R78 Artist with Raven Paintings

 R78 Artist with Raven Paintings

24 x 24" oil on panel

corporate collection (sold)

Raven Chair

 Raven chair

acrylic on wood chair

private collection (sold)

R78 c Raven and Woman tapestry

R78 c Raven and Woman tapestry

32 X 41"  wool

personal collection

Artist painting Raven

Artist painting Raven

10 x 8" ink on panel

private collection (sold)

R77 Man surprised by Raven

R77 Man surprised by Raven

7 x 9" graphite on masonite

private collection (sold)

R76 The Brain beneath it All

R76 The Brain beneath it All

48 x 48" oil on panel

private collection (sold)

R75 Man Feeding Raven

R75 Man Feeding Raven

24 x 24" graphite on panel

personal collection

R73 A la Recherche...

R73 A la Recherche...

6 x 8" oil on panel

R72 Creature Mythology

R72 Creature Mythology

24 x 24" oil on panel

private collection (sold)

R71 Ravens

 R71 Ravens

12 x 16" graphite on panel

private collection (sold)

R70 Creature with Sun Mask, Raven and Dog

R70 Creature with Sun Mask, Raven and Dog

18 x 18" oil on panel

private collection (sold)

R69 Creature, Raven and Dog

R69 Raven, Creature and Dog

24 x 24" oil on panel

corporate collection (sold)

The figures are taken mostly from my sketchbook: the little person with only head and hands, the raven and the dog arguing with each other.  The little person here is caught between two strong and loud parties!  I added one of my orange begonias, in the role of oversized plant, and some of the green leaves growing outside in the yard.

In this painting, the veins on the plants and the petals on the flower stand out, alive with growth and pattern, but the creatures are flat like cutouts, trapped in their two-dimensional view of the universe, and their loud debate, while around them everything grows in and out of invisible dimensions, endlessly.  The little person seems to say, "If only they would be quiet and look around at these wonderful things."

R67 Creature, Sun, Raven

R67 Creature, Sun, Raven

18 x 18" oil on panel

private collection (sold)

R66 Nuclear Family

 R66 Nuclear Family

16 x 16" designer's opaque and graphite on panel

Another experiment.  I drew and painted this while listening to the audio book, Margaret Atwood's 'Handmaid's Tale', which might explain how a fanciful idea turned into a rather forbidding-looking surreality.  Why are pictures like this so much fun to do?  It is choosing whatever colour comes to hand, and doodling in whatever comes to mind, thinking about other things.

But it is always these pictures that bring out the philosophical in critics, who try to find all kinds of hidden meanings and personal revelations in the objects and creatures of what is supposed to be a whimsical rendition of a real little world.

R60 The Dactylology of Raven

R60 The Dactylology of Raven
24 x 36" oil on panel
corporate collection (sold)

My daughter Abigail posed very patiently for all five of the 'angels'.  I was fascinated by the icon-like gestures of sign language when seen one letter at a time.  The V shape, one of my favourites, and a recurring shape in my work, here appears centrally and recalls the somewhat defiant universal gesture.  V, the meeting of two parallels, the inverse of perspective.

I wanted to try a work with one colour for the faces and hands of the creatures, and the rest 'etched' in black oil, the flatness of the black areas contrasting with the more dimensional flesh.  Instead of the usual feather-shaped or wedge-shaped scribble I use for shading, I wrote the word 'raven' repeatedly.  I had already tried this a little in R24, 'Nuclear Creature'.

R59 Figures with Tokens on their Fingers

R59 Figures with Tokens on their Fingers

12 x 16" graphite on panel

private collection (sold)

R58 Raven, Woman, Jar of Snails

R58 Raven, Woman, Jar of Snails

12 x 12" oil on panel

private collection (sold)

A test sketch to try brown oil paint in place of the Payne's gray I have used up to now for the 'etched' oils.  This picture is done in burnt umber.  As often happens, the 'sketch' turned out to be a rather interesting picture, especially I think, in the rather stark treatment of the face.

The burnt umber is a smoother, wetter colour to work with compared to other earth colours.  It is easier to draw lines in with the stylus, and draws well off a fine brush, without thinning.  This workable texture is important for detailed pictures, where many of the outlines are worked negatively, that is, the paint is worked up to a white (or coloured underground) edge, which is left to represent a line.  This method of working takes much more time, but is more effective in painting in white lines or areas later, or using a larger blunt instrument for broader lines which never appear as stark and clean as the 'left' areas.  And interestingly enough, even the commonly-used masking fluids do not leave the same line, the line that I am after.

R57 'V' II

R57 'V' II

30 x 30" ink on panel

private collection (sold)

This large version of the V is more abstract.  Like the spiral, the V is recalled in many natural shapes and events.  I remember a few years ago, doing a couple of dozen ink and brush drawings based on the V shape.

The V also suggests an action accomplished, something that has passed and left its mark, or disturbance.

R56 'V'

R56 'V'

7 x 9" graphite on masonite

$40.00

I became interested in the 'V' shape again, after receiving a commission from Dr. V.  While working on the large black and white piece, I did this pencil sketch.

This V shape became wing shapes in my later drawings of that period, and I have begun to use it again in the oils and drawings.

R55 Originator

R55 Originator

36 x 48" oil on panel

private collection (sold)

Each section of the big spiral contains a growth fractal of some sort, all freely drawn.  There are snails reverting to binary code, and eggs breaking down into bytes, and plants growing into snail shapes, and worms that always turn.  It is much more amusing than ominous, and more whimsical than instructive.

It is so big...yet my work seems to devour the space.  I could do a much bigger one.  The painting that never ends.

Painting in this way, a little piece at a time, a little design or creature composed on the spot each day, is like writing in a journal.  It reminds me of the musing remembrances of the Proust novels, the same feeling of endless reflection, of turning the same motifs over and over, viewing them each time in a slightly different light.  Every motif becomes familiar, a friend, a coded language, a tapestry that begins in the middle and keeps expanding, and is never meant to be finished. 

If only the work need not be in 'convenient' pieces.  If only there were some endless wall to hang it on, no need to break it up and scatter it all over.  It is like losing pieces of your life, sending painted panels here and there, never seeing them again.  How can you be a complete artist, when you are always beginning over again?  Real art, surely, must be built up, one idea on another, like a coral reef, so that the artist at the end of his life, at the end of his work, can look at a whole and see his progression.  Then perhaps something could be said of it, or some greater pattern emerge.

R54 Nuclear Puzzle (rearrangement)

R54 Nuclear Puzzle (rearrangement)

24 x 24" ink on panel

private collection

I worked on this picture, on and off, between oil paintings.  It is a continuation of R43, 'Stirring the Waters'.  Here, particles and matter have been stirred up, and the raven-ish angels are busy rearranging the pieces.

The wolfish-looking mouse and man-eating plants at the bottom are a bit of a joke.  I had accidentally erased a file on my computer, and took out my frustrations on the picture.  I did paint over the mouse's fangs, but the mushroom-like plants still look menacing.  The giant dragonfly happened into the picture because I spent a lot of time down by the lake watching them.  They are born in a spectacular eruption out of the water, and do quite a bit of stirring up, themselves.

R53 Swing with Raven

R53 Swing with Raven

36 x 24" oil on panel

private collection

An in-between, fun picture, meant to indulge the temperamental artist.  I had been casting a very critical eye on my recent crowded compositions and gaudy colours.  I decided to paint a real tree with a real raven, and of course the picture is nothing of the sort.

Experimenting, I wanted to try the permanent marker lines again.  I had originally used it in 'Nuclear Picnic', R13, and liked the way the marker faded to purplish black.  It is interesting working with the heavy, irregular outline.

R52 Brain with Mouse

 R52 Brain with Mouse

24 x 24" oil on panel

$500.00

This is the third in the brain sequence of oils in the Raven Series, and is the next progression or phase of the first brain painting, 'Ravens on the Brain', R37.  The mouse is used rather humorously as the motivator or mover, in much the same way a mouse controls a computer.  The eye is now central, the tentacles spiralling outward in perpetual growth, and the 'brain cells' of the previous painting have become neurone shapes.  The fleshy growths are repeated from several other paintings, including the 'brain' watercolours, but here I have added veined tracings, to repeat the branching (growing) pattern of the tentacles and to indicate the taking and spreading of nourishment, perhaps in the form of input information becoming ideas, self-perpetuating.  The blood-red background, the red of inspiration, is the nourishing ground, feeding into the rest of the shapes like lifeblood.

There is a science involved here, too, mathematics, fractals, those wonderful repeated patterns that appear everywhere, in everything, and disappear into both outward and inward perspectives, to infinity.  The branching pattern, seen in the veins, in branches, in tentacles, in trees, in our body's appendages.  The cellular shape, seen in blood cells, in rocks, in water patterns, in bubbles, in solar systems and galaxies.  The wing shape, seen in just about everything that moves, and really just a variation of branching.  Fractals.

R51 Neurones, wingspans

R51 Neurones, wingspans

4 x 8" graphite on panel

R50 Listening

R50 Listening

4 x 8" graphite on paper

The next night, as it was still raining and the symphony seemed to have picked up where it left off, with one of those Mozart pieces that one can never remember the number of, I completed this drawing.  When the children saw it in the morning, they dubbed it 'the raven telephone', and that rather cleverly describes what it is about.  The raven speaks to the artist, who is receptor-ready.

R49 Raven and Neurones

R49 Raven and Neurones

graphite on paper

One of three drawings done while we were camping.  In the first drawing, the neurones are connected to the idea, in the shape of the raven, and that idea of course is ready to fly off and become a real shape, something to be noticed.

It was very late at night when I did this, and it was raining outside.  The rain on the tin roof of the camper seemed a good accompaniment to the classical music on the radio.   I drew the picture by lantern light, with a mechanical pencil.  It may have been Mozart playing: something familiar.

R48 Raven Methodology

R48 Raven Methodology

24 x 24" graphite on panel

private collection

In making this larger graphite work, I was trying to link together the motifs related to the brain, to memory and to vision, that I have used in other works, or found interesting in my studies.  The familiar receptors and neurones can be found, as well as the mouse and  snail motifs, the fish, raven and book, and my favourite cell.bubble motif.

The title comes from the process involved in thinking through and building up this freehand picture (applying to most of my drawings and paintings), the searching of memory, the repetition and mutation of ideas (motifs) and the recording of them (the book).  Although a turmoil, the patterning is logical and limitless in its variation, hence the 'painting that never ends', the ideas that follow one off the other in painting and writing sequences.

R47 Raven Primer

R47 Raven Primer

7 x 9" acrylic and ink on panel

private collection

The prototype for a new idea for black and white drawings on panel.  I wanted to avoid works on paper, as they are more difficult to frame and appear different in an exhibition.  Glass obscures detail.  With everything on panels, the works can be framed the same, and have much the same appearance, which is important for viewing the progression of the sequences.  However, painting large areas of black on panel with ink is difficult and very uneven.  Here, I tried acrylic for the large black areas, and was pleased with the added texture.  It is quite different in appearance from the black and white oils, as the oil is etched and even sketched on with pen.  But I like the quick drying acrylics for pen work.

Sometimes ideas come from nothing, it seems, and I was very pleased with the idea of a raven alphabet book, and a rather lost-looking lady.  Sometimes the very small works are good, because they cannot contain too much: the eye cant take them all in at once, and they form a pleasingly simple pattern.

R46 Angel with Snail and Mouse

R46 Angel with Snail and Mouse

12 x 12" oil on panel

private collection

R45 Ghosts, Snails and Ravens

R45 Ghosts, Snails and Ravens

6 x 8" graphite on panel

private collection

R44 Snail and Raven

R44 Snail and Raven

6 x 8" graphite on panel

private collection

R43 Stirring the Waters

R43 Stirring the Waters
24 x 24" ink on panel
private collection

The continuation of the idea in R41, 'The Omnipresence of Raven'.  Here the retina/sun shape has become the 'angel', who reaches down to stir up the void.  All of the plant-like shapes are actually animal life.

R42 Raven Tapestry

R42 Raven Tapestry

wool

private collection

Return to Raven Series

R41 The Omnipresence of Raven

R41 The Omnipresence of Raven
30 x 36" ink on panel
private collection

R40 Lady, Ravens and Reader

R40 Lady, Ravens and Reader
oil on panel 30 x 36"
private collection

For the first time I am composing as I paint, so that the etched painting, technically more a drawing, is a daily combined record of the ideas that usually go into a series of ink drawings.  The raven has reappeared in his complete form, as have the checks, feather and leaf motifs, and scales.

R39 Lady and Raven

R39 Lady and Raven
24 x 24" ink on panel

R38 Lady with a Brain

R38 Lady with a Brain
36 x 48" oil on panel

R37 Ravens on the Brain

R37 Ravens on the Brain
24 x 24" oil on panel
private collection

The fleshy portions add an organic quality...in fact, the picture appears almost to be growing or spreading.

The 'brain' sequence shows the dark flutter of ideas, my beloved ravens, coming to the artist's mind.  The raven's eye, sight above sight, bits of wings passing like eidolons through other more physical parts and surfaces, as the intersecting of limitless planes, varous levels of perception.  Repeated scale, cell, cloud, dome of bubble motifs representing infinite replication and a sort of binary patterning to our nature, our being, whether broken down to the smallest unit of cells or atoms, or built to the last greatest universal structure, made up of variations of the same elements.

R36 Working

R36 Working
5 x 8" ink on paper

R35 Elijah

R35 Elijah
5 x 8" ink on paper

When writing friend Elijah and I were working together, he told me that he had forgotten that the prophet Elijah, in the Bible, was fed by ravens.  I did this picture for him, really  a staement on his frame of mind at the time.  He had just found out that he had MS.

R34 Going with the Idea

R34 Going with the Idea
10 x 14" designer's opaque & watercolour

...we all decided to go to the beach. It was a very windy night. We wanted to ‘wave watch’ down by the break-wall. When we arrived, the lake was obligingly thrusting tall fingers of spray over the dock walls. Meri and Bruce were soaked immediately. A continuous fast undulation heaved across the face of the lake, ruffled occasionally by breakers. Everything boomed and creaked. We laughed until our cheeks ached. We ended the evening in Meri's living room, shivering a little, huddled in the cushions, me under the afghan.

R33 Ideas

R33 Idea
6 x 8" ink on paper

R32 Diving Raven

R32 Diving Raven
10 x 14" designers opaque & watercolour

R31 Where Ideas Come From

R31 Where Ideas Come From
10 x 14" designers opaque & watercolour

R30 Meri's Idea

R30 Meri's Idea
10 x 14" designers opaque & watercolour

An artist and I were discussing angst and the ‘artistic edge’. We were trying to put into words the crossover that an artist experiences when he reaches an idea…over an edge or across a chasm, feeling his way around dark rooms and opening doors. The quite physical nature of this creative experience continues to puzzle and awe us.

R29 Lady writing with Raven

R29 Lady writing with Raven
5 x 8" ink on paper

R28 Dream Raven

R28 Dream Raven
8 x 5" ink on paper

R27 Leaves, lady

R27 Leaves, lady
8 x 5" ink on paper

R26 Raven Creature

R26 Raven Creature
10 x 14" designers opaque & watercolour
Corporate collection

A metaphoric creature, a human face, fishy parts, feathery parts, wing tips, and scaly clouds. There is no raven, as such, but the fishy part does have an odd thick-looking beak.

R25 Rose Writing

R25 Rose Writing
10 x 14" designers opaque & watercolour
Corporate collection

May 27, 1987

I'm working on a small watercolour, R25, Rose writing/drawing with Raven. It is in the most muted pastels, grey, flesh and blue. It is lighter than air, made of airy spaces with only a darker underside, just showing. Raven, in this picture, is disappearing, making way for something else.

This picture has no meaning, really. It is just part of that blending-edge, brushed over and fanned outward to become other thoughts and concepts. The shapes will alter; the colours will change. But the artistic intent will always be the same. What a quest my brush is on. What a trail my pen makes. What an illusion my shaded colours give. What a story!