Why Do I Paint Sports Figures?

This is a super long read for this era of quick sound bites and talking points, but if you want to understand why I like to paint sporty stuff, this will give you a good idea.

There aren't many things I'd rather be doing than playing sports. Basketball, football, and hockey are among my favourite things to do in my spare time. I am actually up for any kind of physical challenge - the more challenging the better. (Unless it involves water. Or sharks. Water and sharks are my no-go zones.) Even lately, I've been reading and thinking about a trip to the Cinque Terre in Italy, and I find myself salivating looking at all the hiking paths in 3D in Google Maps. Sweating my rear end off on those trails, particularly the ones that go straight up, would be the highlight of a trip there. I can feel a bit of a rush building, even from just imagining the thrill I'd get from running those old stone steps next to the water's edge up into those hills. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Autographed by the Rocket himself

I played ice hockey as a kid, starting when I was four or five years old. The folks in charge would put a big log at centre ice to divide the rink so that two games could be played at once. I think mostly because parents couldn't wait for us to skate the entire length of the ice. I played until I was about twelve or thirteen, but I had a rink right across the back lane from my house so I could go skating whenever I wanted, which was often.

I got home from school one day when I was around 12 or so, and my mom asked me to turn the tv on. "Switch through the channels. Can you guess what's different?" Well, cable tv for one thing, but pretty quickly, I discovered what was different was Dr. J and the Philadelphia 76ers. Free time on days above zero degrees had me out on our gravel driveway, trying to dunk on our eight-and-a-half-foot hoop, emulating Dr. J as best I could. For a little while, I needed a log of wood intended for our wood stove to jump off of, but eventually I could do it on my own. 

My buddy Darren R and I played sports pretty much around the clock during summer holidays. We'd go throw a ball around before lunch, get together again after lunch, and then play 21 before going in for supper. We did this for probably five consecutive summers. One day, Darren and I were throwing the ball out on my front street. A neighbour lady came out and told us that her son had moved out, but left behind a whole bunch of Sports Illustrated magazines. Would we be interested in taking them? I still have a couple of them. 

My gym teacher in high school got mad at my friend Shawn and I because all we wanted to do was play basketball during our free time in gym class.

Back row, centre

My high school intramural flag football team was called Black Death, a likely indicator as to the type of music I would be listening to a short time later. Throughout high school, Darren and I would constantly be looking for people to play football with, and very often ended up having an epic Sunday afternoon game on the field at Fort la Reine School, just a couple hundred yards from my house. Michael C, Sheldon G, Ronnie D, John F, Peter O, Kelly B, Steve C and a few others were regulars, a few more coming out on occasion. As long as there were three of us, we had a game. Cornerback, Quarterback, Receiver we called it. We just rotated through, and after several years of this, became more than proficient at each position. 

I was ROY for my high school basketball team, and in grade 12, led the team in scoring and rebounding, playing a quasi shooting guard/power forward position. The gym was always open in those days, so if there was no class in there, I was there, shooting around. Lunchtime, after school. Otherwise I was dunking (without the aid of a log) on our still eight and a half foot hoop.

I played a tonne of basketball at Frank Kennedy gym once I started going to university. We had an intramural team for our residence, University College, for a few years, just not a whole lot of basketball players, unfortunately. At the end of my third year of university, I started hitting the weight room, and found a groove quickly. We'd often go play basketball in the afternoon, follow that up with some time in the weight room, and immediately race back to res for a marathon supper at the Great Hall. In those days, suppers had unlimited seconds, and I made full use of that loophole. Night times were spent down in the basement of our residence, in a room that had seemingly no other function than to be the perfect size for ball hockey. Lots of floor rivalries were built in that room.

The following year found an unusually high number of tall, slender athletic first year students living in University College. Their speed was the foundation of success for our dominant run in intramural football. The mortar was the arm I'd spent all those years working on with Darren, honing the complex technique of getting that ball downfield in a perfect harmony of power and finesse. All that time in the gym and the extra thirty pounds I put on since high school meant that there was no limit to what we could do on the field.

From the outside, throwing a football might seem like a simple thing. And it is, until you need to do it on the run, or need to get it to hit a spot as quickly and as accurately as possible before the defence can react. Or you need to hit a swift, six-foot, eighteen-year-old sixty yards downfield without him breaking stride. Or get the ball back across the field when you're running in the opposite direction. You need to be able to throw short and you need to be able to throw long. You need to be able to fire it downfield on a rope so that it arrives immediately, or send it sailing high so it drops in on your receiver as if coming straight down from the heavens. All of these things and more require that your throwing technique is flawless, and this is where simplicity exits the equation. Hours and hours of practice, which in the late 70s and early 80s meant just playing with your friends, every single day, every single breath. When you couldn't get the ball to do what you wanted it to do, you tried harder the next play, and the play after that, for years on end. Every throw was a building block in the pursuit of perfection.

Listen to your younger self, kids.

Being a visual learner, I spent a lot of days watching CFL and NFL games. I remember the last couple years of Fran Tarkenton and Roger Staubach’s careers, but it was the 80s I remember the most. Dan Fouts, Doug Williams, Dan Marino, John Elway, Warren Moon, Randell Cunningham. What did all these guys have in common? They could throw that ball. Hard. I watched them as often as I could, and would stay up late so that I could watch the sports highlights on the evening news. I'd watch the games on the weekends, and whatever day the CFL decided to have their games on that year. Joe Barnes and Sonny Wade, Dieter Brock and Tom Clements. I watched and I watched, and then I put into practice what I saw during those games and on those highlights.

I watched how the feet were planted and angled, how the weight shifted from one foot to the other, the hips twisted, and up the spine that twist was magnified by the shoulders that whipped the arm forward, culminating in a final flick of the wrist as the ball was released. I remember the feeling of the ball coming out of my hand, rolling off my fingertips so perfectly, and then watching it fly. When it all came together, there was a certain effortlessness in getting the ball to where it needed to be. Those moments were pure magic. Today, this is what science would call “flow,” the countless hours of a young life spent perfecting a craft to the point where you didn’t have to think anymore, your body just did as you needed it to, as you wanted it to, as you imagined it could if anything were possible.

Fast forward to the intramural days of university, and those early years of watching and learning, practicing and playing, came together with the new size and strength I'd gained over the previous year or two. Now there was a consistency that came with that effortlessness that meant I could put the ball almost anywhere on the field I wanted to. The other teams simply hadn't seen this kind of thing done before. They wouldn't cover past thirty or forty yards down field because they hadn't seen someone throw the ball that far before. They didn't know how to cover guys who were a few inches taller that could also run a lot faster than they could, so guys were always open. It got to the point where we'd huddle, and I'd just randomly pick two guys to go long. Every time. When the defence figured it out, our receivers would run faster, and I'd throw it further.

Eventually, our magnificent run came to an end, in the playoffs of our third year together? Maybe it was our second. Looking back, it felt like decades. But apathy had set in, and we had trouble getting enough guys to the games. Each team fielded seven players, but you were required to have a minimum of six players on the field or you would forfeit the game. We would regularly begin a game with only six guys, and be up by a couple touchdowns at half-time when our seventh player would show up. In the semi-finals that year, we only had five guys when it was time for kick-off. The referees said we would forfeit unless the other team would allow us to play with our reduced roster. Our opponents couldn't even look us in the face as the muttered something about rules being rules. We tried to cajole the into playing, but they knew what would be in store for them if they allowed us on the field, and we were forced to forfeit. And that was the end of an era. Our era.

Eventually, I started playing pick up basketball at Bison East on Friday afternoons. Those were good games, and that's where I really learned how to play against big, strong, tough opponents. A lot of hours were spent in that gym.

Even after finishing university, I'd still show up to play there when I could. Eventually, the guys I knew had all left, and university was feeling like a different kind of place. I did find some of them on the court at St. Ignatius, which by the early 90s felt like it had become the court to play on at the time. I could even walk there from my apartment on Woodrow, so I was there a lot.

In the late 80s, I played a half year of tackle football for The Rods after a friend heard they were short players. And after university, I worked for an idiot painter who played for a senior men's tackle football team. He invited me out, and I played two years with that team. It was for players who were too old (over 22) to play junior football, but included guys who were well into their thirties and beyond, I think, although at that time, someone ten years older than me might as well have been fifty. Anyway, we played the city's junior teams, and also the UofM Bisons' team. Let me tell you, that was a lot of fun.

Around 1991, some of the guys I knew from my university residence asked me to join their men's league team. I did that for two or three years before everyone started going their separate ways.

Laura and I moved to St. Boniface right after getting married in the summer of 1992. I found some courts across Provencher Blvd. at Holy Cross School and Provencher School, and spent a bit of time shooting around that summer. In 1993, I found a bunch of guys at Provencher school. One of them had brought out his grade 12 friends to play against the junior high team he was coaching. Nobody knew who I was, but they said I could play with the junior high kids. I huddled together with them before we started. They were nervous, and a bit scared about how badly they were going to lose. "We are not losing this game," I growled. 

From all of the activity I'd had for all those years, I knew how my body worked, and much like throwing a football, a good vertical jump required both an understanding of the mechanics of jumping, and a fundamental desire to practice those mechanics over and over again until it was simply a natural expression of movement. Having spent a lot of time on an actual basketball court (and not just a gravel driveway jumping off a log) in an era when Michael Jordan was coming of age (in the NBA) meant that there was a lot of focus on dunking, and I spent a lot of time figuring out how to jump higher and higher. At my best I might have had close to a forty inch vertical, but likely close to three feet at any time from the later 80s and into the 90s and beyond. The summer of 1993 was no exception. And the court we were playing on was attached to an elementary school. The hoops might have been nine feet high. I'd played a lot on these hoops the previous summer, and I knew what I was capable of on a nine foot hoop. Dr. J, remember.

Barely two minutes into the game, our team got a rebound which was quickly outletted to me, and I had a fast break with only one defender back. For whatever reason, I think mostly because he was inexperienced, but also unaware of what I was about to do, this defender continued to back in closer to the hoop. I knew exactly how far away I could jump from and still get to the hoop. And that was when I was there by myself, just practicing, fooling around. In game time, with the hopes and dreams of a half dozen junior high boys riding on these things, the adrenalin was already pumping, and I wasn't letting anyone down. As my defender backed in, I could feel the rush. I left the ground about eight or ten from the hoop, sailed past his shoulder, and hammered that ball home. "He just jumped right over me..." he said to his friends. My teammates exploded with screams of pure joy. The game was on. My favourite part of that story is that I am still friends with a couple of the high school guys who were there that day. We played hours and hours and hours of basketball the rest of that summer and throughout 1994.

In 1995, Laura and I moved to Lord Roberts. Through a job I had at the time, I heard about some pickup basketball happening at a high school in Fort Garry. Some of the guys playing pick up also played in a touch football league, and after seeing me play basketball the first few weeks, asked if I'd be interested in coming to play football with them. Would I?!

That was a run of three or four years in the A-Division of touch football with the Ratz. I played against guys like James Murphy, and a few times with guys like Joe Poplawski, Willard Reaves, Darren Yewchyn. One or two of those years, we were champs.

The Ratz disbanded in the late 90s, and a few of the players got together on a new team known as the Nationals. When that team died, I got a phone call from another team, and the following year was playing on two different teams in different leagues. 

Also in the later 90s (1996 or 1997?), the mom of a young artist friend in my neighbourhood worked at the local high school, and could get us gym time once a week in the evening. Chris and his young friends and I would show up every Tuesday to play ball hockey. In the summer when the school was closed, we were playing outdoors on whatever surface we could find. The tennis courts in Riverview, the crappy asphalt in the fenced-in area beside the library, the wonderful fresh and new asphalt at Our Lady of Victory School across Osborne. We'd play for hours and hours. That seven-hour Saturday is the stuff of legends.

One winter, when our numbers were down, I brought out my old university friends. Then my new football friends. But somehow we always managed to play. Occasionally there'd be a night when it was just Chris and I, so we figured out a way to play one on one hockey so we wouldn't waste the night. For a couple years, we were playing two nights a week. We made up our own league, tallied points, I wrote articles (imagine that) for our weekly Sporting News. 

You may think this is not worth reading, but I beg to differ.

In 1998 or so, I bumped into an old university friend, from the Bison East days. A few weeks later, he called saying that they needed some bodies for their city men's league team. Right on. We had a few really good years, winning the second division in 2001, and following that up with a tournament win in Grand Forks against Deek's Pizza. I will never forget that team name. That summer, I buggered up my knee playing basketball with some teenagers outside at Lord Roberts Community Centre during my youngest kid's soccer windup. I hobbled through the rest of the football season, winning the MVP of the league and leading the league in interceptions at age 35. 

That fall, our basketball team moved up to Division 1, where we struggled with the bigger bodies and more physical, faster play. It took its toll, and in February, I tore up my ankle pretty badly. When I was 25, it might have been a few weeks off, and then slowly back to work. But this year, coupled with an already bad knee, chasing two young kids around home, and my age I guess, the healing process took months. I never fully recovered from that injury, and it was a few years before I really felt like I was over it.

Even with less emphasis on basketball, football and hockey did continue, pretty much right up until we left on our world trip in 2007. Interestingly enough, it was several months into that trip where I realized how much better my knees felt when I got up in the morning. Or when I had to jog across a busy street. When we returned home, football season was just getting started, and I got right back into it. Chris had started playing ball hockey at Robert A. Steen in Wolseley, and so I joined him there on Tuesday nights the next fall. I managed to worm my way into a basketball group that included a couple of church friends, and I found that my knees and ankles were up to the task.

When yet another football team fell apart in 2015 or so, with me closing in on age 50, that was the end of the touch football career. I said to my youngest kid, "If this had been ten years ago, I would have had quite a few calls asking me to join teams. Yeah, well, this year, no one called."

Ball hockey had pretty much wrapped up at that point too, but I was still playing basketball weekly until Covid shut us down.

I still have my hoop out back on my garage and play there on my own pretty regularly. The high flying dunking days are long past, and I'm not quite as keen to see if I can grab that rim anymore. My vertical leap seems more like a low, slow broad jump these days than anything else, more a measurement of distance rather than height. But to this day, I still have dreams of playing basketball on a court all by myself, where I’m running from one end of the court to the other, dunking the ball, turning around and doing it again. The dream is accompanied by a nearly magical feeling of being able to jump as high as I want to, like there’s some kind of invisible force pushing me upward, as though I’m weightless. The feeling I had in my youth.

My favourite thing about this image was the shadow of the hoop on his arm.

When Michael Jordan retired the first time, in 1993, I was sad to think that I wouldn't get to see him play live. Basketball had to this point given me such a sense of fulfilment, a sense of joy, and Michael Jordan to me seemed like the physical embodiment of all of that in my life up to this point in time. Sure, he was probably the most recognized athlete in the world that year, but my interest in him went far, far deeper. He was a manifestation of excellence, an athletic excellence that I'd been chasing since I was a kid. What he could do on the court was the result of the hard work and effort and practice that came before his time in the sun. Creating an oversized drawing of him doing the things that I liked the most was a natural expression of my artistic skills and my athletic dreams. 

And that is what I celebrate with my sports paintings and drawings. I find that physical expression inspiring and empowering, and now also a reminder of what I was capable of as a younger person, whether it was on the court, on the field, or the rink (well, ball hockey gym). I celebrate what sport has meant to me for over forty years, the joy of being with friends, of competing, all the stuff that comes as part of being on a team.

Even a little bit of the simple pageantry: the uniforms, the colour, the equipment. The lights of a Monday night game. How sometimes you can see the entire stadium reflected in a player’s helmet. The way players used to look at half time when jerseys would be so encrusted with dirt you could barely see their number. The sweat, the fatigue, the perseverance. All of it.

The basement gym

So now, turning 56 this year, what’s left in the athletic tank? I will tell you this, being down in that basement, surrounded by many of the players of my younger days, listening to the music I did when I was twenty years old (and let’s be honest, the music I still listen to all the time), I am fired up to be in my best physical condition for as long as I can.

A couple years ago, we were in Bologna, and one of the things to do there is climb to the top of Asinelli Tower to get a great view over the city. This tower is 97 metres high, with 498 steps to the top.

I asked the young guy taking tickets what his fastest time to the top was. Five minutes, he said.

Challenge accepted.

Unfortunately, a family of four with two young kids got in line before us. I had to wait for them to huff and puff up to the first landing before they stepped out of the way, then darted past them and raced up the rest of the stairs. Five minutes and twenty five seconds. (I would’ve done it if it weren’t for those meddling kids!)

An Afternoon in Hanoi

"Everyone seems content to have a nap, but not being much of a napper and feeling a little bit fidgety, I take off on my own to explore some of Hanoi's lesser known alleys.

A lifetime's worth of discovery awaits down these little lanes, some so choked with motorbikes it's almost impossible to pass. There is an authenticity very reminiscent of Jodhpur here that could easily be missed without this time to simply observe. Tarps and awnings protect storefronts from rain and any debris that might be coming from balconies overhead. Perhaps the sunshine too, but I wouldn't know about that. [It was overcast the entire time we were in Hanoi.] Families sit on tiny plastic stools outside their shop or home, enjoying a meal and some conversation. At an intersection, an elderly woman sits on her stool, in a position that in minutes would leave me without circulation in my legs. She seems content to sit out her day like this, watching. I wonder if she sees the same things that I do, if I see anything that she does, but I am content to watch her do her watching. It's a beautiful, tiny moment among among a thousand others happening on this street right now. I wonder what it would look like if the sun were to come out, and the streets weren't always covered with a fine layer of wet dust. Normally, one might call 'wet dust' mud, but really, this is wet dust."

- an excerpt from Distant Early Warning, the Southeast Asia portion of the big trip.

The woman on the stool

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India Will Impress

There was something about this particular Kolkata window that seemed absolutely transcendent to me. The exposed brick, open shutter, the sheet, the bars. Every element in the image added up to something I could not explain, but could feel connecting deep within me. Perhaps the ten weeks of travelling around India by that point had something to do with it, as well as the way were travelling around India. We were embedding ourselves into society in a fundamental fashion, but from a perspective that allowed us the freedom to exit at any point should things go awry. That freedom allowed me to examine society with a micro lens while forever keeping a distance between us. I struggle to explain the way that distance impacted my feelings about India, or perhaps whether that distance means that I could never have a true understanding of India. If we can leave at any time, can our immersion be that complete?
Regardless, this window made me understand how India is so much more than the sum of its parts.

Learning how to pilot a running rickshaw in Kolkata.

Up close and personal with the scent of spices in a Kolkata alley.

If you had asked me which country I enjoyed the most on our round-the-world trip, while I was still actually in and experiencing a particular country, India would have been the last on that list on many occasions. It isn't that there is anything especially bad about India; it's more that there are so many tiny things that can be irritating, and more importantly, accumulative. Accretive. India is about managing how you respond to the little things. Not being able to let some things go can potentially obscure your enjoyment of the true wonder of India. It's kind of like in the hockey playoffs, all those seven-game series, and the commentators forever calling it a battle of attrition. But the rewards?

Leaving your backpack unattended at Kudle Beach has its consequences.

At first you're thinking, "What the heck?" After a while, it's, "Dammit! Not cows again!" and eventually, "Huh, India."

Going to visit the Taj Mahal. Wandering the fort in Jaisalmer. Exploring the markets in Kolkata. Hiking around Hampi. Sailing around the backwaters in Alleppey. Watching the sun set while your kids play in the Arabian Sea. These things are spellbinding, both in their sheer visual beauty as well as how the moment sits within the language of your family history.

Exploring between Kudle Beach and Gokarna's town beach.

That first look is without a word of exaggeration, breathtaking.

It's casual moments like this that catch you off guard. Your kids are listening to the audio guide at Mehrangarh Fort and you think, "Gosh, that's cute." Sometimes the magnitude of what's happening is lost on you. Sometimes it takes years to recognize the truth, and sometimes it hits you in the face when you frame it in the camera's viewfinder. What a day we had there.

What is less magnificent is some of that day to day stuff that you would not be used to dealing with at home. Rickshaw drivers hounding you for a fare. Touts wanting to guide you through a tourist attraction. Shopkeepers who are relentless in their efforts to lure you into a shop. Kids who are relentless in their efforts to lure you into a shop that will pay them commissions. Men who urinate somewhat openly in the streets. I could go on, but you get the idea. As long as you can learn to deal with that, India will quickly rise to the top of your favourite country list. The majority of kids, shopkeepers, rickshaw drivers, and urinating men are not remotely irritating. Well, the urinating men are, but most do their business in more appropriate settings. Or at least, discretely. Rickshaw drivers are trying to earn a living, and when they see a tourist, particularly a family of four, they see their earning potential rise dramatically. And that's what it boils down to - people just trying to earning a living. Yes, the one-hundredth call of, "Hello? Rickshaw?" in a single afternoon may occasionally force some regrettable comment out of your mouth, this is true. And yes, some people (including tired tourists...ahem) are just jerks, that's true everywhere, but most people are just trying to get by. 

My drawings of everyday people in India, and a couple of abstracts thrown in because it was part of a montage.

More often than not, you'll have someone curious about where you are from, what it's like where you live, and how do you like India? When you carry on a conversation, and really engage, it will be a rewarding experience that will provide a mental shield from the next, "Hello! One photo!"*

There is incredible life in India, incredible colour, and some truly incredible people. The distances within are vast, but with India's decent train system and your strong stomach, you can see a lot of the country. Push yourself beyond the Golden Triangle, and you will be rewarded with memories unlike any other.

The south is green, its air thick and warm. Rajasthan the land is the colour of straw, full of castles that hug the sky. Varanasi lives and breathes along the Ganges. Temples abound in the 14th century empire of Hampi. India is an experience like no other, and is worth any amount of time you can give it. 

A tower at Chittorgarh Fort in Chittorgarh, Rajasthan.

Outside the walls at Chittorgarh Fort.

A photogenic monkey at Chittorgarh.

Yes, the Taj Mahal is really something, but there's a lot more to India than this.

For instance, the Taj's poor cousin in Aurangabad.

By the end of our time in India, nearly three months, my mind was a little clouded by some of the negative experiences. But almost immediately after taking off from Kolkata on our way to Bangkok, the moments of pure joy rose to the surface, and I found myself longing to be back in the sweaty embrace of anywhere that was India. The food is a wonder, with restaurants, and hotels too throughout the country, serving up a fabulous array of dishes. The shops are full of colourful textiles and exceptional artisanal work. The history of India is on full display nearly everywhere you look. And the people. Give them a chance, and the good people will find you, and make you feel at ease.

Spice vendor and his son posing with us in Kolkata.

Learn to let the inconsequential go, and hold fast to the wonders. Incredible India will reveal itself all over.

*At first, the idea that someone would want a photo of themselves with us seemed funny and cute. But when you're going to be late for your bus, and the 47th person is saying, "One photo!" it can be a little much. Fun, for sure, but exhausting.

So many photos taken with so many Indian folks.

India's doors will impress.

My book chronicling our time in India.

Interior spread from The Happy Accident.

Flux 2021

If you can make it out to the show at Cre8ery, I highly recommend it over viewing photographs of original art online. There is simply no comparison. But if you cannot, this is the next best thing.

First and foremost though, you must download Peter Gabriel's song Signal to Noise, and listen to it while you look at and read about the images below. Here's the link to the studio version on Youtube.

I've included some fundamental information about each piece, and explore a little bit about how they relate to the music, to today, to history, and whatever else I might think of that is relevant. The title of each of the twelve pieces is drawn from the lyrics of the song, following it from beginning to end. If you can't quite make out the words, they are included below. If you have an comments about the work or the feelings that arise from it, leave a comment below and we'll carry on the conversation.

Exhibition Statement included at the show -

Even though Peter Gabriel's song Signal to Noise came out in 2002, I heard it for the first time only a couple years ago.

My pieces in this exhibit draw their titles from the lyrics of the song, and follow it in the order they are numbered. This is simply my response to the music, but I encourage you to listen to it (on your device with headphones if you can) while you ponder the images. If you feel what I feel, perhaps you will see what I see.

During that first listen, I was immediately transported to my visit to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Images of hundreds of former prisoners hung in the museum, their faces revealing a range of emotions: fear and despair, but also courage and hope. I was confounded yet again by humanity's ability to be cruel and shortsighted, while lost in the faces of those who were just like me.

It's in this place where this group of work began, Gabriel's song providing the catalyst to bring it out of me.

Today we live in a world that is dominated by small but powerful groups, a world that is generally indifferent to our individual needs. Individual thought is diminished for the sake of a marketable contrivance, all the while "we" champion the individual whose action best underscores the superficiality of it all. Invariably, the powerful groups are elevated by the noise, noise that may have some grounding in reality but is largely fabricated. Truth begins to share common ground with fantasy, until it is necessarily pushed to the side.

And to the individual for whom the truth is a fundamental value, particularly in a world where one becomes separated from those who are like-minded, it can feel like the image of the ideal is being lost, overwhelmed by the noise of a seemingly ever-growing majority whose words and deeds no longer make sense.

It will require an internal strength, resilience and hope, to carry us through, to find a way, to make a start.

Reymond Pagé

The Way That Things Go
6 by 6"
Watercolour

What You Fight For
6 by 6"
Watercolour

That Fuzzy Picture
6 by 6"
Watercolour

The genesis of these three images lies in the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh. The power that emanated from these faces, or maybe the emotion that they evoked, was unlike anything I'd ever experienced before. I couldn't imagine what these people faced. Having spent a lifetime building up their lives, in the blink of an eye it all came apart. What they had fought for, worked for, all leading to a point in time when there was nothing they could do against a tide of paranoia and cruelty, and everything came apart. A great deal of uncertainty in a very certain future.

The ink drawings over top of the portraits are culled from my photographs of the old Khmer Empire of Angkor that ruled the area a thousand years ago. A doorway, a Bayon face, a window, each with their own structure and symbology. While ancient Angkor was a magnificent city, purportedly the largest pre-industrial city in the world, I have little doubt that the crimes against 20th century Cambodians occurred in the pre-industrial era as well. But there is something about our existence that finds itself imbued in our history, and in our societies. As we walked around modern day Phnom Penh, it was as though I could feel the eyes of each of the victims of the Khmer Rouge purge. That despite the means of their deaths, they still held sway over the city. Despite the fact that the atrocities had happened barely more than a generation earlier, a sense of calm conviction seemed to penetrate the entire city.

In This Place
24 by 18"
Water soluble graphite

In This Place comes from a photograph that I took in Rabat, Morocco in 2018. Just steps from our comfortable hotel on Avenue Laalou, this building still stood, despite what seemed as obvious efforts not to do so. A face is superimposed over the plaster as a reminder of all those whose actions, for better or worse, make modern Morocco what it is today.

Can You Reassure Me
18 by 24"
Water soluble graphite

Can You Reassure Me is a water soluble graphite depiction of a tiny portion of a photo I took from a bus heading south out of Kolkata, India. There were no two windows alike on the entire face of this building, yet behind each one lived a family who could perhaps always escape to this humble home, to be comforted by a loved one, while the world outside raged.

World is Turning to Noise
18 by 24"
Water soluble graphite

I spoke at length with a friend after I finished this piece (a Winnipeg window in the Exchange) last year, about all the possible meanings of this piece, of each individual brick and the broken panes of glass. One of the big refrains to come out of this pandemic is, "We're all in this together." It seems to me that those are the words spoken by people who are doing just fine and will likely come out of these days better off than ever before. We are all bricks in this economy, clinging to the central core of a broken system. And broken systems/societies don't do a particularly good job of creating unbroken people or nurturing the broken ones. But we soldier on, doing our part to hold everything together while the world around us does its thing.

Surrounding Us
18 by 24"
Water soluble graphite

We spent some time on Chios Island a number of years ago, choosing Chios as it was quiet and uncrowded. The village of Volissos is small, half built up and half broken down. There is so much beauty in the unkempt, as it is a reflection of a life lived, all the experiences hammered into the surface but surely impacting the internal. It's surrounding us, and it's relentless.

Losing Sound and Sight
18 by 24"
Oil on board

Wrong From Right
20 by 15"
Mixed media

This is the part of the song that really hit me, where this idea really coalesced in my head. How our thoughts are powerful and how the people around us can help us to envision the world as a better place simply through their goodness. But when things are not right, when the world seems to be actively trying to make things worse and we are separated from that community of people who see a kinder and more thoughtful place, it can feel like something is drifting from the central values that got us this far. Two fine Winnipeg people, superimposed with two Winnipeg spaces.

All Things Beautiful and Bright
18 by 24"
Oil on board

While Rabat's glory days are definitely not behind her (it is the modern day capital of Morocco after all, and capital cities generally put on their best face), in some places it can certainly feel that way. Building facades that were at one time a sight to behold, now sit in half-ruin. The colour is still there, the memories for many likely remain, but sometimes the beautiful things are sinking, seemingly unopposed.

Something in My Heart
18 by 24"
Mixed media

Make a Start
15 by 20"
Water soluble graphite

Netflix, Amazon, computers, gaming, 24-hour news channels that focus on the immediate moment, but not so much the underlying realities. Nearly five billion mobile phone users on the planet, and almost four billion of those are smart phone users. Billions of game downloads. It's pretty easy to be unaware of all the chaos going on around us, as the modern world is fully equipped for us to do just that. We can try to buy our way above the chaos, live vicariously to try to escape it, or virtually in an attempt to ignore it. I'm of the belief, some days at least, that there are extraordinary things all around us. Little bursts of light that deliver a bit of hopefulness in the face of despair. Hope and imagination are a bit like sports, in that the more we practice them, the easier it becomes to execute the fundamentals. The more we look for hope, the more we will find it. And the more we imagine a better world, the better our world will become. I have always wondered what our world could look like if we spent more time on peace than on war. More time on equality than on self-aggrandizement. More time on celebrating our similarities than on insults over our differences. More time on listening than on crushing our enemies.

I see so much hope in that little sailboat.

“Turn up the signal, wipe out the noise.

Receive and transmit.”

As with all art, there are multiple ways to interpret these pieces. And frankly, if I were to start writing this up again next month (maybe even next week), I could quite easily take this somewhere else. But for the time being, this is what it is. It's about finding hope in trying times, maybe even elevating ourselves above the chaos without ignoring it. Or better yet, taking action.

Flux.

Lyrics to Signal to Noise

you know that way that things go

when what you fight for starts to fall

and in that fuzzy picture

the writing stands out on the wall

so clearly on the wall

send out the signals

deep and loud

and in this place

can you reassure me

with a touch a smile

while the cradle’s burning

all the while the world is turning to noise

oh the more that it’s surrounding us

the more that it destroys

turn up the signal

wipe out the noise

send out the signals

deep and loud

man i’m losing sound and sight

of all those who can tell me wrong from right

when all things beautiful and bright

sink in the night

yet there’s still something in my heart

that can find a way

to make a start

to turn on the signal

wipe out the noise

wipe out the noise

you know that’s it 

receive and transmit