sunset

They watched the sun slip below the horizon, and slowly the lights of the night appeared.

The curious child stared up at the heavens and said, "Grandparent, tell me about the stars in the sky."

This in another illustration from my solar system story. There are many collaged elements: an inkjet print of an old drawing of mine (the sun/face), a scrap of magazine page (the blue advertisement) and some yellow construction paper (the star). Again the image is coloured over with Crayola crayons and black china marker.

the sun #3

This illustration is the title page for my solar system story. There are collaged papers (blue contruction paper and a scrap of a map) coloured over with Crayola crayons and embellished with black china marker.

the sun #2

Another illustration from my solar system series. This image includes a collaged scrap of manila envelope and a torn photo from a magazine. I coloured over the entire page with Crayola wax crayons, and emphasized the shape of the tree and the outline of the sun with black china marker.

the sun

This is another illustration from the series I did for my solar system art class. It's the last page in the story, when daylight again returns.

The image began as a collaged scrap of brown kraft paper on the page. I wrote the text from this page of the story over top of the kraft paper, then coloured over everything with Crayola wax crayons. Black china marker emphasizes the outlines of the shapes.

apple #2

This apple was actually created before apple #1; if you look closely, you'll see that the apple image in the latter is actually a computer-generated print of this drawing. I frequently use a print of this original image on the front of my handmade art cards.

The drawing was one in a series of coloured pencil works I did of fruit. I stopped half-way through, unhappy with the way I'd rendered the reflection in the lower half of the apple, and made notes to myself about what I would have done differently.

glenn gould

I was a huge fan of Glenn Gould in my late twenties. I had just started to learn the piano, and went looking for recordings of Bach keyboard music because I enjoyed the "List A" pieces in my conservatory piano books.

I found something called the Goldberg Variations, and played it on the stereo one night when I was alone in a huge, empty house. Part-way through the recording I was frightened by the sounds of a male voice mumbling nearby. I got up and looked out the windows, peering into the blackness unable to see anything, my heart beating rapidly.

Then I realized that the "mumbling" was coming from the stereo speakers. I later read that Gould always sang as he played, and his singing is audible in all his studio recordings.

The Goldberg Variations (especially Gould's 1981 version) became one of my favorite works, and when my sister got married I suggested she use the quodlibet (variation 30) as her wedding march. (Listen to it here - scroll down to track 31)

I did a series of sketches of Gould performing at the piano, using videotapes of his recording sessions and TV shows. Gould was an eccentric musician, constantly swaying, rocking, and conducting himself with closed eyes as he played. There was something restless and driven about him, and I like this particular drawing because it seems to catch him in a freeze-frame.

self portrait

I remember a drawing instructor once asked my class, "Why are there so many self-portraits in art history?" We tried to think up intellectual reasons - something along the lines of "the self-reflexivity of the artistic process since the renaissance," and were brought up short when the teacher pointed out that the artist is often the cheapest and most convenient model for him- or herself.

I went through a phase where I drew my face, hands or feet incessantly, and after a time I could even recreate my face from memory, without consulting the mirror.

This drawing is created with black markers in varying thicknesses, as well as soft (dark) pencil.