"Collaborative Finish"

14" x 24" oil and acrylic on birch plywood

And I have done a little exploring in the world of lucid dreaming- although I wouldn't consider myself an onironaut yet, but I kept a lucid dream journal at one dedicated point once, for six weeks running, and I have to say; it was exhausting and exhilarating: Imagine that, for weeks, you can clearly remember all of your dreams like it was everyday life, and so for weeks, all of your memories get kind of combined with your waking life's memories, and so you remember writing on the walls which was inverted or backwards or whatever, and animals that show up at odd times and things being out-of-place and being chased by zombies and cannibals and don't you know that tons of people use their dogs as ring-bearers for their own weddings these days? You didn't just dream that, you tell yourself.

"Henry, the Pink Rug and Maria's Nude Foot"

8" x 14" oil on masonite

You know, you never can be sure just who is punk rock. Just when you think you have everybody pegged, and you're all comfy with the universe being nice and tidy, and all of the usual suspects are all safely packaged up and in their respective places; you get a little curveball. By curveball, I mean that faintly, ever so faintly, you hear a bit of Black Flag in the background while on the telephone with somebody who you would be surprised to hear Black Flag in the background while on the telephone with. Or you catch a flash of a Canadian Maple Leaf tattoo as someone fetches something from the bottom drawer in the kitchen; or you take more than two seconds to peruse someone's bookshelf, and find that there is much, much more than John Grisham on the shelves...

Speaking of finding alternative media on bookshelves, I must refer here to "Jane Fonda's Workout" of 1982, which, uncannily, I find on the bookshelves of all of the coolest people I have ever met, and which book, I suppose, has become, in a way, my own personal "Catcher in the Rye," although I think that that might seem hopelessly shallow.

"A Collaborative"

14" x 24" oil and acrylic on birch plywood

So this is that collaborative piece I was telling you about that I'm working on with the painter Tony Kirby for the Oceanside Gallery show in April. It's basically a guy holding some luggage in one hand and reaching out to (a woman? two women?) with his other hand. The women are laughing and walking the other way. The man sort of looks like a zombie, or the dancing puppet John Malcovich when John Cusack is controlling his body in the movie "Being John Malcovich," and I guess that's what I'm starting to like about this painting: the idea that the lumbering zombie with camoflauge britches holding the suitcase doesn't get the girl this time...

I get to have the painting for one more time in my studio and I need to figure out a good narrative for just what exactly is happening here, anyway, seriously. So any suggestions? STAIRBLASTER thinks I shouldn't be doing collaborative paintings in the first place, but that just shows you how much he knows, and I was thinking birds and a maybe a monkey, but then again, I always want to work birds and maybe a monkey into my paintings.

"Detained in Belarus"

10"x 10" oil on masonite

When we were younger and there was no particular agenda, we decided that it might be a good idea to see if we could sneak into Russia. This was before Ion had started with law school or written a book or had a family, and we had a bunch of time, so after we had traveled around Poland, we decided that we should probably just go to Moscow by train, avoiding any guards as we went by moving stealthily from car to car and pretending we were reading newspapers or whatever. Instead of actually obtaining a visa, we figured that we would use our combined powers of persuasion with any border officials or train guards, if questioned. Like Jedis. We didn't quite make it as far as Minsk, in Belarus, before we were hustled off the train, (and do I remember a guard throwing my bag out the window?) and detained for a few hours. It was like "Boy's State: Eastern Bloc" for the next few hours as we tag-teamed the border guards with rhetoric, vehicular openings, and strategic argument, and it almost worked.

This is a painting of Ion wielding a mighty argument with a border guard under the fluorescents of a holding area in Hrodna. I love that Soviet architecture with concrete and cavernous spaces and polished floors which catch reflections and light. I also love the slightly mismatched uniforms of the border guards, and the guards' friends sort of "hanging out," in case there is any trouble. And Ion, as ever, clean-cut even after a bunch of dodgy Bialystock hotels, earnestly making his argument not for release, but campaigning to press on, press on, further into the unknown.

The Big Picture

So I've been thinking:

Over the next 12 months, I am going to be documenting the planning, preparation and implementation of my family's one-year experiment- To consume only the food we've produced ourselves here on our little farm on Vancouver Island, B.C.

I'm doing this because I'm interested in discovering whether this can be done at all; as a bit of a challenge for myself; as a way to learn some new skills, obviously as an exercise to consume fewer global resources, and also, in the event of a massive viral outbreak or a zombie infestation, I'd like to know that I could last at least a year, feeding my family, and keeping them healthy, even though all the local supermarkets have long since been burned to the ground and the nearest shopping mall is occupied by biker gangs.

Throughout this experiment, I am going to try and enlist the help/commentary of people with specialized knowledge of some of the subjects I'll be approaching over the next few months: from power and water management to gardening and animal husbandry to greenhouse construction and food preservation. I think what I'll do is try to post 5 "meta-projects" which I'll need feedback in order to move forward with, while at the same time I'll also post projects that I can sort of figure out on my own.

I'm not going to be afraid to ask for help throughout this project, for I'm starting out with a big handicap: I'm a bit of an idiot. You know how there are those people in the world who are kind of wise/knowledgeable about a whole host of subjects? Well I'm not one of them. I'm a really hard worker- I'll put in tons of hours on a project, but usually because I have to do things twice.

I am originally from Sonoma, California, which is one of the most beautiful and temperate places on Earth, but I think maybe for my adult life I wanted to live somewhere a bit wilder, with some weather and some snow, so I moved to Eugene, Oregon for University, where I got my degree in Fine Art, then moved to Portland, Oregon where I worked, made some paintings, and met Natacha Lesage, a Canadian veterinarian who was on a working visa in Portland. Natacha and I took a year to travel around the world before getting married in her small hometown of Notre Dame de Lourdes, Manitoba, and then, after a couple more adventures, moved here to Vancouver Island, bought this really run-down ten-acre farm, had a little baby boy and now we're ready, with Spring almost here, to put some sweat and tears into our hobby farm, and get it producing some sweet sweet milk and honey.

Each and every one of these posts is meant to invite discussion, so feel free to post your comments below.

"Lavender Blue Dilly Dilly"

8"X 8" oil on masonite

I was thinking about Francoise and le fromage bleu, et cette petit chien bleu, Dilly, and being fascinated by my extended French family actually eating big chunks of ripe/fragrant/slightly (and maybe this is my imagination) petulant blue cheese, and what's more, appearing not to be faking their pleasure when they'd say, "That cheese really tasted good."

Because for me, I was always really faking it when I'd say, w/r/t foul-smelling cheese, "Oh this Pont l'Eveque is just fabulous!" And then I'd privately spit it out into my napkin, as I naturally assumed everyone else was doing too. This was all before Natacha gave me the simple excercise of taking just a bit of blue cheese, on top of a wedge of butter, on top of a cracker, and eating that, and I've got to tell you, it felt like the way I felt the first time I rode a bicycle without training wheels- I was like, "Holy crap! I'm actually doing this! I'm eating and enjoying blue cheese!" And now, I don't understand how anybody can really have any particular aversion to anything culinary anyhow. It's all just a big fetid playground; and for me, the world is now full of food I don't like yet; I just need some time to figure out the secret way to eat it. (Additionally, I'm always kind of laughing whenever I eat cheese now anyway because I'll invariably think of last Christmas when Mireille referred to cheese as "stool hardener," which is hilarious.)

And by the way- I'm also going to be showing some paintings at the Oceanside Gallery for the month of April with my friend Tony Kirby. We're each showing some recent paintings, and although we work a bit differently, we've got a collaborative piece that we've been trading off to each other every week for the past few weeks, and the last time it was in my studio, I must admit, the painting was really starting to take an odd, if not entirely unpleasing shape. But anyway we've got another couple of weeks to fix it up before the opening reception, which is on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 7PM- and I certainly hope to see you there.

"Djemma el Fna, Marrakesh"

10" x 17" oil on masonite

So this is a painting of the Djemma el Fna square in Marrakesh, Morocco- just before they start setting up all the barbeques and tables and lights, and you're getting really hungry for lamb or whatever, and you've only had orange juice in the hours between your breakfast and this moment, because you're a little embarrassed to come down off the roof of your hotel because you were convinced to buy a jaloba that is like a big ladies' dress, and you wear your Fanny Pack underneath the dress, so you end up looking like a pregnant tourist man, even though the idea behind purchasing the jaloba in the first place is so that you would blend in. And you really don't blend in.

But now, here in Canada, you're remembering what it was like, years ago, to really sleep on the rooftop of the hotel because it was cheaper, and you remember how that pretty French girl, who was also sleeping on the roof, noticed you sketching in your sketchpad and wanted her portrait done; and you were nervous, and you were trying so hard, and she was waiting forever, and you just stared in horror as your own drawing turned out worse and worse. And you watched yourself draw a picture of an aging Cro-Magnon woman, and here in front of you was this real live beautiful French girl, waiting in the sun, on a rooftop in Marrakesh, and you're thinking to yourself, panic-stricken, "Maybe I can somehow turn this into a drawing of a boat or an eagle or something."

"The Light in Manitoba"

8"X 8" oil on masonite

Here is a painting that I made as a gift for some good friends/relatives this last holiday season and it was one of those paintings that started to feel like a deck of cards as I kept getting further into it. Or like maybe Jenga or whatever. I just kept watching these nice clear shapes emerge, as I was painting, and I was like, "Holy crap, this might be a good painting." And then I got to the point where, (yes, Jenga is the analogy, not the cards) I wasn't going to take any more out or put any more in, and so I just left it alone and there it was, just sitting there.

(And now whenever I sort of congratulate myself on a nice painting I remember Ron Graff calling me a "softie" after looking at my work and I feel like a load of crap again.) Anyway, I was listening to Frank Black's "Manitoba" about that guy getting lost in the woods while I painted this.