The Living Tableau

Happy New Year!

2012-01-04T22:20:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, everybody!

January update:

Not a heck of a lot to report. I'm working on a few portraits and portrait commissions, as well as getting going on a painting for the travelling YESSRS exhibition.

Aside from that, the studio is basically full of canvasses and mounted panels being prepared for painting upon. That means lots of gesso - the protective ground used on the surface to be painted - being deployed. So the studio has all these pure white rectangles starting to proliferate in it. I love the look of them. They're so pure, I hardly want to touch them.

Website Updated!

2011-11-28T20:51:00.000-08:00

Well, my website is all neatened up and updated. That's good!

Holy eyestrain! Never mix Philip Glass and html.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

(very early) December Update

2011-11-22T15:09:00.001-08:00

Lots of good things going on.

- Plans are shaping up for a show of my new work at KWT Contemporary in the late summer or early fall of 2012, as well as a show for Galerie La Petite Mort in November 2012.

- I've been invited to submit a piece for a travelling group show called YESSR4, that will travel from Buenos Aires, Argentina, from March 15th to April 8th. Then, from Santiago, Chile, from May 10th to June 3rd. Then finally on to Ottawa to La Petite Mort from July 6th to July 29th. It looks pretty interesting. Definitely not flowers and teapots kinds of stuff.

-I'm submitting work to be included in a new book to be published by Bruno Gmunder. It will feature thirty-eight artists, all of whom work with the male figure.

2011-11-19T17:33:00.000-08:00

2B Magazine Article

2011-11-07T16:22:00.000-08:00

Oooh! An article in Montreal's 2B magazine, about the show!

(Plus, a wee interview). Huzzah!

Link here

Thanks Ottawa!

2011-11-06T21:53:00.000-08:00

It was a wonderful show opening weekend. Lot of laffs, drinks, conversation and a really good dinner party. Thanks to Guy Berube and his gallery staff for making it all go so well.

Lookin' Good!

2011-11-02T18:38:00.000-07:00

Image courtesy of the La Petite Mort gallery website.

Galerie La Petite Mort has just put up pictures of my new show all hung up, as well as some nifty painting details from them.

It's always such a surprise to have seen the paintings hanging around the studio for a year, all homey and ordinarily familiar...then - bam! They're up and looking all official!

Link:

http://www.lapetitemortgallery.com/november-2011/

Website Updated

2011-10-31T04:06:00.001-07:00

I've begun updating my website (www.jameshuctwith.ca) to provide readers with a less irritating experience. It's more comprehensible now.
The new show is all there, with , I think, a more telling set of pics than can be shown here.

Images From The New Show

2011-10-29T16:52:00.000-07:00

The Land Of Milk And Honey

12x12"

Oil On Panel

2011

Stormwatcher

12x12"

Oil On Panel

2011

Self Portrait

12x12"

Oil On Panel

2011

Roadside

22x28"

Oil On Canvas

2011

The Helpful Snake

36x36"

Oil On Canvas

2011

Prophet

22x28"

Oil On Canvas

2011

Chrysalis

30x40"

Oil On Canvas

2011

Memory Night

22x28"

Oil On Canvas

2011

Man With A Glove (Medical Student)

24x30"

Oil On Canvas

2011

Helene

12x12"

Oil On Panel

2011

Fay Beset By Errant Cupids

12x12"

Oil On Canvas

2011

Christ Pissing On A Pile Of Money

30x40"

Oil On Canvas

2011

OWS

2011-10-26T20:19:00.001-07:00

Just a few posts and weeks ago, I was darkly complaining about the awful feelings of helplessness that had seemed to have saturated everything - how being bullied, browbeaten, lied to and fearful had increasingly become the norm.

Then, Occupy Wall Street, and the Occupy movement started, and - well, what a difference a few weeks have made.

Who knows where it's all going? But It's great to see a movement so inclusive, and so concerned with social justice. I hope it goes far - and reaches those right at the top. Further even - I hope that this is the start of something that will let great and uplifting change come through. Innovative, creative change. More goals than demands, more solutions than problems.

October Update

2011-10-12T01:41:00.001-07:00

New Show

2011-10-11T16:47:00.001-07:00

Memory Night

Friday, November 4, 2011

7-10pm

Galerie La Petite Mort Gallery

306 Cumberland Street

Ottawa, Ontario

Canada, K1N 7H9

613 - 860 - 1555

The show will run until November 27, 2011

Another September Update

2011-09-16T19:04:00.000-07:00

The first painting finished for the November show and photographed. It's a mood and a puzzle shaped like a portrait. The likely titles decided upon. The artist's statement sent.

All in all, a good day.

Moods and Storms

2011-09-13T16:16:00.000-07:00

I'm back to work today, after about five days of refusals. My views haven't changed any, but you can only keep up the furies so long. News is breaking since yesterday about the heedless, unnecessary and horrible cuts our newly-elected Mayor is about to inflict on this city. At this point, aside from signing petitions and passing on the usual social bits of interest, it's a relief to feel some distance and resignation. There's only so much you can control - if that's even the right word to use. Maybe 'influence' would be a better word. One has to pick one's battles, as well.

As it stands got my two co-existing downers and a long mental hangover from trouble to murk with daily.

North America isn't used to history. North America has thought, since the First People genocides, that it can control history. But history is really starting to take North America and wring it.

But, as for art and furious times: Matisse painted right through two world wars, but you'd never know it. His work is consistently abiding with pleasure. No one picks on him for that - it's hard to imagine him being of the necessary aesthetic temperament to paint the trenches. Sargent tried it, but the results didn't quite impact. He was too late and long in his fatuous career of painting gilded cream puffs by then.

It's interesting - is the art that dealt with trouble quite as...loved now? You don't hear the names of noted war artists very often. Barclay McClelland springs to mind - but not too many others. Pictorial art dealing directly with war hasn't held up in the mainstream.

Abstraction took worldwide anxieties up, perhaps with better results. Picasso's Guernica is a masterpiece, though he preferred to deal with his friends, dames and mythologies. Notably, there's Motherwell's Elegies For The Spanish Republic. However modern art is loved, it's generally ambivalent about being tied subject matter, or even a name. Divorced from appearance, it could deal with anything without having to actually bow to it. As warfare jumped ahead in inhuman, mechanized scale, maybe that range of distancing it embodied, combined with it's large physical scale, allowed it to succeed where humane pictorialism began to fail.

I'd say representations of war have held up in the media, but they haven't really. Reporter's images of it have been frontally blocked by the government, for starters, and the reporting has been 'imbedded' anyway, as they say. The programs about it are pretty crap. There's been a lot more worthy social art close to home, but it's more localized.

I don't paint abstractly, and I don't think I'm the guy to take on the woes of the world pictorially, either. My stuff is more inward, more hesitant. That said, I wonder who could do it?

Who's painting about the CIA, rendition, torture, right-wing authoritarianism, pollution, machined media, petro-Christianity and all the other things bedevilling us right now?

Cezanne said that he wanted "to conquer Paris with an orange." He did. Isn't that interesting?

That bit of history soothes my soul, right now.

Le Petite Train

2011-09-13T16:06:00.001-07:00

Les Rita Mitsouko, 1989

DPN

2011-09-12T16:06:00.000-07:00

To leaven the mood, it's great to see that Diseased Pariah News has all it's back issues online! See it all here.

But I'm Shopping As Fast As I Can!

2011-09-12T11:44:00.000-07:00

Some fucking anniversary.

Things have gotten worse in just ten years.

_______________________

This puts me in a mood.

Right now I'm hating painting, thinking art is a complete fucking waste of time. A know-nothing pursuit patronized by grasping shits, and maintained by wifty, useless wankers.

This mood seems to be lasting. I don't think it applies to just art these days, either.

Our whole society is currently overextended on rotten moral credit, and no one knows why anyone is doing anything past a certain point, except for the insistent drumbeat to pile up money at any cost. The pigs are running the show, and there's no intelligent resistance. War, fear, stupidity and lies are becoming common currency along with wholesale slavery, superstition and torture. There is no serious movement happening to prosecute the assholes responsible.

I don't suppose it's bad if artists lose faith every now and then. In fact, I'd say, why should we have it in the first place?

Art doesn't seem to be addressing what's going on in a way has any influence, and I don't expect television or movies to address the hideous fucking human rot at the top of our society, either. Commerce here - corporate and it's offshoots - has it's roots deep in slaughter. The fruits of that tree are surveillance, curtailment and fear.

All our claims to morality, peace, culture, and human progress are bankrupt now. And isn't that fucking depressing.

2011-09-12T11:07:00.001-07:00

Studio Bits, early September 2011

2011-09-07T03:56:00.000-07:00

September Update

2011-09-07T03:05:00.000-07:00

First Week:

Things are crawling along. Huzzah. Yeah, the painting's going OK.

Sometimes one just doesn't feel like writing pleasant, family-friendly updates.

I'm overcome with a kind of miserable fury today, at seeing a painter whose work I loathe go for sale for over thirty thousand dollars a pop. This is why I have to be careful how I cruise the net - for the sake of my sanity. Porn, paranoia and atrocity are old hat, but work this dire can still dim the available light in the world a bit.

The work is so smugly horrid, so screechingly, plonkingly execrable and derivative, so pornographically soulless and so remarkably popular, I can't help that wish that everyone who paid to purchase one of them comes down with a case of galloping facial piles and and cramping trots. It would do the world a further favour if the only way to remediate these symptoms was to break the painting over the artist's head and set it aflame.

I can't blame my bad mood on parasitical gay art alone.

Here in Toronto, our mayor (and his near-indistinguishable brother) seem set on destroying just about everything that makes this city liveable. Frills like transit, education, health, tolerance, gay rights, the creative class, understanding, intellectualism, peace, trust in and cooperation with government, etc. You get the picture.

Living in Toronto is a little bit like being in a relationship you can't break off, but don't know why.

It's not beautiful. It's not soulful. It's not even a good dancer. It asks people how much money they make over dinner, isn't sure why 'puritan' is a term of opprobrium, and, in a local joke, says, "Thank God It's Monday"...and yet it tries so hard to do right. I hate the place in such interesting ways, that I've kind of ended up loving it. Sort of.

So, when you have two suburban...how to put this kindly - OK, I will be polite - barging in and claiming that the city is a mess, a socialist hellhole full of commies and art, a bubbling fountain of ill-gotten gravy over a mountain of gold coins stolen by evil socialists from the honest hands of labourers everywhere, etc., etc...it doesn't help the mood.

I was barely in love with this striving, antiseptic, orderly, gung-ho good sport of a place as it stands. Now they're making it even more difficult.

The only good thing about them (The Mayor and his City Councillor brother) is that they've got the populace so riled up they're actually turning out speak, organize and to passionately defend the city. People's hearts are swelling, and their stopped tongues have been loosed. Pride, rambunctiousness and, yes! - even passion - are in evidence all about. This is wonderful! It will be an even more wonderful day when you can walk down the streets of Toronto and feeeeeeelllll that luxe passion in the air all the time, instead of having to find it in the bottom of the freezer, and thaw it out.

What's happening in Toronto seems to be part of a North American trend: ruling via enforced stupidity. It's very scary. It's most evident in the United States right now, with the Republican leadership trials featuring two people who are, to put it kindly, imbecilic, superstitious, manipulative fanatics.

Personally, I always feared being ruled by "intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic", to quote H.G. Wells. But this mucky, pointless sewer of rotten effluvia that's drowning out rational discourse - and even set on actually eliminating rational thought - is far worse.

Canada got a little whiff of it today, as our charmless Prime Minster tried to stir up fears that Moorification was a great threat to Canada. Real classie, thar, bringing that up on the tenth anniversary of the World Trade Center attack. An announcement by him about the perils of unjust wars, abridgement of human rights, and fundamentalist religion would have been nice. That, and how he can manage to even stand up with his lips firmly rallied 'round the flag of a wayard superpower so fundamentally corrupt that news of it's insincere dealings worldwide reads like rivulets of bloody pus. But, he's a fundamentalist himself, so I won't be expecting any water from that rock.

Well, I'm off to bed at 7a.m. What dreams may come!

August Update

2011-08-16T23:25:00.000-07:00

Well, the deadline for the fall show is getting near. I'm glad to say that I'm not going out of my mind - well, maybe I got there through doing this for so many years now ! - but I'm not feeling too bad.

I'm glad that all the simmering and obstructing and worrying and trying has started to pay off in some really interesting resolutions for the new work. I can't believe how much I've attempted and discarded. I think I've thrown out more 'starts' and starting material than almost any other show. One inconclusive start after another.

Still, nothing need be in vain. It's been an interesting process, as I've had about three or four changes in what I thought the organizational theme of the show would be. Each time, after a period of initial work on various pieces that related to it, some other pieces would start to change more interestingly, and lead off in a new direction that ended up being different from the initial group.

So - what's been interesting is trying to give up aiming at an overall theme, and instead concentrate on lettting the show author itself at this point. This mostly involves letting myself enjoy what I'm doing and letting it speak back to me about what it needs to make itself more beautiful. That's pretty enjoyable. It's also that magical time when it is possible to do so due to all the base material I've been working up.

So - things are going well. That's wonderful.

I also took a commission a while back, which is a rare thing for me. I have an instinctual reaction to any interference with what I choose to do - namely, to break necks. Taking direction on subject matter is usually an absolute no-no with me.

This commission was so...unique in it's subject matter that I thought I could take it. Because, to put it mildly, it wasn't exactly nicety-nice family material.

Getting down to doing it was like trying to pull my own teeth. Still, it all came out in the wash. Or came out swimmingly. At any rate, my heels are sore from digging them in so deep, but I'm pleased with the result. The painting, of course, which came out well, but also a new pleasure in the freedom that has come out of fighting for the space in which I can be at ease.

July Update

2011-07-30T22:08:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers:

Ugh! Not a lot to report. I've been working on a private commission, which is not something I usually do. I thought I'd give it a try, seeing as there's nothing like breaking one's own rules every now and then to keep things flexible.

Anyway, it's been a better month for thinking about painting than painting about painting. What has been done is simplistic. What I haven't done is enormous. At this point, I feel like a willful alien to conception and execution.

Another update shortly.

Where are the pics? - Part II

2011-07-18T11:48:00.001-07:00

Hello all visiting:

I jut moved the entire blog to a new email address (again), and (again) all the pictures on it have vanished. So, I'm going to have to be doing some restoration work. I'll try to get 'em back.

Damn.

James

America's Next Top Capstone

2011-07-12T01:42:00.000-07:00

Everyone seems to hate that "awful unblinking eye" (to quote Gore Vidal) atop the pyramid of lore on the American Dollar Bill. Yet, I never hear of alternate visual proposals. Something with charm and novelty might be of interest - maybe a design that would have to be changed yearly.

How would you make it over?

Fantasy List For Canada

2011-06-28T07:42:00.000-07:00

Over at the Urban Toronto Forum, there was a post that went up, asking for megaproject ideas for Canada - "Wackiness Encouraged". Here was my favourite:

1-Coast-to-coast maglev high-speed rail.
Right from St. John's to Vancouver (7,821 km, or, 4,860 miles) at, say, (483 kmh or 300 mph.) Coast to coast in just over 16 hours.

Toronto to Niagara Falls (130 km or 81 miles) - 1/2 hour.

Toronto to Ottawa - (353 km or 220 miles) - 3/4 hour

Toronto to Montreal - (504 km or 313 miles) - 1-1/4 hour

Toronto to Vancouver - (3354 km or 2084 miles) 7 hours.

Union would be Toronto's main stop, brought in through a deep tunnel that would contain more than enough room for extra layers of rail traffic and transit of all types. The new TGV station would replace the Toronto Convention Centre's north building, with the replacement convention centre space placed underneath it. The Bremner street entrance could become the defacto entrance for the entire convention centre.
The line would continue back out of the city, in a tunnel with a stop at Pearson. Another tunneled high speed line would leave Union, surfacing near Pearson, and curving through the countryside to the U.S. Border at Niagara Falls / Buffalo. The line coming into Union could be combined with:

2-The burial of the Gardiner expressway, and removal of all rail lines and highways from Toronto's ravines. (Scenic wandering lanes and the odd trolley allowed).

Mammoth, deeply-laid tunnels under the suburbs instead - with multiple levels and compartments, containing both heavy and passenger rail, subway, automotive and utility uses. At the same time, this would be accompanied by the general picturesque and soothing narrowing of downtown streets with accompanying widening of sidewalks and full tree cover. It sounds kind of tame, as far as megaprojects go, but it would be...pretty complicated.

3-The complete conversion of the country's electrical needs to solar production

...making us independent of any need for nuclear, gas, oil, coal or hydroelectric sources.

4 -A working fusion reactor. Just in case that solar bit takes awhile.

If neither of the above work, a giant battery that can absorb and store the power of lightning strikes would be nice.

5 - A "'Manhatta" project that would link up major scientists from all over the world to find the natural and renewable counterparts to all the components of distilled oil now used in every application - from fertilizer, to transport, to medicine, to electronics. Canada's agricultural interests could be shifted to suit, making us shortly oil independent - and help us also be well off by exporting the encycopedic knowlege gained.

6 -A spaceport for Toronto. A Canadian moonbase and hotel, too, eh?

7 - Enormous year-round indoor summer parks for Canadian cities. Each of these parks would be, say, three to five miles across, and tremendously high inside. High and huge enough, in fact, that the structure would practically disappear. Buckminster Fuller's domes still might be the best way to do this. With artificial full sunlight and deep heating mimicking the summer in the depths of winter, these parks would help relieve seasonal affective disorder. Their size would guarantee return visits, as it would take years to "see it all".
If this size is prohibitive for most cities, they could have smaller ones. That, or we could entreat Cuba to join Canada. Or build a giant touristy one of near-ungraspable dimensions in high-north Nunavut. See: fusion reactor.

8 - A varied and thriving canadian electric car industry. For trucks, transit and other conveyances, too. Oh, and make 'em glamorous.

9 - Not so much a mega-structure as a mega-law: Invisible, ongoing boundary walling of cities, towns and hamlets in Canada. Draw a line or circle around each settlement, however big or small. Once it fills up, it only goes up from there. Not out. Quickly, there would be no sprawl. None.
In the city and need to get out? Cross the street!

10 - A Huge (truly) Central Park For Toronto - The bulldozing and resettlement of entire inner suburbs ( redone in stunningly advanced and gorgeous edge housing) to develop an immense central park for the city of Toronto. Density transfers from the amount of land recovered would encourage an urban edge to the park with a strong emphasis on streetlife - theatres, clubs, and variegated delights that address the park.

11 -Re-widen the St. Lawrence Seaway. This will encourage lake transit, and allow ocean-bound cruise ships to dock at Chicago and Toronto. On the quite fanciful side, A cross-country canal, along the U.S border. From the Great Lakes to where the Fraser meets the Pacific. Make it big enough for shipping, leisure craft, and the occasional flotilla of houseboats. Ship the dirt back to Toronto and create some worthy hills around it from the northeast to the northwest. Also, re-widen the St.

Side projects:

-A huge Canadian scientific effort to cure all deadly viruses, bacteria and cancers. Starting with AIDS.

-Find a disease-resistant elm, and bring that beautiful tree back.

-Free University

-An urban cathedral that will take a two hundred to thousand years to build by hand.

-A 2000 foot high cubist-honeycombed semi-hollow artists co-operative. A baffling and beautiful superstructure strung together with bridges, beams and atriums, it would be a vertical community free to any working artist with an established portfolio and yearly output. Non-established artists could secure living space via an intake program. All ceilings would be a minimum of twenty feet high, and the bare concrete studio rooms - at least thirty feet square each, would all have sufficient ventilation, soundproofing, and light. Special zones would be set aside inside the structure for speciality trades like heavy industry experimentation, noise works, the chemical and biological arts and transport play.

-The hiring and dedicated application of thousands of artists from all over the world to beautify Toronto - working in tandem with scientists, shamans, energy healers, housewives and ecologists and nerds.

At least four times the subway lines we have in Toronto. With express lanes, ring routes, etc., etc. Blah, blah & so on.

-A greenbelt and canal around Toronto's city core to act as both an animal expressway and habitat - plus a picturesque place for scenic boatrides.

- Hierachalist/ oppressive conservative governments out of power, egalitarian / liberating ones in. Steady banks and dancing streets. One citizen, one vote. Peace, Joy and exploration.

June Update

2011-06-18T22:13:00.000-07:00

Here are some pics of paintings under construction in the studio. A lot of tight dark work is gettting flooded with washes of fairly bright white. Odd.

It's four months to the show, so, this is the time when all the concentration starts narrowing in. The year of forward thinking, background thinking and planning and dithering that proceeeds it really starts to come forth and show itself.

Where The Heck Are All The Photos?

2011-06-18T22:12:00.001-07:00

Oh my. I did a fancy switcheroo on my blog to change it's basic e-mail address (among other things) and somehow seem to have lost all the photographs in it in the process. I'll try to replace 'em, but please bear with me.

Damn.

May Update

2011-05-14T16:09:00.000-07:00

Still working away on the 14 paintings for the November show at La Petite Mort gallery of Ottawa, in November.

Eight small ones, two medium sized, one three-foot square one, four moderate-larges and three large ones (around 5 foot long or longer) are being worked on. So - although not every single one will make it to the show, a decent amount will.

Themes? Er, well right now it's sort of a not-yet-reconciled battle between depicting a kind of synthetic world of industrially composed psychologies, psysiologies and situations...and romantic painterly enjoyments.

April Update

2011-04-19T03:15:00.000-07:00

Work on the fall show for La Petite Mort is continuing, with sixteen paintings on the go in the studio. I expect twelve to fourteen of them to make it to the final cut. They are figurative, moody and deal with a theme I've detected I've been working on since 2003: psychology, and the modern world as laboratory.

Due to my 'year of tiredness' after a much needed medical treatment (thank you, excellent Canadian Healthcare!), I'm back up and running. It's been a good opportunity to get back from the work for a while and richly re-examine it.

Because my production has been so low this last year, KWT Contemporary has scarce received any new works from me. They do have two pieces of mine, currently. I was a bit concerned about this scarcity, so I had a good talk with the Manager there, and, wonderfully, she was great about it.
Although my focus is on the fall show for La Petite Mort right now, I will be beginning to produce work also for KWT this fall - and I am talking with them about the distinct possibility of a fall show in Toronto for 2012. That is very exciting.

I'm Generally Over At Facebook Now.

2011-03-13T22:28:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone.

I'm mostly running with the facebook collective these days - joining the mass exodus, like everyone else. Detailed and regular postings here are rather scarce, as you've probably noticed.

I'm still continuing the blog, though. There'll be monthly updates and I'll continue to post any extra stuff pertainting to shows and upcoming events and whatnot.

Thanks!
James

Paintings Under Construction Have A Life Of Their Own

2011-02-03T19:19:00.001-08:00

Imaginary Toronto(s)

2011-02-03T19:03:00.000-08:00

This is something I do for enjoyment in the in-between times...
Revise, rewrite....draw places I would enjoy exploring...alter the city in my imagination.
Some Sketches:

All four of these have some things in common - Union Station has a magnificent new southern entrance, and plaza before it. A park slopes southward from the width of the station to the lake, uninterrupted. A ring boulevard surrounds the core, and radial alleys, streets and avenues radiate at irregular intervals out to it from the center of New City hall.
The city gains interiority, surprise, complexity, delight, randomness, intimacy and unification.

XeXe > KWT

2011-01-26T02:17:00.001-08:00

XeXe Gallery in Toronto is now KWT Contemporary.

Their website is here.

Cloudbusting

2011-01-21T18:38:00.000-08:00

One Can Dream...

2011-01-07T20:59:00.000-08:00

I think Toronto would benefit from having:

a) A Planetarium

b) A lakeside honkey-tonk amusement park

c) A rival opera house

d) An official city circus and festival of oddities

e) A vast enclosed year-round public park, with a botanical garden

f) A giant wave pool

h) A permanent burlesque revue

i) A Winter Love Carnival

l) A mind-blowing year-round indoor skateboard park

j) A branch of the Tate, Guggenheim, Louvre or Prado (one or more)

k) A mythic history (one or more)

l) Intricate, intimate and winding streets, laden with fruiting trees, redolent of mystery

m) Harbour & Lake Waterborne Transit

n) A wild urban 'transit roller coaster' linking tourist sights

o) A monumental social generator for the arts, either in the form of an interior-spaced live-work skyscraper co-operative, or a massively refurbished Hearn Generating station

p) Over fifty percent of public video screen time dedicated to non-commercial citizen's videos and video art

q) Picturesque ruins

Snow!

2011-01-06T21:06:00.001-08:00

La Vie De Boheme

2011-01-03T17:25:00.000-08:00

Now I just need an idea. Just one idea. Just one...!

Office people get to hang out in one thousand foot high buildings that cover entire city blocks, full of little else but other office people.
Soldiers often meet to step stoically with other soldiers, soaking in the fulsome atmosphere of vast bases.
Factory people are famous for consistently consorting with scores of other factory people with charming regularity, under ample roofs.

I wonder how much business would get done if after some initial training, we put set businessmen in rooms alone, and asked them to "make it all up" - mathematics, business models, accounting sheets, the whole thing - and tell them that they'll get paid - someday, perhaps. Reminded them constantly that numbers were once regarded as witchcraft, and what they are doing now is a charming throwback with no real expected contribution to society. Softened, of course, with the reassurance that their business scribblings might have increased theoretical value after they're dead - to some connoisseur, somewhere. For their aesthetic value.

Of course, it'd be nice to have Zaha Hadid involved for the heck-of-it.

Artists in Toronto are a bit isolated from one another. Heck - a lot of people here feel isolated from each other! That's not just the climate or the deep protestant substrate of the place - it's in the structure of the city itself. It's endless right-angled grid of streets shooting off to the four points of the compass without interruption have created a city without a natural sense of interiority. No place to linger, ponder or intimately dawdle at ease.

I'd like to see a new one-thousand foot skyscraper in downtown Toronto dedicated to affordable artists live-work space. Wouldn't that be grand?
One would need a portfolio to get in, and a touch of supplementary credentials: art school, maybe, or exhibitions or references and the like. The building itself would be basically concrete and steel - bare essentials - fantastically rough and spare, but capable of hosting needs as diverse as filmmaking, welding, oil painting, printmaking, sculpture and very loud music without complaint. Ceilings would be set at a fifteen foot minimum, with generous windows. Each floor would have a small glassy "living room" open to all for those times you want to get out of your room, but don't want to go outside (especially in the cold Canadian winter). An array of galleries, clubs and services would fill the base, and double-height skylobbies every twenty stories would contain specialty rooms, casual meeting places and creative labs. The building itself would have much needed interiority in these rooms - places for people to co-mingle in non-programmatic, non-commercial ways. These 'social generator' spaces would give the building it's heart - and save it from merely being a variant on your typical high-rise filing cabinet.

I figure if the government can build the Skydome (nee: Rogers Centre) stadium for $895 million, then sell it for the price of a Muskoka Cottage...and if they can sell highway 407 (estimated worth at ten billion dollars) for wonderbread, then how about an affable investment like this, for a mere pittance?

A touch of green is always calming while you're running up a frock.
(photo courtesy of Lileks)

I Swear, The Flower Shop Was Right Here!

2011-01-03T16:55:00.000-08:00

Quote - !

2011-01-03T16:43:00.000-08:00

"Forget the damned motor car and build the cities for lovers and friends."
Lewis Mumford

Black From A Buddhist Perspective...

2011-01-03T02:41:00.000-08:00

Buddhist:
"Black is the color of hate, transmuted by the alchemy of wisdom into compassion. Darkness represents the imminence of the absolute, the threshold of the experience. It is used for terrific ritual actions, the radical conquest of evil in all its forms - conquest not by annihilating, but by turning even evil into good. Thus, in the black paintings (Tibetan nagtang) the black ground casts forth deities in luminous visions of translucent colors." - Nitin Kumar

Happy New Year!

2011-01-01T21:26:00.001-08:00

Note

2011-01-01T20:55:00.000-08:00

To work with oil paint isn't to work with theory or praxis, it's more akin dealing with the body: it's shit stains, grease stains, smells, mumbles, murmurs, uncertain assertions and frailties.

To work well with oil paint is to respectfully acknowledge disease, ambiguity, transmission, mortality.

2010-12-29T20:46:00.000-08:00

Allan Gardens Park, downtown Toronto, from the studio.

Midwinter

2010-12-28T20:05:00.001-08:00

Last February I was working on the first three Angel No paintings. Three went to XeXe Gallery, and a triptych went off to La Petite Mort gallery. Then, I more or less stopped work for awhile afterwards for some scheduled medical maintenance. The six months break I initially planned grew as I felt the need to recharge. It's been about nine months or so, now. Nine months without producing new work, or feeling any novel creative oomph.

I tend to berate myself when I'm not nagging myself to think up new things, or forcing myself to "produce". But I've had to remind myself that I've been painting as a full-time occupation now since 1995, and, until a few years ago, been working on the side at one job or another at the same time. Needing a break is a very natural thing.

I'm feeling very, very shy about getting back to work. That's a wonderful feeling, because it's so gentle. To not get back to work, exactly, but to come more into loving it.

It's hard to love something inconsistent, though - or something that we're inconsistent in relation to. I wonder and worry a lot about producing or not producing, the role and capability of art anywhere now - especially painting, and of my own capabilities.

At one time I could love art more easily, because it seemed so much more grand, steadfast and certain than I was. Maybe, out there, somehow, it still is. The last five years have shown me, though, that art is as fragile as I am. As fragile as we are. It's not something imperial, unchanging, unendingly beautiful and amazing. If we're weary, it can weary. If we're sick and tired, it might just annoy and reproach us. The mystery shrinks to indecipherability, the composed to the contrived. The culture to the commodity. It can fail.

I wish I knew where the keys were to reliably seeing it through. I wish the cultural situation was a bit different, that the atmosphere was more rich in artistic vitamins. There's lots of remarkable and beautiful social creativity going on, but not a lot involving mere linseed oil and canvas. Early twenty-first century Toronto is a long way from wherever painting was deeply venerated, whenever that was.

To be an artist here is to be soft, irrational, suspect, perhaps useless.

In the book and then, you act (making art in an unpredictable world), the author Anne Bogart writes:
"The South African writer Antje Krog described meeting a nomadic desert poet in Senegal who described the role of poets in his culture. The job of the poet, he explained to her, is to remember where the water holes are. The survival of the whole group depends on a few water holes scattered around the desert. When his people forget where the water is, the poet can lead them to it".

This is a lovely, self-satisfying metaphor. But now, the group is so populous, so inventive, it has wandered so far from the original water holes...who can say they haven't found streams, lakes, rivers, or even a beer parlour or two? Sailing and firewater, soda pop, candy bars and sushi. Electricity, antidepressants, gaming and factory beef?

There's no way that I can see that oil painting will ever speak again with the cultural voice and authority it posessed one hundred years ago. C'est la vie, I suppose. Certainly I wouldn't want to live back in a world without bleach, antibiotics, electricity and proper sewers. Not to mention a Monarchic state control on official art production. Times have changed. It puts oil painting in a strange and tacky position, though: something along the lines of an ingratiating novelty, a boutique luxury item or persistent superstition.

Although art shouldn't be merely tied to utility - what artist doesn't want their work to be meaningful to society? A sense of shared worth is the social currency that presages commerce - and esteem.

I think the thing is now, the tribe has moved on. You can move on with them, if you can live with yourself, not honouring all the poetry in your head. If it won't drive you crazy. You can turn those old poems into cults or pop songs. Or, you can sit by your very own water hole like at some inverse altar, repeating obliquities to whoever chances by at intervals. Get defensive, get generous? Maybe dig some new ones. Maybe start a new group. I don't know.
But whatever the case, the choices, the roles and the social support aren't what they used to be.

Jelly Wobbler

2010-12-27T22:56:00.000-08:00

Happy Hovering

2010-12-25T20:56:00.000-08:00

I've Had It Up To Here With Computers! (For The Moment)

2010-12-19T21:02:00.000-08:00

Waiting for a six-thousand punch-card return tweet, 1950's

I just went to see Tron: Legacy.

At first, it felt like a great aesthetic sugar rush. Then, a wash of cyclamate. By the end - unfortunately, a heap of rebaudioside A.

How can a thrill twenty-eight years in the making - with a budget of one approximately hundred and seventy million dollars - be so uneven and unsatisfying? I know it's Disney (conventionally chaste, deeply sanitary), so we're not expecting Lynch, VonTrier or even John Guillerman. But it would have been gratifying to have a movie with some deep glimmers of invention filling out the screen under all those new visuals. It's got that over-processed flavour that all the big-box movies seem to be coming in lately: a texture both frantic and turgid.

I suppose I'm disappointed that with the immense resources at it's disposal, the studio could have tapped the best thinkers, visionaries and prognosticators out there to make a film that would not only be current, but prescient - and great fun. Nope! The main bulk of the film doesn't even address the internet - it takes place in a box hidden under someone's desk. In an age where digital media, connectivity and access are rewriting so many social norms, this is a staggering oversight, and calls into question the imaginative capabilities of the writers. If there was ever a time or opportunity to have a movie that looked at the internet from a wholly unique angle, now would be a good time to have it.
New abstracts, mystery, open poetry. But the flick demands that huge lumps of it be taken with a peculiar literalism. It skims breathtakingly through its own hermetic designs. But they don't connect back to anything here.
It made me feel revved, but it didn't satisfy.

That statement we hear so consistently these days, "The Special Effects Are Great!" - isn't it becoming such a dull refrain? A worrisome commonplace? One that gives people of good conscience pause? I think what's interesting, is that movies have been using this tactic to lure us back since, uh, forever. With the money studios have, they could make It Conguered The World look good. Still, we're such suckers for it.

I find this constant propaganda that we should get used to living with/in/as computers to be a bit depressing. I didn't feel uplifted after this latest round. The visuals are unnaturally sweet. But that doesn't get rid of that disagreeable metallic aftertaste.

That Time Of The Mood

2010-12-19T21:01:00.000-08:00

Lunch Begone!

2010-12-08T20:48:00.001-08:00

A (formerly) standard City Hall lunch banquet described by Toronto Life Magazine as, "...a bacchanal of extravagant delicacies: cheap-looking fruit platters, wraps and soggy sandwiches."

Mayor Rob Ford managed to get one of his major campaign promises completed today - a monumental opening salvo in a war against the vast and rotten soul of corruption that permeates Toronto city hall:

He cancelled councillor's lunches. For four years.

This will save, apparently, twelve thousand dollars a year. In a city of 2.48 million people, that will save each individual .0048 cents per year.

I'd say it's some kind of red herring, but it's far too tiny to be a fishie. Is some kind of inverse new theory of fiscal conservativism?

Next up: the great patriotic battle against paperclips, pencil sharpeners and sticky posts.

Edith Prickley: Live! From The Melonville Baths.

2010-12-07T20:38:00.000-08:00

..."And what night at the baths would be complete without a reading from the letters of Alexander Hamilton, by Edith's special guest, Charlton Heston?"

A Skateboarding Bulldog!

2010-12-07T12:17:00.000-08:00

Because this just perks up the spirit.

It worries me that this pup has more athletic acumen than I do.

Kicking A Man Who's Down

2010-12-06T22:54:00.001-08:00

Nice move, Smithsonian. Without even putting forward a token bit of resistance, you caved into the power bigots and betrayed the populace you claimed to serve.

It reads like the U.S. right-wing starting their "culture war" in earnest, back in 1989, except it's over twenty years later. Still the same war on the queer, the complicated, the debatable. Shitheaded political opportunists still scoring transient points off the murderous treatment of the different.
The artist, David Wojnarowicz, was protesting about this stuff the first time around - looks like they still can't take it.

There's a lot of protest out there about this one, which is heartening.

I know it's not the best of manners (when not plain daft) to criticize a country you don't even live in, and a the policy of a museum that you've never even attended. But - when someone's work touches your life, one doesn't have to be a local to feel the hurt when they are treated badly.

Ugh - Oh

2010-12-04T04:12:00.000-08:00

Kinda Nice!

2010-11-17T20:34:00.000-08:00

New studio arrangements. Looking rather comfy, eh?
Not a single easy thought in my head as to what to do with myself, but at least the studio is set up and ready to go. It's a good thing to work on, between waiting on the big ideas.

You can see there's a bunch of canvasses stacked against the wall behind the easel. There's one underway up on the easel (it's being a curious bugger - hard to resolve or figure out exactly how to proceed), and about six others on the go, of various sizes.

Toronto International Art Fair 2010

2010-10-26T20:10:00.000-07:00

XeXe Gallery is taking me to the Toronto International Art Fair! A few of my works will be up and on display.

It's at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, from October 28th to November 1st. It's always a swell event.

Hope to see you there.

http://www.tiafair.com/

Next Solo Show....!

2010-08-11T13:49:00.000-07:00

The date's getting set for my next solo exhibition. It looks to be held in November 2011, at Galerie La Petite Mort, Ottawa. It will be all new work.

I guess that means summer's launguid lolling and strolling will be drawing to a wistful conclusion. My farmer's tan, I hardly knew ye. Back to the old coal hole, er, drawing board!

Thanks XeXe!

2010-08-11T13:44:00.000-07:00

XeXe Gallery in Toronto has included some works of mine in their 2010 summer group exhibition. Huzzah! It's on until August 21.

Link here.

Summer Vacation!

2010-07-23T18:04:00.000-07:00

After a fashion.

Side Effects

2010-06-04T20:54:00.000-07:00

Dear Enraptured Readers:

I'm undergoing some novel new medical applications at the moment. It is a frustration that there seems to be no guarantee that my quality of life will be lifted to celebrity quality by them. This seems to me to be markedly unfair. Voluntarily taking oneself out of the loop-de-loop of "regular life" to enthusiastically participate in slow-moving new clinical explorations should at least, I think, warrant some salt-water taffy and a souvenir trinket. Perhaps my rewards will be in heaven, after all.

These procedures are not without lesser earthsome rewards, though - namely, a panoply of fascinating side effects. Side effects are the actual journey. Cures are merely mirage-like, chimeric - the travel brochure.

I should add that these side effects are keeping me occupied. Full-time. They've also got me touchy, untoward, and discomboobulatingly tired. The days are washing by, unevenly. Lying about in a variegated miasma is not exactly the summer career I would have conciously chosen, but - whatcha gonna do?

So - I'm not feeling my best at the moment. This means no new work is being publicly produced by me for the time being. Which is my first time off in twenty years of production. Which has its charms, for now.

More soon.

Vous Pourriez Détester Ceci #2

2010-06-04T20:27:00.000-07:00

2010-05-25T20:13:00.000-07:00

"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.

Angel No

2010-04-27T16:31:00.001-07:00

At CS13 in Cincinnati for the Gasoline Rainbow show, opening April 30th, 2010.

Angel No (c)

24 x 24 "

Oil On Canvas

2010

Angel No (b)

24 x 48"

Oil On Canvas

2010

Angel No (a)

24 x 24"

Oil On Canvas

2010

A Landscape Painting?!

2010-03-22T21:27:00.000-07:00

Framed Witness

20 x 30 inches

Oil On Canvas

2010

(at La Petite Mort Gallery)

I haven't done a proper landscape in a while. This one is very proper. So proper, upright and true, in fact, it could adorn just about any wall or room anywhere without ruffling a feather. Or lifting an eyebrow, or attracting a wayward glance. This is not usually my known way of working.

In a tight construction such as this (yes, slightly modified from reality) where is the room for the hearty commentary and invention to go? Nowhere but into the title, I'm afraid. But it fits.

Still, though heavy on the starch, I think this one came out of the wash OK. It's purty. It's neat as a pin. It's a bit seditious, like all super-nice things. Suspiciously suspect. And that makes me glad.

Now, back off to "Angel No", for some restorative loosening....!

CS13 in Cincinnati!

2010-03-10T16:58:00.000-08:00

Cincinnati's first LGBT Pride celebration is coming up, an gallery CS13 is having a show there at the same time called "Gasoline Rainbow"....and here's a list of participating artists. Ye gawds, I'm in it!

Thanks to Guy Berube (La Petite Mort Gallery) for presiding over my inclusion in this, and to Matt Dayler for having me along!

Angel No

2010-02-25T13:45:00.000-08:00

Angel No (1)

40 x 50 inches

Oil On Canvas

2010

Angel No (2)

24 x 36 inches

Oil On Canvas

2010

Angel No (3)

24 x 36 inches

Oil On Canvas

2010

Wheee!

2010-02-06T16:49:00.000-08:00

Dear Enraptured Readers:

a) The "Urban Artefacts" show opened at XeXe Gallery. Many thanks to the gallery for asking me to be in the show, and for presenting the work so well. The opening was swell.

XeXe Gallery opening day for the Urban Artefacts group exhibition. The paintings Angel No 1, 2 and 3 are visible on the walls in the background. Thanks to Pauline for the photograph.

b) I was prepared to be all curmudgeonly about the Olympics. But now that they're here, aren't they fun?

c) The "Angel No" series continues apace (in case any of you are waiting with bated breath for more. Yes, er, quite.) *cough*

Anyway, the first three of the series are hanging up at XeXe right now, and the next two large ones are off to Gallery La Petite Mort shortly. I'll have to sit down and write about what this rather serious group of work is about sometime - but right now, let's just say it's influenced by a invert's view of a few biblical myths, the black-matter meat of a hospital visit, late hardcore drug use, the energetic intelligence of killer viruses, the fallacies of hope, wholistic abstract transsexualist archetypes, the fog of prayer, appliance-assisted monasticism, celibacy and other zany stuff that would probably get me crashingly liberated right out into nonsense, could it be plainly stated.

d) On a somewhat unrelated note, LIFE magazine (never thought I'd mention them on here) has a nice profile of 44 famous literary drunks and addicts, here.

Inspiring Drag Performances #1

2010-01-31T22:07:00.000-08:00

Carlotta Gurl performing C'Mon A My House. Vancouver, 2007

This is comic drag of a very fine order indeed. Check her out here, where She busts out of disguise as Diana Prince, cavorts her wonder stuff around a Vancouver cafe, then runs out onto the street to apprehend a bus and gets into a catfight with a gun-toting evil-doer, all in short order!

Tandi Iman Dupree: "Holding Out For A Hero", Here

And the ever amazing Craig Russell....

Three New Paintings Up Soon At XeXe

2010-01-31T19:54:00.000-08:00

a) At XeXe Gallery - I'll have three new works showing there at a group exhibition!

"Urban Artefacts "
February 13 – March 27, 2010
opening Saturday Feb 13, 2-5pm
A Group Exhibition featuring: Brian Harvey, James Huctwith, Vivian Lee, Sally McCubbin, Aaron Oussoren, Gregory Serpanchy

The three paintings that will be shown are the first three of a series I'm doing called "Angel No". They deal with a lot of things, but let's just say for now, they're in spectrally manufactured (urban) settings, they are heavily informed by a biblical residue of catastrophe, and they're not without a certain perverse cheer.

My Personal Website.

2010-01-06T16:25:00.000-08:00

www.jameshuctwith.ca

is now online.

Vous Pourriez Détester Ceci #1

2010-01-04T20:04:00.000-08:00

The Knife: We Share Our Mother's Health

Elgar: Enigma Variations IX (Adagio): "Nimrod"

Psychic TV: Force The Hand Of Chance

Werner Liebmann

2010-01-04T16:18:00.000-08:00

I first ran into his work at Heffel Gallery in Vancouver back in - oh, 1994-ish - and was fascinated. Still am. I'm completely jealous of his marvellously evocative working style and the way it organically builds association on association, and still comes out somehow colourfully all making gorgeous sense. How does he do it?

Wot's New?

2010-01-03T13:19:00.000-08:00

a) I've left facebook.

It seemed to be the right time. The site was beginning to feel like a high school reunion - or worse, cafeteria lunch hour - that would never end.

The site did fill that social gap nicely between those you admired and never thought you'd ever be in touch with (and never messaged past the initial hello), those you regularly enjoyed communication with (though wished they'd post more meaningful daily updates and less drivel), and the multitudinous striving self-promoters, curiously friendly strangers, mimsy relatives, uneasy acquaintances, and "whatever happened to...?" near-memories of so-and-so. Still, being diverted by the steady daily impulse to be attention-worthy, bit-by-bit and line-by-line, got a bit worn.

b) In meagre compensation, I've got a simple little point-'n'-click website of my work pretty much ready to go. That should be online within a few weeks.

c) I'll be showing three new works at XeXe Gallery, Toronto, in February this year.

d) New paintings will continue to be sent to Galerie La Petite Mort Gallery.

e) Looks like 2010 is going to be a pretty serious year - in a good way. Plans for exciting new troubles, uncertain (though hopefully evolving) new work and beneficient new ways of living underway.

Cha!

Five New Small Paintings

2009-12-18T18:18:00.001-08:00

Wade
3 x 4 inches
Oil On Canvas
2009

Josh In The Studio
12 x 12 inches
Oil On Panel
2009

Study Of James K.
10 x 12 inches
Oil On Canvas
2009

Study Of James K. 2
10 x 12 inches
Oil On Canvas
2009

The Blessing

12 x 16 inches

Oil On Panel

2009

New Things

2009-11-30T15:30:00.000-08:00

Just remember to breathe!

Dear Enraptured Readers:

I'm not dead. In fact, I seem to be becoming quite recovered from my recent illness. Thanks to family and friends who helped me out!

The studio is full of canvasses - some in the process of being covered with real live paintings, others just waiting for me to buy some more gesso and get them finally prepared enough to work on, others sagging miserably at the corners. Looks like I didn't stretch them quite properly, and with a little time and humidity, they're drooping like undies on a line. It's dispiriting.

I'd lost my taste for sketching since about 2004 - but happily, I'm concentrating on bringing it back. As I've said, I've been becoming too computer-dependent for the purposes of assembling the work. Without drawing with only my mind and hand, I was relying on the machine to bring up "chance" meetings - collage-style - of photographs I thought I might want to use, and that might work out into something fantastic when brought together onscreen. But, nope.
Sometimes there were some nice collisions of images, but mostly it was all too empty. I was working too ass-backwards - and a bit desperately, I suppose. You can't rely on external things to provide the inspirational glue - the idea that will motivate and inform a work. No many how many things you pile up, you have to do that yourself.

I've always believed the gestures of the body are really important to art - how they give real individuality to the finished work. Running dead set against this, is how I percieved - and trained myself up in - what I call the 'imperial' tradition of oil paintings, which being usually made for those in power, tended to impersonality and a kind of grandeur that is somewhat removed from regular human considerations - and intimacies. Out of this conflict comes...well, some stuff I'm still dealing with.

In some ways, the computer can be a seductively powerful tool. On the other hand, in what I fear what might form the nature of a truly personal and integral art, I suspect the computer may have very little to do with it.

So - I'm sketching more. The sketches look so far removed from what I've considered my good finished products that I'm a little agog.
So far they're full of troublesome skirmishes with vexed men fighting dubious angelic-looking creatures. I wonder wot's up?

Some pics and such soon.

J

H1N1

2009-11-21T10:56:00.001-08:00

Dear Enraptured Readers:

Right there, above, is a pixellated representation of that lil' virus that has made my life so miserable this last week and a half. It wasn't just debilitating to have on its very own, though - No!
No, I came down with the flu's despair-and-worry inducing symptoms on the very same eve of the day I had some minor surgery on my back.
This was not comfortable. This was not nice. The bloodletting was formidable. Every time I coughed, the my isolation room looked like a Sam Peckinpah movie.

All in all, November was a great month for losing blood. I gave about twenty vials away in the first week (one half for research, the other half, nobly, to science), and about what seemed like half my liquid body weight in the second half. I wonder if this will benefit me in any of the olde ways that bloodletting used to claim? I think I have gained a somewhat otherworldly, delicate pallor.

Thanks to all the staff of Toronto General Hospital who did such a good job of saving my tattered existence. I do have to question, though, their zeal for unconsented-to Lumbar Punctures? Yow!
My back's still aching. Better than from being laid in a pine box, but...still!
Blech.

Crazy Time (In A Good Way)

2009-11-10T19:56:00.000-08:00

Dear Enraptured Readers:

Not much is happening above ground that's evident, but up in my sky-high studio in the clouds, a great deal is going on.

I've been scooting around town on my bicycle, carting home all sorts of found goodies on it's ample side-carriers, and making fun home-made stage sets with them. I think I've got half the Leslie Spit's cast off metal junk in storage back home at the moment. Twigs, rocks, metal, fragments of this and that, tubing, glass, toys...you name it, it's probably lurking somewhere around the place. Cycling around, clanking and grumbling, I think I'm starting to look more and more like one of those crazy old coots one sees about, weathered by the vicissitudes of fate, doing an imaginarily brisk rag and bone trade.
All these things I'm piling up, tying and ragging together, arranging and re-arranging (whilst cursing and sweating) into nifty and provocative 'settings' that I'm photographing and sketching. These should form a kind of framework that's intriguing and evocative, neither background or foreground, into which I can work all sorts of other pictorial elements. At least in theory. Well, we'll see how this goes.

It's all a lot more hands-on, creative and meaty than the kind of computer-dependent photo-collaging I really starting kicking with, in 2003 and 2004. At the time, that had a real sense of digging into something meaningful for me, and was an evocative and flexible tool. By 2005, though, that had already gotten a bit more uncreative and worn- or at least I had. I was distracted by distressing woes, and got too dependent on technical distractions to carry the weight of the work. Uh-oh.
In the few years since then, I've been veering around a bit, trying this and that, trying to find that visceral sense of newly creating again. Not without some merit - I think the architectural ("shrub") paintings, were a necessary search, and that a lot of the still lifes turned out quite nicely. And the last show felt like I was getting back on the saddle.

So - yes! I'm building all sorts of funny things around the house, and photographing them like mad. Wish me luck.

It's interesting feeling a lot of walls dissolving - sketching, photographing, designing, inventing, re-photographing, mashing stuff together....a lot of hands-on, unexpected and intimate weirdness. This is bringing up new possibilities to access, or get near the kind of prescient ambiguity needed to show some of the heavy stuff I'm trying to deal with, with all this - grief, loss, trauma.

For whatever reason, I've found that whenever I've tried to take a break and swerve from this - well, darkness is the first word that comes to mind - the work flattens out.
I don't know if this is because of something I've been through, personally, or an external set of metaphors I work best with expressing feelings and intensity through. I don't know if it's because society needs a certain set of symbols at any given time to understand what's in a work, and artists reflexively work with those setups whether they're personal to them or not - though sometimes artists may internalize and believe they 'are' those things. I do not know.
Whatever the case, I have to keep myself directed toward the ambiguous and difficult, or else I seem to lapse into a terrible superciliousness.

Another thing I'm interested in right now is the feminine in my work - and - well, that's a whole other blog post.

In almost unrelated news, I had my first ever acupuncture, and first-ever chiropractic appointment as well. Both, I can say, have been marvellous. Not uninspirational! Ain't that grand?

More soon....

2b Magazine Article

2009-10-17T22:26:00.000-07:00

Thanks to 2b Magazine from Montreal which did a nifty and well-laid out article about my show. Aside from me saying manically overlongish quotes, there are reproductions of the Cold, The Disc Jockey, The Conversation and Knock Yourself Out paintings. Thanks fellas!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-10-11T15:56:00.001-07:00

In The Interim

2009-10-10T17:33:00.001-07:00

Dear Enraptured Readers:

I have to admit, this blog is hardly turning out to be a 'page turner', as they'd say in former days. Maybe a page scroller?. I haven't been reporting too much, because, well, really there hasn't been much overt to report.

I don't like typing about too many private things in public. I find this to be crucial to the work - if it is to be meaningful work, I've got to spend time not talking about it. It has to be nurtured silently.

This makes for a bit of a shortage of day to day items to type about. I could talk about my grocery bills, bunions and brand of nail clippers and my favourite celebrities, but...ugh! 'Nuff of that around.

On the other hand, I do like talking about things that go into concretely making up the paintings. But even this has to be done at intervals let all the delicate creative impetus that blossoms at the start of a work gets frizzled up and away into conversation.

So - at least...well, here's what's up right now.

The show in Ottawa at La Petite Mort has closed, though Guy still has works of mine on hand. Thanks to everyone who cared enough to come out and see the show, and to those who bought work. That really is a tremendous support, and means a lot.

This means I'm going to have to get painting whole hog again - I've just had a few week's dawdle!

I've been discovering I'm hideous with deadlines though. I can hardly be said to have officially made it in under the wire for this last show with Guy - he was quite patient about it, bless.

I used to be good at deadlines, though. So what's up?

Well, the answers could probably go on forever. So, instead of trying to fuss and force myself into some unseemly contortions inventing new deadlines and striving to live up to them, I've decided to more or less just do away with dire deadlines for the foreseeable future.

I've catalogued all the frames, boards and canvas thingadoodles in my studio by name, type, number and size, and begun stretching frames in earnest. Thats about forty paintable surfaces.

The plan is to get the studio full of gorgeously stretched, gessosed and ready-to-paint gems that vertitably cry "Paint Me, James!".
Then , in a more relaxed mood...I shall let the oils, results, types and inspirations fall where they may.

Right now I'm painting some scenic traditional landscapes, actually. They're wonderfully relaxing.

Anyway, there's a bit of catch-up.

Cheers!

Sister Unity

2009-09-17T19:44:00.000-07:00

It's A Stretch!

2009-09-17T17:47:00.000-07:00

Dear Enraptured Readers:

Well, wahddaya know. Say - isn't that a canvas being stretched, right on the floor of my very own capacious and amazingly productive studio? Astonishingly, yes it is!

Nothing like stretching canvas to get back into work. More than meditative, it gets your fingerprints into things, right from the soil up. It's gotta work, right from the start.

One of my profs used to tell me that if you look at the back of a stretcher frame, you can usually see what kind of artist you're dealing with.

Seeing the new, untouched blank canvasses lining up in the studio - sometimes, I think they're more beautiful than any painting, begun or finished. The loveliness of that silent, perfectly charged openness they hold so delicately.

Studio Pics

2009-09-15T13:34:00.000-07:00

R & R...& Rrrrt.

2009-09-08T11:15:00.001-07:00

Some views of my new show currently hanging up at La Petite Mort Gallery, "An Orgy Of Divergent Errors".

Dear Enraptured Readers:

Wonderful! - to have the pressures of getting ready for an opening lifted. I've been purposefully floating through the last few days - organizing the studio and clearing the air (and my head) for new pieces, puttering about, and enjoying the clear early autumn air.

One of the strangest things to get used to in getting ready for this show opening was discovering that my 'working rhythms' are different than they were even a couple years ago. I'm more mistrustful of my impulsiveness, more certain about the way I can generally proceed, and, strangely, more willing to take some big unusual risks.

The biggest thing, however, was finding out that I'm working more slowly, but more deeply. I guess getting off a crazy-making toxic stimulant habit will do that for you! That, and getting older.

Finding I was working more slowly isn't a bad thing at all, but it did put the pressure on when the deadline for all the work was due, and I found I was suddenly behind in production. Happily, I had paced myself more steadily in preparation for this show, and the work was more modest and reasonable in size and necessary effort.

I've gotten bad with deadlines in the last few years, and had been overextending myself. Too much partying, back there. Bad scene. Yikes. Bad promises, and too much blind overreaching.

Being able to deliver on this show was a restorative pleasure. Guy Berube up at La Petite Mort had to kick my butt a tad to get me mobile and on date, but it all worked out to a good show opening.

Guy hung the show really well, and the opening night crowd wasn't horribly busy, and everyone was really enthusiastic. Happily we sold a solid number of pieces, which will go a long way towards alleviating my long-suffering grocery needs.

Thanks to everyone who showed up, and all your support. Special thanks to Guy, too for putting in such a solid effort.

With the pressure of deadlines lifted, ideas for new pieces are beginning to form. That's a wonderful feeling. No hurry on these, though - I'm taking my time.

I want to do this next bunch right. I have an immensely soothing feeling something special's a-comin' up.

2 More Painting For The Show.

2009-09-02T16:22:00.001-07:00

Dear Enraptured Readers:

When it comes to deadlines, I'm no angel. After throwing up my hands and thinking there was no way I could deliver on the two grand, experimental paintings for the show that I seemed incapable of actually finishing...Wham! Suddenly, two more little portraits sprung up to take their place.

It seems even my creative urge has a perverse and obstinate streak. Oh well. Whatcha gonna do, except exclaim when it works?
Below are the two portraits:

L.J.
2009
Oil On Canvas
6 x 8 inches

Stev'nn
2009
Oil on Canvas
6 x 8 inches

James Huctwith 2009 New Show

2009-08-19T10:06:00.000-07:00

Temporary Monument

30 x 40 inches

Oil on Canvas

2009

Dear Enraptured Readers:

I have a new show of my work coming up on 4th of September, 2009. It's at:

Galerie La Petite Mort Gallery.

7 until 10 pm.

306 Cumberland Street

Ottawa, Ontario.

613 - 860 - 1555

The show is called "An Orgy Of Divergent Errors", and has something for the whole family.

Attached are a pictures of ten new paintings from the show:

User With Gear

2009

15 x 22 inches

Oil on gessoed plywood panel.

The Precise Contents

2009

15 x 22 inches

Oil on gessoed plywood panel.

The Disc-Jockey

2009

15 x 22 inches

Oil on gessoed plywood panel.

Knock Yourself Out

2009

15 x 22 inches

Oil on gessoed and scarred plywood panel.

Portrait Of A Man Leaving A Hospital

2009

15 x 22 inches

Oil on gessoed, carved plywood panel, with mixed media overlay.

Fetish Sales

2009

12 x 12 inches

Oil on gessoed mounted wooden panel.

Laid On Scars

2009

16 x 16 inches

Oil on canvas.

Absence One And Two On Mean

2009

22 x 30 inches.

Oil on gessoed canvas, mounted on hammered plywood panel, with metal, canvas and paint overlay.

Hard Slam

2009

15 x 22 inches

Oil on gessoed, burned, hammered, scored and carved plywood panel, with found metal objects and oil painting overlay.

Huzzah!

Welcome - To The Living Tableau.

2009-08-19T09:48:00.000-07:00

This is a blog by the artist/painter James Huctwith. That's me, in the pic above. Or, better said, a well-lit, daintily posed, heavily considered flattering representation!

I had a blog online until earlier this year called "Dainty Bastard". I took it offline because I was doing more writing about working, than doing the actual work. It was fun, but a too much of a distraction.

I don't expect this blog will be as "everyday" as the last one was, but at least it should be a proper outlet for those moods and notions that only find appropriate expression being offhandedly typed for public perusal.

I hope you enjoy it. Or are at least bemused. Or whatever might benefit.

Cheers!