Hello and welcome to High Park Blobs.
I am renting a place in the Roncesvalles area in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I love it here for many reasons – one of them being that I am situated very close to High Park. I visit almost every day, often to practice Tai Chi but also it serves as a potent source of artistic inspiration.
What you see below is the beginning of a series based on material (photos) drawn from High Park. These paintings are based on noise (just like most of my work) – I am presenting the forest as vehicle for the expression of ‘noise’. I am interested in examining the intertwining systems that compose the forest ecosystem – their endless interdependencies. For all answers, look to nature. What I gain in the process of completing these paintings, informs my other more programmatic work – software (web apps, or the NB for example). These paintings are a more intuitive approach to obtaining information from noise. The information: the multitude of life forms that occupy and form the substance of wilderness. Each twist of a branch, each track on the ground left by a creature, each curled up leaf serves to embody the form of living presence. Each configuration, a momentary document of the dynamics of interacting living beings. Incredibly rich at every level of detail – these places serve as a deep and abiding source of inspiration for my work and research through artistic practice. Never will I tire of these structures, systems, and forms. A canvas that shifts and adapts moment by moment to everything around and within it and shifting alongside are our interpretations. Wilderness – the ultimate collective portrait of psyche and living presence.
Every person who does art could base their entire practice on trees/wilderness and they would all be different and totally valid and new.
This is the beginning of this series. I plan to do more paintings. Eventually I also plan to host an art show/event in the forest. It wouldn’t be the first time (Harvest/Midlothian Castle, WR-NETTT, Arrowhead – see the ‘EVNETS’ menu item under ‘shows’).
one of about a bajillion photos taken of High Park, Toronto. I try and find the most everyday, unspectacular (at least conventionally unspectacular) scenes I can.
HPB1
HPB2
HPB3
HPB4
HPB5
Each piece is a 22.5″ x 15″ watercolour painting on 140lb hot press Arches watercolour paper. Each image also has an inexpensive inkjet reproduction option – 17″ x 11” or 18″ x 12″ on premium matte poster paper enclosed in a clear protective envelope (unframed).