It’s a year now since the arctic Quest voyage in 2006. This ongoing project has been such a large part of my life since December 05 - when I was first invited to participate - it seemed particularly fitting therefore, that this latest chapter in my own arctic adventure should conclude in the place where it all began. A year and a half has past since Sothebys' Auction at the Arts and Letters Club and it’s been, without doubt, the most productive period of my career. Being able to wrap up the project with a group show in that same venue was a great pleasure. The Arctic Quest exhibition opened on June 9th and ran for two weeks. During that time the show itself was eclipsed (from my own point of view at least) by two other events:
Immediately following the opening reception, on the evening of June 10th, I was invited to speak at a member’s dinner about our collective experience on last summer’s voyage. As you may recall, the initial inspiration for this journey was to commemorate the centenary of Roald Amundsen’s successful transit of the Northwest Passage, completed in 1906. Shortly after my presentation there it was pointed out that in January 1913 Amundsen himself had visited the newly formed Arts and Letters Club to talk about his own expeditions; specifically, that original journey through Canada’s Northwest Passage and his later trek to the Antarctic. In this age of GPS, Satellite Phones and Air-Sea rescue only the most tenuous parallels can be drawn between modern day Arctic “adventure” travelers and that Vanguard of 19th century explorers. In spirit alone, can even the vaguest comparison be made. None-the-less, I felt a certain privilege in being able to relate the experiences of Arctic Quest to the membership of this venerable old institution.
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The second event in June was an “Introductory” group exhibition at Loch Gallery’s Toronto location, the 2nd through 14th. Following the show, which exceeded most of our expectations, I was invited to become one of the gallery’s represented artists. After many years and numerous exhibitions, I’m very pleased to find a new "home base" in the heart of Toronto’s Art District. Loch Gallery itself is something of an institution in the Canadian art world –Read More
Because of prior commitments however, new work will not be available until late September. To find out more about the upcoming "Different Worlds" exhibition (September 26th-30th) please fill out the form at:
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Alternatively, the gallery can be contacted at: Locations and contact information
A continuing “artistic” exploration: Deconstructivism...
I’ve often thought it strange that Minimalism (deconstructivism and reductivism), though central to Modernism, reflects a distinctly Victorian mind set. So, in addition to a conventional explanation of minimalism, I thought it would be worthwhile to look at the subject from a slightly different point of view. Since art generally imitate life, it might be interesting to consider this movement from a perspective that includes other possible influences of the time.
Classifying, Documenting and Collecting, those most Victorian of penchants, are manifestations of a world view from the 19th century; and yet, they still find artistic expression in the various forms of modern art - particularly in the earliest stages of this movement with ideas such as Found Object and Readymade by Marcel Duchamp, and Collage by Kurt Schwitters and Georges Braque. These “disciplines”, although, they reflect an objective, almost analytical view of the world are generally expressed in very subjective ways. Around this time a proliferation of “isms” sprang up as modernism, freed from earlier artistic conventions, moved from one new idea to the next.
“The whole”, Aristotle speculated, some 2000 years earlier, “is greater than the sum of its parts”. An idea which, in all fairness, wasn’t entirely helpful - to any practical person at least, starting from a philosophic and scientific square one in the hope of arriving at some rational understanding of the world. As astute as that observation may prove to be, it was the counter-argument however, that found common acceptance (among the scientifically inclined): the belief that a complete understanding of the world around us, even reality itself, might be arrived at through reducing objects to their most fundamental components.
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The parallel ideas of scientific determinism and the ultimate irreducibility of matter found full expression during the industrial revolution - enduring, almost unquestioned, until the early atomic age. From the steam engine to Niels Bohr’s “billiard ball” model of the atom, these ideas all reflected a simple, mechanistic understanding of the world. This illustrates, I believe, that rather than being a radical departure from earlier times, the thought process underlying modernism was very much a natural evolution, expressing a basic need to comprehend the world around us in simple, comprehensible terms. This is an idea that has been explored in great detail by Margaret Somerville of McGill University. Disturbingly, perhaps, as the atomic age progressed old ideas began to unravel; it seemed, as even deeper layers of complexity emerged, a rather more elaborate system might be required to fully understand the nature of things. At this time a more all-encompassing view of reality came into being; precipitated, strangely enough, by developments in Quantum physics and “revelations” such as Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Since then a litany of ideas have emerged, from Chaos theory to holographic models of the universe, ideas that expressed a new, holistic vision – a gestalt. |
The world of art however, did not follow suit but continued along the path of deconstuctivism. Art critic Clement Greenberg, modernism’s main proponent, sought through his writings to formalize the movement. In part a response to the work of French Theorist Roland Barthes and a perceived “Crisis of Cultural Authority”. Continue Reading >>> |
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Beauty in Art - and elsewhere |
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"Life in Illulisaat" |
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"Resident in Resolute" |
Aesthestic values have changed radically in this post-modernist world. I’d like to illustrate this point by looking at a series of works done recently depicting street scenes for the outpost of Resolute, at the entrance to Canada’s Northwest passage. The first of these was painting for my year end show in December 06, “Resident in Resolute” (Above Right). I was drawn to this image from the point of view of someone who has a general interest in architecture, but this was also part of my ongoing exploration of modernism, in which I’m attempting to fuse the key elements of modernism with my own, more traditional, style of painting. In this first painting of resolute I was attempting to create a counterpoint to “Life in Illulisaat” (Above Left), a scene from Greenland, in order to illustrate the difference between communities in the north of Canada vs. those supported by the Danish government. This was not by any stretch of the imagination a beautiful painting; however, it sold almost immediately and was probably the most popular piece in my 06 Year End Show. In fact, it was this same paining that resulted in an invitation to participate in the Lock Gallery’s “A look at young artists” exhibition. As part of the collection for that show I painted two more small canvases in that same vein, “High and Dry” and “Tag 21”. Here too, both pieces were purchased right at the opening of the show. I named each with suitably “un-pretty” titles hinting at the underlying narrative. |
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"High and Dry" |
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"Tag 21" |
| When we think of the arctic, desert isn't typically the first thing that comes to mind. The community of resolute though is situated in one of the most barren areas I've ever seen. Resolute Bay is the Gateway to Canada's Northwest Passage. |
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In 2006 the community of Resolute was issue 34 "Tags" for the local people to hunt polar bear. The first 20 of these are held back and sold to hunters from the outside - On average these visitors bring $20,000 into the local economy... More next time |
In both of these paintings “Beauty”, in the traditional sense, was not at all the objective; and yet, they still evoked as much interest as all of the other paintings I submitted for the show - perhaps more so.
For anyone who has been following this discussion over the last year and a half, it must seem as though I’ve been avoiding the subject of “beauty”. To be honest, I realized I might just be opening that proverbial can of worms so, I won’t wade in all the way just yet. I think you’ll find the short intoduction (Immediately below) quite interesting, and I’ll continue further in the next update.
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Beauty - A Revelation from the Trading Floor
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You may recall from my biography (CV) a short reference to the Toronto Futures exchange. Strangely, it is here, on the trading floor of the Toronto Stock Exchange, that this whole discussion of beauty begins. Aspiring to be a technical analyst I quickly became familiar with the Fibonacci numbers as a system by which to determine cycles underlying the market. The Fibonacci sequence is based on the number 1.618033… Phi, as it is known, is the most irrational of Irrational numbers - a ratio that can not be expressed as a fraction.
In the Fibonacci sequence, 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21, etc., each number is the sum of the preceding two. As the sequence progresses, each number divided by it’s preceding neighbour results in a sum that gets closer and closer to Phi. By the time we get to the 16th number (987) and divide it by the 15th (610) the result is Phi, as shown above - Like Pi, however, the numbers following the decimal are infinte, and thus, Phi itself cannot be perfectly expressed this way - Read more about the "Golden Ratio"
In applying techniques such as Elliott wave theory, and other Fibonacci based systems, to the market I discovered, among other things, that trading wasn’t really my strong suit. ( Although I never made my fortune in the futures market it did, however, see me through those initial "starving artist" days - which is another story entirely). Ironically, the application of Phi by artists - in so far as it relates to the underlying structure of things – seems equally clumsy. Perhaps that’s because mathematics is antithetical to the way most artist think. Phi is most frequently represented in the familiar and graceful shape of the nautilus, an image that has been appropriated by numerous arts and design related organizations. It is, unquestionably, related to the structure of many natural forms. More importantly, for the purposes of this discussion, it seems that these proportions also apply in a very direct way to our understanding of what is beautiful. More on this next time; meanwhile, I thought I'd wrap up this latest update with an intriguing little puzzle. Created by Sam Loyd in the late 1800's, this visual conundrum relates, in a more playful way, to this same structural system. It has fascinated me for a very long time because the explanation never quite seemed to tell the whole story. This too I will revisit later; I include it here though, because it does, I believe, allude to that mysterious architecture underlying the world.
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Simple puzzle or Profound insight |
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8 x 8 = 64 |
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5 x 13 = 65 |
An 8 x 8 "Chess Board" grid is bisected into, so-called, "golden rectangles" and "golden triangles". The relative dimensions of the larger images and shapes delineated within are all Fibonacci numbers. These four segments from the original grid create a mystifying paradox when rearranged into a rectangle. If we are using the shapes taken from the Chessboard grid to create this rectangle, why then is there an extra square?
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“The conception and reproduction of truth and beauty are the first object of a poet; so should it be with a painter.” - Thomas Cole.
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