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Sunday morning, sleeping in….
Good Morning Long Branch Aug 24
Chat! Cat! Katt! Kedi! Kissa! Mao! Gati!
in any language, a cat at home is a ton of fun!
Stan’s treat – Kabul Express
Kabul’s paneer with garlic naan
looking east on Dundas…guy in the middle.. just finished 23 paintings….sheesh!! Thanks for lunch Stan!!!
passing the ‘Super Doller’ store
Daily Specials….(with duct tape)
The Thunders
I recall the day I made the decision to give up my record collection. My cat William sat transfixed across the studio from my turntable. I was playing Old Corrals and Sagebrush by Ian Tyson on the stereo. Suddenly and without warning, William sprinted across the room and leapt upon the turntable, causing a sickening screech as the stylus scraped across the Tom Russell Mexican polka, Gallo del Cielo.
I gave my collection to my friend Stan Repar, who I figured would be the last man standing in the record department. 
Today we had lunch with Stan and another painter friend Claude Breeze, and Stan presented me with a bag containing a number of records. (Those of you too young to know what a record is can tune out now). Stan was culling his collection and asked if there were any I wanted back. I had told him that if he still had a few of the special ones, some of which were signed by the artists, I’d love to play those records again.
Stan, aware that we now once again have a turntable, put a package together with those special records and a number of others he knew we’d enjoy.
The highlight of the package to me is Zydeco Thunder by Fernest and the Thunders. It must have been back in the late 80s when Fernest Arceneaux and his band came to town, and it was a fantastic show. I met the band – some of them joined us for a beer between sets – bought their album, and had the whole group sign the cover. I’m no autograph hound but this is a momento of a great night.
One of the reasons it is important to me is that I formed a vague idea in my little brain that night that I’d like to learn to play the button acccordion. It wasn’t until around a decade later that I actually bought a button accordion and learned to play, but I recall thinking, 31 buttons, how hard can it be?
Usually in a Zydeco band, the singer stands front and centre with the frattoir player at his (or her) side. In this case the frattoir player was centre stage, ,and Fernest stood off to the side where he sang and played button accordion.
Ah, this takes me back. Anybody else out there at that show? It must have been at the Horseshoe Tavern. If you were there, stop by and comment. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
George update
George has sprung right back to full energy after his neuter surgery yesterday morning. By 6:00 yesterday he had figured out how to remove the collar that was supposed to keep him from licking his sutures. Fortunately he obsessed on the collar way more than on the sutures.
The Goose Garden
This simple garden, featuring perennial geraniums and goofy cement goose has become one of my favourites.
Buddy MacMaster RIP
Cape Breton fiddle great Buddy MacMaster has passed at 89.
Just listen to him play…Mr. MacMaster’s fiddle touches something way deep. He spread a lot of love through his music. RIP.
Surgery
Our George is off to the vet clinic in the morning to be neutered. I should be able to pick him up and bring him home on my way home from work.
A Lost Forest painting not in my spring exhibition
My Paintings from the Lost Forest exhibition this spring at Yumart featured oil paintings with a high level of impasto. I tried to make full use of a variety of surface qualities and textures as I built up the images over time.
However, there is a painting called Lost Forest from 2011 that has a much different feel, a different language, that used different materials and techniques. Like some of the later paintings, this one is a small diptych, but in character it is much different than the others. I make no apologies for making some paintings that may seem like anomalies within the larger body of my work.
This painting was built in layers over a series of sessions just like the others, and while there are some textural elements betraying some of the history of the image, it was mostly built with layers of acrylic paint thinned with water. In fact I recall painting it with a brush in one hand and a spray bottle in the other. There is no medium or varnish applied on top of the finished painting and it has a surface that is matte but still has some depth about it.
I was reminded of this painting last weekend, foraging for mushrooms in the drizzling rain in a drenched forest at Go Home Lake. Perhaps it was a case of life imitating art. The forms are obscured, dripping. They seem to me to be on the cusp of becoming something else, but what exactly I can’t say.
This painting is an orphan. It’s one of the Lost Forest pieces, but anybody playing “which of these pictures doesn’t belong” would pick this one from among the others in a flash. I like it because it’s an orphan and because I used different tools and techniques within the same kind of thematic backdrop. I have this one here at 27th Street. I don’t know if it will ever be exhibited – although perhaps one day I’ll do an exhibition of paintings that don’t quite fit in.
27th Street 