Angry Barn Threatens Derelicts

Just playing on hot press slippery paper. Cropped to get fun compo...Bink to explore the domain of uninhibited colourplay....

Landscraping

High Water in the Slough

This is my idea painitng, just trying to work out the compo... bink to see the inner workings...

How Are Things in the Old Neighbourhood?

Work in Progress - BOO! Reversed

BOO! At Twilight

Bink on pic to blow, up!

BOO! Eight - The Goldwater Cathouse

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This rambling wreck of a painting needs to be simplified and tied together better, but it serves as an idea painting..its the uze, a full sheet of unadulterated hay-wirosity.

Bunch of low-lifes (mostly my friends), minor league scofflaws since the drug laws were relaxed, squatted in this shack and conducted their dubious biness deals. One of the girls loved cats and some clever chap figured he would advertise in the faint hope of an economic gain or at least getting a laugh...as cathouse means whorehouse which I am sure most of you sophisticates know. The house, being old and reputedly the scene of a fatal stabbing, had slogans and warnings all over it. So "VOTE FOR GOLDWATER" and "THE CATHOUSE" becomes "The Goldwater Cathouse". I'm sure Barry would be impressed. (1964? Presidential candidate)

I think the terlit needs a proper burial...I was gonna put "We won't take any crap outa you" right next to it but too many letters. The pampas grass are in full bloomage in my front yard so I figured I put'em in...

BOO! Seven - The Demented Snowman

Yard Mates (Hanging Out for the Long Haul)

The Pessimism of I.M. Beaton

All righty then, this may take some 'splainin', so bear with me...My grandmother was a Rosicrusian who would tell anybody who would listen that, "when she went, she wanted her ashes spread in her garden." As a precocious child I figured I could untangle this riddle. A Rosicrucian must be some kinda gardener specializing in roses. But where was she going and what did "ashes" have to do with anything? If I'm a nut case its partly her fault, I'm pretty sure. Her husband was a newspaper editor for the old Vancouver Times and a an amateur painter. He checked out the week I was born. All through my childhood I looked at two muddy oil paintings that hung above the chesterfield in Granny's livingroom.

My brothers used to ask our dad to draw stuff to illustrate the stories he would cook up for us kids. He couldn't draw worth a lick but he gave it a shot. My brothers were always impressed, but I would look at the drawings and shake my head, the ol' man would grin and that was that. When I would draw something he would show his poker buddies and generally advertise the productions of his oldest kid. Well he packed it in too, leaving the whole outfit shy of male influence. As luck would have it, my grandmother had a brother. In retrospect my great uncle was prolly a full blown loon, that no responsible parent now would let a kid anywhere near. But times were different and I was shipped off to see visit the iconoclastic recluse (that may be redundant, but you get the idea) for weeks at a time during the summer. I would be about ten and his shack was in the interior and it was hot and magical and I learned a lot of stuff that I maybe shouldn't have.

I called him, "Gunk"..a contraction of great uncle. Thing is, the ol boy was sort of a patron of the arts and a polymath and encouraged me to draw and paint. He was an incurable contrarian and encouraged me to question everything as a matter of principle. He had (wait for it, you can see it coming) wrecked cars and junk and told me what they were and how they got to his yard. I loved the idea of the junkers and the designs, colours and history...I was hooked.Gunk sent me supplies, books and encouragement until he joined the rest of the crowd up above (I hope). He lived to see my first big junkyard painting and was over the moon about the whole production, somebody else saw what he saw...beautiful junk.

Gunk's real name was Ian Marshall Beaton. An appropriate name for a natural "bad attituder" who didn't see any real future for mankind, yet whose bright light shone on his grand nephew (or whatever I was).

Drip, Drip, Rusting Away

A Cluster of Cabriolets

Snake Light Illumination

Barn Fresh Cabriolets

When a farmer advertises an old wreck he has hauled out of a web-infested corner of his falling down barn it is referred to as being "barn fresh".

The Car Lot in Cumberland Hill

Left Behind

Fletch Speaks From the Great Beyond

I would have liked to have been able to ring up Ol' James Fletcher Watson and ask him a coupla things. Maybe have had a little visit...a lesson or two. I re-read his wonderful, The Magic of Watercolor and was struck by his assessment of J.S. Cotman, after whom the paint is named. The Fletch was particularly impressed with how Johnny handled cloud shadows in the landscape. So I fiddled a bit with an old drawing and popped out this scribble. It prolly doesn't have much to do with what the masters had in mind but I liked the notion of darks and lights with no particular reason other than, "there they go...there you are!"

When the Wind Blows

I like to invent scenes that are hopefully resonant, the motion, the light...the way things were and still are in some places. Junk, clutter, the debris of the mid-last century, the fodder that I am compelled to re-arrange in my paintings to create my scenes. It is just plain fun for me and the reason I paint.

I am still working on this idea, there are a few things that are unfinished, but you can fill in the details like the unfinished chimney top...its the idea that is important. This is the middle section of a bigger painting that I thought could stand on its own. I love this breezy style of painting and I admit to being stuck not only in another world of old stuff but also an admirer of older painting styles and I lament their loss.

The Encore Performance of the Dowager Queen of Desolation Sound

When Vasiliev DeFrenz, a seminal influence on the local art scene, first batched up one of his "industrial art" pieces I was a teenager industriously working on perfecting the mechanics of a whole arsenal of bad habits. F'rinstance, I had taken up smoking filterless "Export A" cigarettes, learned how to roll a joint and was an apprentice acid dropper. My grandfather had provided me with the Panhead and I was generally a terror to no one in particular and a hazzard mostly to myself. The man I credit with my early career as a miscreant was the aforementioned Vaz DeFrenz ("seminal influence"...get it?), a charlatan of the first order and an instructor par excellence in the fine arts of dissolute inclinations and pastimes.

In the late sixties it was possible to get a Local Initiative Grant for any ol'hairball scheme and Vaz's proposal looked good on paper. Rolly paper, no doubt. He wanted to rescue an abandoned fishboat and restore it as an art piece, namely splash a coat of paint on it, drop it in the drink and hope it floated long enough for everybody on board to get thoroughly stoned. A noble enterprise in the opinion of the under-employed and heartily endorsed by the local council who were a bunch of comedians themselves. So, all righty then, grant given, boat located and hauled out and patched for painting. The usual rainbow- gaudy splash and dash paint job and sploosh back in the chuck. Well, some saboteur with a talent for the comedic had chipped out the seal around the propeller shaft and it took about five minutes for the boat to sink, right in front of the village council and the local M.L.A. It was seriously among the most pant-wettingly funny incidents that I have ever witnessed. Vaz beat it out of Dodge after draining the grant fundage into his pocket and I never saw him again.

The boat was eventually refloated but it was washed up in a storm and settled on the rocks across the bay and you can see it as the sun goes down, resplendent in it's glorious hues.

Before it was rescued and temporarily revived it had worked as the "Dowager Princess" in Desolation Sound. __________________
Ron Morrison

The Tub Unplugged

Light Circulatin' in the Holler

Pre-Study for the BIG PIC

An idea I am working on...bink to explore.

Seclusion Fusion

Truck-you-lent..."defiant".

have dreams about vehicles I have owned and collections of "stuff" that is stored and lost...I can't find them...because I never had them in the first place. Trucks that I lent to people and they disappeared. This is the shape of a lost truck that haunts my dreams sometimes...where the heck is it?