We Slept in a Cave.

  “all the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams”

-Elias Canetti

No one had told me that sometimes falling asleep is the best way to start something really important.  In fact, I had always believed that sleepers were blind. That to close your eyes and ears off to the world was to commit socio-economic suicide. But we sleep to gain strength, to reflect on the things that keep us emotionally healthy, we sleep to be sure we can stand against the winds blowing in from tomorrow.

This year has been a considerate nightmare; considerate in its delivery of positive experiences and a nightmare because they happen to be my favourite type of dream. When we wake up screaming, sweating and disoriented in the dark, our minds become focused on one thing: illumination.  

The saddest thing about this dream is that it will always be fleeting and the lamplight will never reach every corner of my room. I know already that I will forever be trapped in twilight, never again to be engulfed by the same dream but never fully awake from it.  

And so my work this past four months has been lit by this twilight. I began trying to express the unrealities in a child’s perception of things, especially of unfortunate things, but have found even more unrealities in my own perception of things. If something is good, I yell at it, jump on it or pick it up because it's magic. Equally, if something is bad, it looms, personified as a winged thing. It would hope to destroy me, but that's why I picked up the magical good thing in the first place.

I would rather not kid myself or anyone else in saying my work is an exploration of the past anymore. The past has just happened to visit my present and let me play with it in the way I want to now, not then.

In the past, I was distressed, and so when the past came to the future I distressed it with steel wool. I no longer want my work to be inhibited by my “overwhelming intelligence and conceptual aptitude”. I want it to be reactionary and maybe a little emotional.

And I think I can illustrate this way…

VESTIGES....THE SHOW.

Check out the website at www.ocadfirenze.blogspot.com

Too many leaves.

"If you don't believe in ghosts, you've never been to a family reunion."

-Ashleigh Brilliant

Bug Collection.
Acrylic on Masonite 19x22"

  After some experimentation with the memories of strangers, for my final few pieces in this body of work, I've decided to return to more familiar things. In the midst of all the paranormal excitement I found in the antique photos from the market near Sant Ambrogio, it completely slipped my mind that during my stay in Ireland, I was given a few antique photos of my own family.
  In the small stack of black and whites my father's sister gave me was an image I had never seen before this reunion; my father as a boy. His past has always been something of a mystery for us growing up, or maybe the little stories never trickled down the sibling ladder to reach me at the bottom. Either way, any childhood story about the man has always been a new one for me.
  I suppose the photo I was given gave me the opportunity to explore my perception of his experiences in a new way. Many of the conversations I've had with my father have been about his or another's journey into sobriety. This part of him is one of the only parts I know well. He has devoted most of his life to helping himself and others through the metamorphic change required to give up a substance, which is why I think he has such an affection for butterflies. 

If Only a Nightmare.

Dreams are illustrations... from the book your soul is writing about you.

-Marsha Norman

It Whispers.
Acrylic on masonite 19x22"

  Frequently around the studio I see polite inquisitions into how one of the artists' night went answered in a desperate tone leaking out of a defeated face with red, glazed eyes. Insomnia is an Artistically Transmitted Infection (ATI) easily contracted in a place where creative juices flow freely.

  Trying to fall asleep is often a futile activity for those that consciously tap into their sub-conscious each day. The main reason most artists sleep in most of the morning is because most of the night is spent with their eyes open in darkness, and then lamplight over a sketchbook, then back to darkness; rinsing and repeating, thinking and depositing.

  The problem I think may lie in the fact that when most people begin to visualize the impossible, their bodies surrender to fantasy for a rationed eight or so hours. But when any type of creative begins to see those familiar, intertwining, translucent blobs of colour, their body kick-starts and the cycle begins again. See, it's very hard to tell someone they're sleeping if they spend most of their day living in fantasy.

  But that moment when reality and dream cross over is always the ripest for harvesting inspiration. The only difficulty is that it is usually too late to get back to work (although you could argue it's never too late). Which is what I considered at 5am this morning, waiting to slip away. But I pulled through, slept on it and made a piece about those soft spoken moments before a dream.

Slap Me in the Face.

All art is autobiographical. The pearl is the oyster's autobiography. 

-Fredrico Fellini

Fixation.
Acrylic on masonite 19x22"

  For the first time, last week I could not bring myself to respect the work of someone prominent in the world of art. Or rather, was stunned at the fact that, whether distasteful, shocking or not, the work of this well known individual (whom I choose not to name as the foundation to his success is infamy) is widely considered to have artistic merit, if only to raise the question of what art really is.
  Truthfully, it wasn't the work itself that shocked me most, it was my reflection on my initial reaction to his work that came as a bigger surprise. Up until last week, I had been able to respect anything essentially artistic, even in a minute way. Without fail, I could find something worth my attention in a piece out of respect to the individual that, however mundane, had created something in his or her own image. But the work I was asked to look at and react to was pointlessly violent. It was created without satisfactory justification to the death it inflicted. So I painted about it without really thinking.
  I guess I've begun to welcome intuitive acts back into my work. The people in this studio have helped me unknowingly with that. For the first two years of my education in design, I had been taught to think, and not feel. I strove to make images that advertised my intelligence instead of my intuition. But most images are looked at intuitively by the viewer, so something created intuitively is like a reciprocal high five. No one wants to high five a formal handshake. A successful image should sting your face in a way that seems like masochism.  

Channel Changer.

"The great advantage of being in a rut is that when one is in a rut, one knows exactly where one is."

-Arnold Bennett

Ghost on a Screen.
Acrylic on masonite 19x22"

  About a week ago, the piece I was working on stopped going my way. My brushes just weren't cooperating, no matter how strict I was with them, so I banished the painting to the dark side of my studio and walked home anxious and frustrated. 

  The best remedy, I knew, was to start a new piece and return to the disobedient one later. So early the next day I went hunting in the antique market near chiesa di Sant Ambrogio for some old photos to paint from. But Instead of finding motivation, all I found was a feeling of shame. Looking through the personal moments of someone I had never met, with the intention to make them my own, felt surprisingly perverse. I honestly thought I would find inspiration at the expense of the aesthetic oddities people in the past seem to hold for us, but the thought of painting a stranger's wedding portrait seemed like really bad karma. Still, I didn't want to leave empty handed and consider the trip a failure, so I purchased four small, black and white portraits to study respectfully.

  Now, I don't want to claim that one of them is haunted, but it totally is (although maybe in a good way). After scanning the four photos onto my computer, I threw one on a flash drive and took it to the print shop around the corner to get it blown up to paint from (I hope the lady there has gathered by now that I might be a painter in view of the absurd things I have her print for me on a regular basis). My intention was simply to paint this centred portrait of a young man as it was, maybe with a bit of colour, as a break for my mind from the piece I was working on before. Only, something beyond my control hated that idea and took my successfully copied image and split it in three, offering an adequate alternative to the redundancy in a painting of a centred face. Two things had me accept this eerie change: 

1. I was out of money.

2. It seemed like something knew what it was doing.

  So I painted it as it was, in spite of its hauntedness and the apparent discomfort of my studio mate. Something had reminded me that these "accidents" are important in making art that feels honest; art that isn't over thought. Art that is plainly a reaction to the illogical shit that happens in a lifetime.

In Need of Lampshades.

"The herd seek out the great, not for their sake but for their influence; and the great welcome them out of vanity or need."

-Napoleon Bonaparte

Influential People.
Acrylic on masonite 19x22"

  As an artist or designer, it's quite common to be asked to define who in your field has influenced your work to date. Yet in doing so, your work can immediately lose some of the glory it gained by your hand. It may seem easy from that point to find the obvious parallels between the work you do and the work of your named "influences" which, by means of creative paranoia, will leave you to think of your work as unidentifiable, or even worse, in breach of copyright law. This is why many young artists I know have invented their own formulaic responses to these questions, many of whom find it easier to employ an ignorant shrug than commit artistic suicide with a straight answer when it comes to being seen as an original thinker.

  The first few times I had been asked one of these questions, I swiftly but gently shovelled bits of shit into the ears of my supplicants. I have never thought of an influence as something that could be named in the first place. Isn't the point of successful influence to go unnoticed? 

  For a long time I had been drawing and painting in the dark, deprived of illumination from the shining heroes in the art world, and I was blissful in ignorance. The only art that existed was what I could see by candlelight in the distant Renaissance. But artistic illumination was inevitable, and it became harder each year to dim the lights; to muzzle the people outside screaming PLAGIARISM!

  Influence should be a looming shadow. If you can name your influences, you are either unintentionally appropriating, or over-thinking why you do what you do. You will put yourself in danger of developing the need to justify your work to everyone who may see your work and relate it out loud to something they saw on television. If you let your work be what it is and develop your own visual language, then anything that sneaks in by accident can be considered a welcomed guest.

The Potato is a Root Vegetable.

"Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us."

-Van Wyck Brooks

  It's humbling to finally accept that you are the result of something much older and much grander than you originally anticipated. I suppose the curse of immigration is the loss of genetic discourse. It can be almost as confusing for children to be the first in an immigrant family to grow up in a country where they have very little direct genealogy, as it must have been for the immigrant parents themselves. When all you have to stand on is a shrub in a forest of giant redwoods, it's hard not to feel unsupported, ignorant, that all the pressure to grow your leafy green sapling is on you and your siblings. The answers to questions about your appearance and talents were fragmented or lost when your branch was severed from it's ancestor tree.

  Such were the answers I expected to simply absorb and piece together when I set foot in Ireland on December 14th. As if by walking where the rest of my bloodline had walked, a door would open in the back of my head and reassuring stories about a distant relative that also liked to paint, or had lips far too big for their face would spill out and pat me on the shoulder. Of course the idea was ambitiously romantic, but so are the rest of my ideas, so it's justified.

  In Ireland, I didn't find a painter in the family, or any direct relation to Steven Tyler. What I found was undoubtedly positive, but completely indefinable (and I really did try to get that damn door to burst open). The morning I arrived in Ireland, sitting on a bus on its way into Dublin city, I was a little disturbed. I hadn't prepared myself to bare witness to so many....Irish people. I remember actually laughing a little out loud as I imagined my face on the heads of my fellow passengers and it not looking entirely abnormal. It was as if Ireland was my personal ending to "Being John Malkovich" and it made me a little uncomfortable.

  It wasn't until my second week that things began to change. I found a piece of a family I had always known about, but had never met. For the rest of the trip I was able to spend one on one time with men, women and children that belong to the trees that my mother and father left behind. I had never experienced similar unconditional welcome. All they needed to know was that I was the child of their brother, sister or aunt and I was immediately a member of their family. I dug a little into the past, visited childhood homes and looked for evidence of relation in the way my family looked and acted. Let's not call it creepy, just curious.

  It was something close to pride that I felt as I sifted through boxes of old photography with my father's sister and her daughter and as I walked along the shores of Blackrock where my mother grew up. I had no idea what my grandfather looked like until I was given an old photo from one of these boxes, and was embarrassed to ask for certain how many siblings my father had. But all aside, that's the charm of the family.

  I think after all this, I've started a mission. I've always loved meeting the siblings and parents of good friends for the first time, just to look at their faces and find family features. I love the idea of being an aesthetic product of genetic information and even more so when that information extends beyond parents and into distant ancestry. I expected to look at an old photo of a great grandfather of mine and maybe see my face, but I left uncertain. I need to find what part of the tree I stem from beyond that of my parents. I can see what my parents have given me, but is there an individual I relate to the most in my family's past as well? It's either that or I start looking for mailmen. 

The Patron Saint of What no.

"First you will hate Peter. Then you will hate the day you were born."

-Peter Porcal

Passing it on.

  I was thinking the other day about how Maestro Porcal could very well be one of the last remaining scholars on earth. At least one of the last that has devoted his life to sharing wisdom with the peasants rather than lining up in the patent office. Peter says often, to the immediate discomfort of his students, "Peter will die soon. But you, beautiful children, will never die." 
  This is a ruse. I wouldn't be surprised if he had lived through the renaissance itself, conversed with Michelangelo ("Mike" as he calls him), or lectured in greek to a group of budding philosophers. We all love the posh way he dresses but I think he's more suited to a toga when he stands proud in front of his bright-eyed pupils.
  Peter Porcal has been a part of the Florence program since it began about 36 years ago. My high school art teacher was taught by this man in Florence the year I was born, yet she still finds every opportunity to speak highly of him. There's something to be said about a man who chooses to remain in the company of individuals that have such an interesting and sometimes volatile relationship with their emotions. I just don't know what that thing to be said happens to be.
  I do know that he cares for people. Not just the people he's being paid to care for, because I don't think that he gives a flying fart about how much he's being paid, but anybody that could appreciate what he has to offer. 
  We were in Venice for a weekend in October to absorb the history of a sinking city. Peter took us on quite the hike from cathedral to cathedral with barely a seat in between. Most of us are in our early to mid twenties and were exhausted, but Peter kept his composure in spite of the limp he was walking with.
  I remember I was  leaning against the railing on a ferry heading across the canal on the way back to our hostel when he baffled me. He was closer to the middle of the "standing room only" and there were about three passengers between him and myself. One of the passengers was a young blind man of about 25. He seemed to be handling the sway of the boat but you could tell it strained him more than was comfortable. I'm not going to lie and tell you I would've helped him. If he had fallen I would have caught him of course but I must've assumed he was used to being troubled with balance on the ferry and stood aside, cautiously watching, making sure not to stare. This was all in a few moments. Peter reacted so quickly. He was somewhat unstable himself yet in a blur of greyish hair and polite requests, he stabilized the man with a friendly arm. This should have made us all look bad but that's not Peter's style. In fact, I may have been the only one to notice (purely by chance) his subtle act of kindness. I watched as Peter's presence and conversation put a smile on the man's face. My little understanding of Italian told me they were strangers to each other, engaging only in small talk. But I think Peter knows that for some people, small talk can do big things. 
  I hope I don't betray his modesty in writing this but I thought that those who know him would enjoy that simple, character reinforcing story of Peter. And for those that don't know him, it might be nice to know that there are a few people out there that don't abuse their influence. There are people who respect the power they have as a mentor to young people in transition. Even after 36 years of being worshipped.

Everyday on our Knees.

"We have met the enemy and he is us"

-Pogo

Reconsidering rosaries.

  Mass is in service in the congregation of creative people. A church that gives certain sects of christianity a run for their money in number of tears shed and minds lost. There is no priest. There are no pews. Not even a confession booth or delicious little wafers. Only desperate newcomers and somewhat less desperate veterans searching for that sweet moment when inspiration hits. Their bodies convulse and they fall to the ground with hands stretched out, scraping along a canvas or notebook. They may speak in tongues but that's usually a result of a bit too much sacramental wine (A popular ritual). This moment is so fleeting. It's cruelty incarnate. 

  But have you heard the good news? Two men, in the early 1990s wrote a book. It has been my bible as of September 2010, passed on to our Florence community by another David Bayles and Ted Orland witness. The name of the book is "Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking" and it is good. 

  If your art is an obsession and a lover like it is to most of us, then it would be safe to say that your process doesn't follow reason. Your art is an abusive spouse but it's way too good in bed for you to leave it. Fortunately though, Human rights do not yet apply to your art (however sentient it may seem sometimes) and it is generally accepted to gag and bind it until it meets only your needs. This book is a supportive friend with a knack for tying knots. 

An excerpt from the introduction:

  "THIS BOOK IS ABOUT MAKING ART. Ordinary art. Ordinary art means something like: all art not made by Mozart. After all, art is rarely made by Mozart-like people--essentially (statistically speaking) there aren't any people like that. But while geniuses may get made once-a-century or so, good art gets made all the time." 

-Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland

Walking on Eggshells

"Artists don't get down to work until the pain of working is exceeded by the pain of not working"

-Stephen DeStaebler

Eggshell.
Acrylic on masonite 19x22"

  About 10 minutes ago I sat with a panel of two distinguished painters and an art historian to discuss my work over the past few months, which immediately became a discussion of my work over the past few days. As I sat, delivering what by definition would be an artist's statement, but what i would describe as "Why I only like two of my pieces", the three other sets of eyes in the room fluttered over to the piece I whipped together at the end of last week. 

  Continuing with my recent discovery of the almost certain benefits of uncertainty, I painted Eggshell because I needed to capture something, not because I needed to say anything in particular. The apparently misinformed designer in me was baffled by the concept of painting an image that simply cannot be justified with words, But the resurfacing artist in me could feel that I captured what I needed to capture for me and not for anyone else. Yet this thing, that I made for me alone, stood out the most to three individuals that know me the least in our community. This type of critique was so surreal to me. I felt something close to shame in narcissism as they drew meaning from something so personal. I suppose I received a taste of what it feels like to be a commodity as an artist as opposed to distributing a product made of paint and wood. And man does it make me feel guilty.

  I read somewhere that making art is like masturbation; pure self fulfilment. Whereas design is like intercourse. If you're skilled at it, you know that the satisfaction of your partner should come before your own (which is why it's important for designers to masturbate on the side once in a while). Which explains why so many successful artists in every field are said to be profoundly narcissistic. How hard would it be to resist loving yourself if you heard applause every time you finished doing the deed?

The Gift of the Gab.

"Other people have a nationality. The Irish...have a psychosis"

-Brendan Behan

Bar "Service"

      A friend of mine has a way of defining Canadian nationality to the people we meet in Europe that seems to always confuse the inquirer. Of course it sounds more charming coming from a girl with the remnants of a stereotypically Canadian Cape Breton accent, But her point usually circles 'round to say that most Canadians will label themselves as anything but (Until they make it to Europe sporting patriotism in the form of a backpack patch).   
  I remember the bewilderment on the face of a Yugoslavian (an Italian at first introduction) when he was told that generations didn't matter as long as it set you apart. That in Canada, stating that your father's cousin was born in Germany and came to visit one summer is acceptable evidence for an exotic status. 
  I leave for Ireland in about 14 days, for 3 weeks, which is why I've begun to question my own "exotic status". I was raised in Canada, granted by Irish people with Irish values (whatever those might be), but aside from my pasty skin and hints of accent picked up from my mother, I'm pretty used to the cold and end my exclamatory sentences in eh. Still, I remember my own entitlement to nationality as a grade schooler to feature subtle rejections of Canadian things. I can count the times I've been ice skating on one hand and how many times that included a hockey stick on a fist. In grade 3 I was very intent on never truly singing "O Canada". I would stand silently, Lip-syncing only when I was in the teacher's sights. Never anything boisterous, only little things to convince myself I was special.
  I'm in Limbo. I don't feel Canadian, my 9 year old self made sure of that, but I don't feel Irish either. Especially around those travelling from the island itself. I figure then, it'd be best to be good at being both. At least if I spend time with the family that only knew me by name and diaper in Ireland, then I can feel more comfortable convincing myself of what I would have fought for before hitting puberty. And why not milk the Canadian reputation in Europe? I passed my civics exams after all.

Dearest Saint Nicholas.

“Art is like beginning a sentence before you know its ending.” 

-David Bayles

 Art and uncertainty are one in the same. Uncertainty means to have the privilege of sneaking downstairs Christmas morning to unwrap parcel after parcel, experiencing the ecstasy of pleasant surprises as well as the devastation of unpleasant ones.  For those whom embrace uncertainty, every morning is Christmas morning.

Many will argue that foreshadowing can help prepare you for desperate times by subduing the shock that comes with sudden unfortunate events. But it’s when you make predictions or snoop around in closets looking for evidence of what you haven’t yet discovered that forces you to fake a polite smile for every parcel you open, the good and the bad. Thus, shoving every predicted event into a box in the attic reserved for unexciting things.

Of course it’s impossible to accurately predict everything to come, and so there will always be surprises in store for those that choose to leave the house. But in art making it’s quite possible to predict what will come, if the approach itself is predictable. And so the danger of being shoved into the “boring” box is a very real and immediate danger.  The difference between those who make art and those who don’t is that after an artist unwraps his or her parcels that may contain new paintings, poems or music, he or she then wraps them back up and puts them under a different tree, where it will then be deemed a pleasant or unpleasant surprise by someone else. 

I have recently rediscovered the excitement of Christmas mornings (or at least of uncertain ones). A journey, to a place I could never visualize accurately, along with experiences I could never verbalise correctly, is what it took to remind me that my art is a product of the rest of my life, and that maybe my life before Italy wasn’t very good at surprising me. Just like it would be irresponsible to bake a cake without first tasting the batter, it would be very difficult to surprise others with art if you can’t surprise yourself. This may be the simplest lesson to learn from a life-changing experience such as this, but it’s fundamental and easily forgotten in the midst of producing client-based work.

As an illustration student, it is an absolute privilege to be working in a community of mostly fine artists, as what excites me most is that I’ve begun to feel like one again. I began this year knowing exactly what was going to be under the tree for me to unwrap. I had the ambition to create a body of work that required the viewer to read each piece instead of feel it. A series that desperately tried to claim respect from its viewers by pretentiously showering emotional themes with convoluted subject matter.

But in Italy, I can experience overwhelming emotions by the mere sight or sound of very simple things. So I realise that emotions are born from discovery, not premeditation. I know now that the only thing worth having when considering making art is intention. To have the intention to create something emotionally valuable and the Intention to convey something important to you that others may discover later. Being honest with your work and trusting that your personal voice is interesting enough is undeniably important. And so I think the intrigue of “great art” doesn’t lie in paint, clay, words or musical notes but in the intriguing personality that manipulated them. That person is the commodity, and anything they produce is an autograph, a footprint from a life journey worth following.