Mark's Blog

I want to share some of the images and words that I have accrued about our planet and the life that has transformed it’s outer skin.

I read a lot. Always have, hopefully always will. I don’t retain much. But from time to time I think of writing down some particularly articulate capture or thought. I had the happy thought that my Blog is a good place to collate these words that have accumulated over the years on scraps of paper, pages of sketchbooks or key strokes in various word processing programs. Wake up all over again to how many people have thoughts that are worth sharing. And you never know. Someone out there in the wide open spaces of teh World Wide Web just might find these snippets interesting or of value.

Tens of thousands of years from now, humanity will be climbing out of our own Oort Cloud and heading down into the next solar system in the same way humanity journeyed step by step out of Africa, across Asia and Europe, down into Australia and the far reaches of the Americas.

I made 8×10 prints of a few of the Tree Dancer drawings on a light card stock. And then I coloured them in with pencil crayons and touched them up with pencil & fine line pen. Here are some original drawings, and their colourized do-over. I really enjoy doing the colour work, and people tell me they see details that escaped them previously.

I had this strong mental image of the silhouette of a large toad on a toadstool as seen from below. How would that affect the lives, the patterns, the stories of those who lived in it’s shadow? I’ve started the tentative beginnings of a children’s fable, but in the meantime a completely different aspect presented itself to me visually. So I drew it out. Here are different stages of the drawing.

Times I’m waiting, often in a coffee shop or a car, sometimes in a lobby – and I draw what I see through the window.

I have a fair number of Wait Sketches that are the result of parenting and husbanding and doing the car thing. Activities that put me in various places for a while with empty hands and an urge to use my time to some effect.

The universe resides in what is referred to as deep time. Billions of years layer the foundation of our understanding of our world and of ourselves. The depth of our history, all the way from the elements we are made of on up to the faculties we have evolved, combine to understand and interpret that world. This is what fuels the synthesis which is the essential structure of understanding ourselves and the world we live in.

. . . wanted to see doodles with character that you might be able to tell a story about. I thought that was a fun idea, and decided to post some of my doodles here as well. Some may have more character than others. Some are Wait Doodles, which are a bit different than my Wait Sketches. It is all in fun.

So I just had a Tree Dancer accepted in the 59th Colour and Form Society Annual Juried Exhibition. Excellent for me

I am taking part in the Don Valley Art Club Fall Show, and the Bayview Art Tour 2011 this fall.

Friday, September 2nd-5th, 2011 (Labor Day Weekend) I will be exhibiting my Tree Dancer drawings and a few paintings in the Distillery District annual art show.

I thought I’d blog this painting’s progress because I haven’t done a painting for a while (those Tree Dancers keep leaping onto the page) and thought I’d try a different process than one I’d been using recently.

Harrison Springs is a small town an hour and a half inland from Vancouver. I carried my sketchbook around and was able to get some drawings done that I felt good about.

My scam story. The scammer Charles Phey – email address academicss00@gmail.com – was consistent enough in his scam that Google could feed me his name

Light defines things which are beyond our hands reach. This definition has an immediacy it is difficult to appreciate without considering the various layers and levels which are interposed between us.

Here are a few trees that have gotten into my sketch book while I am waiting in a car.

I didn’t think to take a photo of this piece until it was pretty well set, so there isn’t a real early stage photo. But it is interesting to see a couple of intermediary steps before the finished look. I didn’t try to make the colour of the stages look like the finished piece. I [...]

The balance and interplay of “what is” and “what if” can be so dynamic and so important! If there is no way someone can see properly, does that then allow that person to see clearly from time to time?

I recently read a post in an online forum about guys approaching girls on social websites. The discussion in the forum moved to guys  interacting with women in general. The forum contained a post by a woman that burned my biscuits. It was one of a series of posts by her that indicated a real [...]

The AWOL Gallery on Ossington here in Toronto is holding their annual Square Foot show again this summer. They accept the first 500 artists, each of whom can submit up to 3 pieces. The theme of the show is that all pieces have to be exactly one square foot – 12″ per side – and [...]

Some waits recur. Again and again the waiting takes place at the same location.

we wait and wait for the event, the moment, the open door, the busy professional, the activity-laden child . . . I now bring a sketchbook

I posted my thoughts elsewhere, but I’ll put them here as well. I admit I was much more taken with the discovery of the Air France Flight 447 black box in the uncharted depths of the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere in the Mid-Atlantic (in more than 13,000 feet of water, no less), than I was with [...]

The Don Valley Art Club is holding it’s annual Spring Show at the Paper Mill Gallery at Todmorden Mills on Pottery Road in Toronto. The show is running May 7 & 8, and May 14 from 12 pm to 5 pm, and Sunday May 15 from 12 pm to 3 pm. The address is 67 [...]

The Dignam Gallery run by the Women’s Art Association of Canada has invited me to take part in this show. There are 6 artists showing the results of their own experience with the 6th Sense, which the curator Deniz Ergun-Seker feels is a key element in the artistic conversation. I was thrilled to be asked [...]

I remember a man describing the colours of songs. For him all songs had a unique colour arrangement – every compositon had a retina print, so to speak. I wondered if that was similar to the way conversations and concepts swim in my mind as an ever-flowing imagery – a flow that is both important [...]

Best invention – I have to go with the wrap. Using the hide of a kill to gather up the important parts you separate out to take back to your shelter was such an enormous step. Imagine the divide before that meme. The efficiency in that discovery – being able to expend only the energy [...]

I almost forgot to post this! The Don Valley Art Club is having it’s annual Large & Small Picture Show at Todmorden Mills Museum and Art Centre, 67 Pottery Road Toronto. (http://www.donvalleyartclub.com/) I’ve submitted some drawings – my Tree Dancer 13″ x 19″ series. Tree Dancer 3 sold, so I’ve dropped the rest of the [...]

Once again the Bayview Art Tour is happening in our neighbourhood. Local artists and artisans open their homes/studios for a show & sale on the second last weekend of October. The Manor will be open, and now that I have moved my studio down to the main floor I will feel more like I’m going [...]

Local artist Sharron Katz has organized a Leaside Davisville Nuit Blanche and invited me to take part. So I am setting up in the Tremblett ValuMart at 1500 Bayview here in Toronto Central. Rob Tremblett has kindly offered the use of his entrance and will even clear out the displays and shopping carts so I [...]

11″ x 14″ Pencil We tend to live our lives unaware of the alternative spaces which are knit with our own. The world around us contains us as we contain the particulars which make up our minds and bodies. There is existence beyond and above us. Eventually, we all have to deal with this great unknown. A vantage of time [...]

AWOL: I have 3 pieces hanging at AWOL Gallery’s 8th Annual Square Foot show. The number of pieces the gallery has put on display means that the show is now held at 2 different locations -  the original AWOL Gallery at 76/78 Ossington, and a large space at 100A Ossington on the 2nd floor. The [...]

Well I’ve signed up for their online art competition. I am putting myself out there again in a “vote for me” way with http://markjohnson.3rdward.com/ I am always very aware of how my art doesn’t translate well – my cheap old digital camera is not a very good window through which the world sees my work. The work itself is in a [...]

This acrylic piece has been sitting on the easel for far too long. I’m including it as part of a juried submission that accepts works in progress, which means it can make it into the Blog as well. I’m betting the end result will not look too different from what I have here, but it [...]

I’m happy to be taking part in the Don Valley Art Club’s Annual Spring Show. There will be quite a range of work by the members, including my new piece Reflections II. Place Todmorden Mills, Pottery Road, Toronto Ontario Show Dates April 30, May 1, 2, 8 & 9, 2010 Opening Reception Friday, April 30, [...]

I decided I wanted to do a variation of Reflections, going with the energy and ideas that were still strong from the original. So, working on a larger scale (36″ x 24″) in acrylic, I will be trying extra-hard to make this piece a fully functional painting when hung in any orientation. I’m interested in [...]

11″ x 14″ pencil People have a reliance on and a relationship with the animals that share our world. Our bodies, our natures and the very roots of our existence are conjoined. There is a natural correspondence between this ancient interrelationship and the iconic gestalt that we consider when we think “bear”, “bird” or “fish”. [...]

The Song – 12″ x 16″ finished size in micron pens and colour pencils. This is the first stage complete before I colour it in. The show is coming up and I feel the crunch time, so I will see how quickly I get The Song complete. Hopefully there will be a final version hitting [...]

I am participating in the upcoming Toronto Art Expo. I’ll be in Booth D073 – a corner location on the perimeter a few rows away from the centre stage. Very exciting, very nerve-wracking for this neophyte, and a little rich for my blood. But it will be an amazing experience, and something to look back [...]

I thought it would be interesting to have a running blog showing what work was in progress. Sometimes art changes quite a bit as it works it’s way onto the canvas or the drawing board. Sometimes the process leads to an evolution that wasn’t expected at all. The review of the art can be a [...]

I’m taking part in the Toronto Art Expo with a corner booth. Please drop and say hello.

Metro Toronto Convention Centre
February 25 – 27th, 2010
Booth: D073

I think art is organizing and binding of time and material with intent. The intent is to add quality while expressing some purpose in our lives. Good art does this with aesthetic intent, craftsmanship and the imbuing of the artists pleasure into their construct. A person can be an artist in the way they load [...]