perfect remedy

for having overdosed on press coverage of the violence and vandalism on my city's streets on Saturday and Sunday (indeed, is it over?) the answer was spending peaceful hours in my studio in the company of Naples yellow, Zinc white, Alizarin crimson, burnt umber, French ultramarine blue and others on Sunday - turned out to be a creative and restorative day...this painting is almost finished, don't tell Team Parent...onwards!

Toronto - in the limelight - protests abound

Our city is currently hosting the G-20 Summit - media attention is being paid to the deterioration of peaceful demonstrations today...predictably some protesters are violent and destructive. Police cars on fire, storefront windows broken - negative images to be sure. As it continues I can only wish that the next several hours will not see more and worse consequences of these actions.

One thing really puzzles me: people who purposefully go down to view the "action" - I guess they are fearless (read: misguided) or is it just that I certainly am too much of a wimp to deliberately place myself in the line of fire?

Peace and love,

Luminato Festival of Arts + Creativity 2010 in Toronto

Today I visited a couple of the art installations - part of this year's Luminato Festival; beautiful and thought-provoking offerings, I am attaching a photo of one: an art/fashion installation in a breathtaking venue, the Galleria space of a downtown office building, this space was designed by the well-known architect, Santiago Calatrava; the piece is entitled "The Ascension of Beauty" by Mark Fast a UK based knitwear designer (hails originally from Canada), the dress on the mannequin is knitted on a machine and the white ropes are its train, also, I believe, made on the knitting machine, the train goes on for a great distance reaching into the top of the Galleria and swings down and up, quite lovely. The other installation was film and really too esoteric to try to describe herein - especially after two glasses of Australian chardonnay...a la prochaine, mes amis,

I'm Back! by popular demand and unrelenting requests

hello, gentle readers, after a prolonged absence from the blogosphere I have returned; I am technologically challenged and have changed my e-mail address since I last wrote, now I can see if you leave me a comment - which you can do if you are yourself logged in as a blog user - but I will not get your e-mails as it seems impossible to change that...but if I find out how, you will be the first to know. You can still gain access to my website, please visit.

Lots of changes since I last wrote, I have moved house and job locations (same job, just moved locations) now working from home base and I love it - no commuting problems, yea! Each morning I walk around the block then I enter my home office and plug away at the tasks which require my undivided attention...