Vermeer to finally get recognized?! They say he died of exhaustion in a time of war and left his family in debt. Even in a time of shitty circumstance, one beyond his control, he found the light and painted. After death he was known locally but it took a couple of decades for him to find status beyond that. Today people line up everyday to see his paintings. He must have known his paintings were good, I hope. 

Happy Fambly Day From Your Local Drawing Club / Official Statement From The Rogue Leader

I should mention, you can't talk about family day without talking about this piece from my favourite drawing cult, The Spooky Astronauts Drawing Club! It's called Wrinkle Monster Fambly Reunion: 

Wrinkle Monster Fambly Reunion by The Spooky Astronauts Drawing Club 2012, digital print.

These are wrinkle monsters Vice President Jim drew that President Jeff composed and inked together from different drawings. It sat in my space box about 6 months before I got around to colouring it, releasing it on Christmas Day. I'm pretty happy about it, you can tell I started replacing some of the black lines for more contours like I started to do with my painting. I mostly did that for the monsters that were more gooey in nature. Some people think of family as relation but I think family can be a family of friends too, or come about by creative circumstance. Family accepts you for you, no matter how weird you are.

Many print options available, just ask.
Additionally, here's a quiz to find out which Spooky Astronaut you're most like!

https://www.playbuzz.com/thespookyastronautsdrawingclub10/which-spooky-astronaut-are-you

My Official Happy Family Day Statement

The excuses to blog about my work are endless. Some people say you should make artwork that is impersonal, based on theory, but I'm pretty personal about my stuff. I actually find personal work a lot more interesting. Part of it is knowing about the human who made it but also I think human experience is interesting. Some of it is varied but a lot of it can be quite relatable as well. Anyhow, seeing family day coincided with Chinese new years, this painting comes to mind. It's a family portrait of my family in Chinese zodiac animals. A number of us work in healthcare hence I really sprinkled on the stethoscopes there. This is just the immediate, add on the extended and we really could probably open up our own hospital. It's not a bad thing. That's not to say some of us aren't arty either, I like to think we're a renaissance bunch. 

Family Portrait acrylic on canvas 48 x 36 x 1.5 inches 2017 $1500

Below here is a close up of a snake hug. We have a lot of rats and snakes in the family, which might explain why we don't always get along. I added in my favourite family feast dishes my grandma makes. Below you have sticky rice wrapped in leaves and the slippery eggy shrimp with bits of parsley that pairs so well with rice.

My husband is a pig, depicted in his hat and the rat below here is Dr. Dad, with his very prominent eyebrows. My mom's passion is the sewing machine. Growing up she made all our clothes and then some. When my classmates had to buy their uniforms from the campus store, my mom would just do her research there and make our uniforms herself for a tenth of the price in material costs.

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Here is me in my red beret. I was always extremely arty growing up, it actually got to be a problem. My mom was always bugging me to clean my room, it was just filled with piles of art projects. Eventually I learned to just cram it all under the bed and in the closets to make my room appear cleaner. Ng in Chinese is written upside down there in Chinese calligraphy, which my grandma is quite the master at.

Here are my parents, the green snake is my mom. She's wearing a pendant of Lam, her maiden name.

More tasty dishes, beef brisket, salmon and beef balls, all with parsley! Parsley comes in such big bunches and I don't think my grandma likes to waste anything. She's a first generation immigrant, hard life style, it carries over.

Well that's it for family day, I worked so I didn't really get to see my family. That's another thing with my family, we never really get together for the big holidays like New Years, Christmas, nor Thanksgiving because healthcare people are generally working. My family is weird like that, instead we get together on random Sundays for dinners at grandma's. Growing up there were also language barriers, I've always had trouble communicating, it's probably why I draw pictures, one of the great universal languages.

Bark bark bark in the New Year!

Hope everyone's having a good start to the new lunar year. Does anyone know of any crazy Chinese New Year superstitions? My grandma Po Po (see painting The Afterlife) used to say washing on this day washes your luck away so come Chinese New Years you do all your cleaning before it starts and on this day you don't shower, don't wash your hair and don't clean the house or you'll clean all your luck out!

Oriental Ave. acrylic and ink on canvas 12 x 9 x 1.5 inches 2012 In private collection.

Today I spent about 4 hours painting. I muted the colours in the ceiling of the giant goose painting I'm currently working on (see posts previous). I'm happy with my colour decisions, more grown up, making more use of the colour spectrum, despite the time consuming aspects of frequent colour changes. Some people sketch when they draw, like making a bunch of lines before choosing the right one. I do that with picking colours, like I have a pretty good idea in my head what colours I want but I won't really know until I mix a bunch, see how they relate to one another before picking the right ones.

Depicted here are 2 paintings I did in 2012, you can tell because they have the black outlines. They're from my brief Monopoly property series. Was it 1 lady who bought all the light blue ones? did she get the Monopoly? Although every now and then this other lady shows up to ask if by any chance is Oriental Ave. back on the market? Her regret she didn't purchase it sooner. I also think about her every time I think about this painting come Chinese New Years, I hope she is doing better. My takeaway from this is this: if you see something you like, get it now and and get it fast! You don't want to be one these half sad people who show up to my art shows, like a recurring dream of regret, I don't like it either and it's a dog eat dog world out there.

Connecticut Ave. acrylic on canvas 12 x 0 x 1.5 inches. 2012 In private collection.

My Official Happy Chinese New Year Statement 2018

Please don't take this statement for granted, it took me 3 hours! I re did it 3 times, finally taking a new reference photo. I got new glasses this year so I wanted to update the look. I know people like statements from cool and interesting people, I guess that's fair. 

Best of luck for the new year, lots of money and good health I wish everybody. 

The Day After Valentine's Day

Had a pretty packed day. Got up early, burned through a bunch of chores and errands and squeezed in the painting time. The sidewalks were slushy today and it made me think of this melting icicle I painted back in 2010, you can tell because I was still using black ink then. I stopped using it in 2013. It never feels like there are enough hours in a day and everything's just melting away. 

Mixed a lot of black cherry today.

Did some second coats on my geometric forms. The reds can take up to 4 coats, these paintings take a long time. I'm pretty happy with the colours, finally! I gotta go to bed now and get up early to go to work tmw, more on that later. Been spending a lot of time alone the last few days so it'll be good for me to interact with people again. Spending too much time alone makes me weird, and sorta depressed? Anyhow I'm already looking forward to coming back home and painting again.

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day to my adoring fans. Painting is my first love and you by association, naturally!

My studio apartment's getting renovated so I've had to temporarily move into a new studio art residency. Work in progress pictures below, right now I'm working on a large series of giant animals adapting to rooms. I've done them before at 1 foot by 1 foot but now I'm going at them at 4 feet by 4 feet for a challenge! 

Why these parameters? I'm not sure, it's an interesting theme running in my work, like a recurring dream. I had a very particular childhood, my parents were strict and had me copying out the dictionary by age 5. By age 12 they took me out of public school and into private and there I discovered a whole other stressful world of ticking off boxes, meeting expectations and getting that tie on. To this day, I still struggle with things like adulating, getting stuff done like taxes, keeping clothes without paint (never mind the furniture) and what not. I need to feel free, 101% of the time! I've always struggled with conformity, trying to meet societal expectations. Humans are social creatures and they live in a world of rules but within that, I adapt and try not to loose my sense of self, hanging onto that bit of my unique individualism. Each one of these animals represent an individualistic self, special in it's own beautiful way, yet adapted in the shelter of a human environment. Maybe that's what art is to me, a place to be my true self in a world where we must learn to coexist ?😕

I spent the day changing some colours around and adding in second and third coats, making the pinks richer and some flatter, to make the whole look more 3D with shadows and what not. After this I'll start filling in more details, colouring in the objects, adding more textures.

My favourite mug here, it makes me happy and just a little more awake every time I see it.

Been drinking a lot of passion fruit tea which is coincidently also very pink, not a good idea to keep this beside the bucket of paint water, especially when you've also been painting in pink.

Well, it's late. My 2018 Valentine's Day resolution is to update my blog more, job accomplished! Check off that box. Why does painting always get extra super exciting right before bedtime I don't know.