Julian Merrow-Smith

Julian Merrow-Smith, artist. Taken March 18, 2013.

On February 16, 2005, Julian Merrow-Smith painted an oyster. It was 12 x 14 centimetres, about the size of a postcard. A year and 362 small paintings later, an article about the painter and his project appeared in the New York Times. Six months after that Julian’s mailing list had grown from three to three thousand and each painting was selling even before it was dry.

Ruth Phillips Cherries from Cheveux's Orchard

Outside the red cottage where I live in Roberts Creek is an ageing fig tree. It is planted too close to the house. It is, in fact, planted directly under the power lines making constant pruning both necessary and dangerous, but is gives abundant and beautiful fruit. Each September if I can collect the figs before the birds and wasps get them I stew them into a ruby jam and deliver a jar to friends at Christmas.

In the spring of 2009 I began following Postcard from Provence and in the summer I bid on the painting of three figs. Each year my figs come and go but these three have remained true.

Three figs - Julian Merrow-Smith

I wanted to meet Julian Merrow-Smith and his wife Ruth Phillips not just because he is a brilliant painter and she a professional cellist and skilled author. Although that would have been enough. I wanted to meet them because they seemed to have solved one of the great questions of our time: how to make a living through art while at the same time retainingo a measure of independence to live where and how you choose. When I first encountered Postcard from Provence. I thought it was the most clever idea I had seen in a long time. It seemed a stroke of genius. Take advantage of the internet as a visual medium that can easily be tied to online auctions. Make the paintings small enough to go easily through the post, add one very talented painter some hard work and some luck and “voila!” you had a mechanism by which you could live almost anywhere and make your living through your art.  

The Watercolour was small, warm, very much alive; mp tom the sense that the oranges looked like oranges; although they did. It was more that the pleasure Julian took in the paint and the oranges was somehow alive in the painting. There was a strong sense of analysis but also of revealing—in the subject and in the medium—that made it so different to anything I was doing then or have ever managed to do since. I think that this is something that defines the best of his work: an intellectual coolness and sensual warmth that is emulsified somehow in paintings which, and I don’t think this is a coincidence, are more often than not inspired by the pantry.

Introduction to the book Postcard from Provence by GJH

I set up my portable studio in their living room. Julian, I photographed before lunch, Ruth, after lunch. For my assistant I took my seventeen year old daughter Esmé. Julian remarked how different it was to be on the other side of the portrait process. Ruth played her cello. Even warming up it was magnificent.  As I worked on Ruth's portrait Julian left to begin his afternoon's painting. I felt very privileged to be invited into their world and tried hard not to make too big of a dent in their day.

Ruth Phillips

Ruth Phillips, cellist, writer. Taken March 18, 2013.

It was early spring 2008, a year after Lucien Chauvet’s death. Along the length of the house now ran four wooden boxes in which grew the beginnings of four varieties of tomato. There were aubergines. There were salad leaves, chard and rocket, turnips and beets. A Sicilian gourd reached upward with its first rampant tendrils. Potatoes were planned, naturally. Every square of growth was punctuated with an organic insect repellent or bee attractor such as rosemary or marigold, and the vegetables were arranged in happy families. Carrots that loved tomatoes, tomatoes that loved basil, radishes that loved mustard and redwort pigweed. Julian tapped a packet and three seeds plopped into his hand. He took a pencil and created an indent for them in a pot the size of an egg cup. He let the seeds drop. He placed earth on top of them, sprinkled fine sand over them, and watered them from a great height. Next, he transplanted a row of lettuces, gathering earth around the seedlings as lovingly as if he were tucking a child in to a bed. Then, looking as smitten with the yellow blooms as he ever had been with me, he picked four Lady Banks roses from the bush and walked them toward the studio.

Ruth Phillips – Cherries from Chauvet's Orchard: A Memoir of Provence.

Ferry Building Gallery - Walk Through

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Stephen Osborne

Stephen Osborne, publisher, writer, photographer. Taken February 21, 2013

I first met Stephen Osborne in his writing several years ago when, as a young man, freshly degreed from University and unable to find work in recession-weary Ontario, I packed everything I owned into my parent’s basement, decided to travel light and headed for the coast where I quickly found work with one of the largest, family-owned book-selling empires. West of Toronto this could only mean Duthie Books. The staff at the flagship store where I started were young, overeducated, underpaid, but, by and large, felt they had landed the best gig in town. They were working in an environment that was at the centre of all that was important – books. We were on in the inside, spending days where everyone else wanted to be. No doubt each had their own personal relationship to the romance of a meaningful life (regardless of whether this vision was based on, say, the intellectual smoke of Parisian cafés, a notion of the lone scriptwriter working at night and shilling books during the day, the nail-chewing novelist, or just the litterocentric polymath who knew that the members of the general public, the great unwashed, those who had not dedicated themselves to a life in books, could never pose a question of either title or author that could not be answered immediately, from the head) each felt that they were at the center of a culture that mattered and each felt fortunate that, as Duthies was itself a family of eccentrics, none of us were ever asked to make the McJob sacrifice and put who you were or who you wanted to be aside while you stacked the shelves and answered petulant queries from disgruntled businessmen who insisted that we carry some motivational guide or – the standing joke in the bookselling trade – dealt with that person who wanted to know if we had a book, but could provide nothing: no title, author, plot, or character – and had only an inkling of the colour of the cover. The great ship Duthie went down and now, sadly, has passed away forever. It has been replaced by box-store outlets staffed by booksellers who are forced to restrain their individuality, wear identical brand-building clothing, and at times, god help us, headsets. I refuse to give up the idea that they are all bibliophiles - but for them the era is over, they were born at the wrong time, arrived too late, and the bookstores they work at are quiet and meaningless, filled, not with straw, but with other things, things that are not books: minor home furnishings and giftwares. If I were to state clearly my own conviction, it would be that a bookstore was a place where ideas were bound up as objects and sold to a public that was hungry for ideas. It was an optimistic view, especially when you added some craft such as typography and design to the objects. It was a view that saw labouring with ideas as important, and held that the general public was, if not preoccupied with, at least interested in a culture of ideas and the vehicles that contained them.

It was here, in the early nineties, on the magazine stand of the 10th ave. Duthies that I first encountered the prose of Stephen Osborne. The writing was remarkable in a way that eluded me for a very long time. I subscribed to the magazine: Geist. Each time my issue arrived I saved it for a particular bus ride I took. On the bus I would begin with Mr. Osborne’s essay and read it through. What was he doing? I understood that in the mechanics of writing what drives the engine is plot: the mystery has its murder, the romance its attraction, the polemic its thesis – but Osborne’s dispatches contained none of these. And yet, I was moved along, and would often fold the magazine shut as I rode my bus, looking out the window, to contemplate what I had been reading, with a confident will to return to the dispatch. I had no idea who he was. For a long time I confused him with another writer I had seen perform in one of the literary events taking place at the Niagra: a tall man who often wore a wide brimmed hat and leather jacket. He was not that man.

As authors we are not always the best people to explain the motivation of our work. I could not say exactly why I felt so compelled to photograph him. I asked him one year - our schedules were off and so I left it. But it seemed important and so I contacted him again the following year.

He arrived for the shoot, which passed with more conversation than photography. No doubt we talked about bookstores and writers. His Vancouver preceded mine. When I told him I was working on a book of photography he was interested and offered advice. I would have saved myself considerable trouble if I had taken more of it. He was generous with his time, which surprised me - I knew of his various photographic and literary projects. I pressed my luck a little further and asked him to write the preface to the book I was working on. He agreed.

Books are like children - there are those who think it is unfair or unkind to bring more of them into this world. Maybe that is true. The book making process was more difficult than I ever imagined. But now, as I post this, the book is complete and ready (after a few false starts) to make its entry into the world. I'm thankful to have Stephen and his words in my book and pleased to be able to post his portrait here.

——————————
Stephen Osborne is the founding editor of Geist Magazine. He writes an essay for each issue and publishes photographs under the alias Mandelbrot. A number of his essays can be found in the collection Ice & Fire: Dispatches from the New World.

Portraits: Found and Taken is being launched next week (January 30th, 2014) at the Ferry Building Gallery.

Cloe Aigner and Jocelyn Hallett

Cloe Aigner and Jocelyn Hallett, creatives, taken February 22, 2013

There is a strange math at work when you add a second subject. I find photographing more than one person at a time almost impossible. You might think the complexity simply doubles when you add a second person, but I find that is not the case. If, for example, you spend time and took forty pictures of a subject to get one that is suitable, it is not the case that you would need to take eighty photos to make an image of two people. It seems to me to be exponential. One hundred and sixty would be needed. By then both the photographer and the subjects are exhausted. 

This session was a gas. I learned a lot from it, in particular about using lights in a small space with two people. Cloe and Jocelyn were great to work with and as two founders of Zen House Media they knew all about photo shoots - I think maybe that made them very tolerant ...

New Show - Ferry Building Gallery

I'm happy to announce a solo show at the Ferry Building Gallery in West Vancouver. Located on the shore next to Ambleside Park, the Ferry Building Gallery is a heritage building and a great, intimate space for an exhibition. I have printed four new portraits for this show and they will be large format works, measuring 24" x 36". 

There are three events associated with the exhibition:

Opening Reception - Tuesday January 28th 6-8pm

Official Book Launch for Portraits: Found and Taken  - Thursday January 30th

Meet the Artist: A chance to talk about the work - Saturday February 1st, 2-3pm

Hope to see you there!

Musicworks Cover Photo

My portrait of Giorgio Magnanensi is on the cover of Musicworks magazine. Here is a link to the full article. http://www.musicworks.ca/featured-article/featured-article/giorgio-magnanensi-sonic-playground

Congratulations Giorgio!

New Book - Press Sheets

I put together a special signature of images to test the printing of the images in duotone. The press sheets arrived from the printer a few days ago in a very heavy mailing tube. I am pleased to say that the sheets look fantastic— rich, crisp, and with considerable depth to the greys and blacks. 

It is a very exciting time.

Even without the book finished yet, sales are good. Pre-order your copy here:
http://andandcompany.blogspot.ca/p/books.html

Peter Braune

Peter Braune, printmaker, taken February 8, 2013

Photography is the easiest medium in which to become competent. Almost anybody with a point and shoot camera can take a decent picture. But while photography is the easiest medium in which to be competent, I think it is the hardest medium in which to have a distinctive personal vision.

Chuck Close 

Peter Braune runs New Leaf Editions and is a motivating force behind the Biennial International Miniature Print Exhibition or BIMPE.

Review - Facing the Light

A review of the show "Facing the Light: Portraits" now showing at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery has just been published in the Coast Reporter.

Here's the link:
http://www.coastreporter.net/article/20130809/SECHELT0501/308099998/-1/sechelt/tim-portrays-jone-acts

Tim portrays, Jone acts

Jan DeGrass/Arts and Entertainment Writer / Staff writer

AUGUST 9, 2013 01:00 AM

Figures in action stalk the walls of the Gibsons Public Art Gallery (GPAG), and portraits stare down at the viewer during the current exhibition that opened last weekend.

Tim McLaughlin's almost life size photographs dominate the smaller room. As a working artist, McLaughlin is also a graphic designer and a writer, who began to focus on photography in 2004.

Late in the summer of 2010 he launched into portrait photography. He blossomed quickly; the body of work that resulted from his first efforts is large, each picture realized, portraying the essence of the subject. Many of the portraits are of Sunshine Coast artists - Todd Clark looking moody, Nadina Tandy looking like Tina Fey, her sense of humour apparent, Maurice Spira aloof - or of performers: sound artist Giorgio Magnanensi, ethereal behind his beard, or Jean Pierre Makosso, laughing as usual. Why artists? Most of the people he knows personally are involved in the arts in some way, McLaughlin told Coast Reporter.

"Those who work in the arts immediately understand why you would like to make a portrait of them," he said. "They seem to understand (and are keen to collaborate in) the process of turning their presence into another kind of presence - a portrait."

Taking a photo is a great excuse to meet people, he added. He went to France on the strength of that idea and photographed a British painter now living there, Julian Merrow-Smith, and Craig Hanna, an artist working in Paris. The results can be found in a recently released hard cover book, Portraits Found and Taken (Eidetic Editions - available for sale at the GPAG's gift shop). Coast people are prominent, but the book includes portraits of strangers unearthed from thrift store photo albums and canisters of previously undeveloped film. The book also includes a preface by Stephen Osborne (aka Mandelbrot) anda series of fanciful, creative writings in which McLaughlin defines his portrait subjects in words as well as photos.

McLaughlin's work is in the Eve Smart room, a separate section of the larger gallery. This is also significant. McLaughlin played strings in the Sunshine Coast Community Orchestra with the late Eve Smart, benefactress of the gallery. He realized how happy he was, in his first show on the Coast, to be in the gallery named after her.

Jone Pane began painting figures in action in order to boost her own energy, she said. The walls are covered in brush stroke figures not unlike Chinese characters and they are moving through all kinds of martial arts, dancing, giggling, or performing tai chi.

"I'm not that good with language," she said, pointing at one of her paintings titled, It is Written. "This is my language," and she waves a hand at the many works.

The gallery has embraced the idea of action paintings for the month of August and has scheduled activities such as karate, NIA and fencing that are open to the public. Tomorrow, Aug. 10, the Coast Martial Arts Club shows a few of their moves and on Sunday, Paul Blakey demos Wild Goose Qigong. Pick up a brochure showing the other events that run until Sept. 1.

On Aug. 16 Marlene Lowden attempts to mesh art and yoga in an interesting two and a half-hour workshop designed to help you rediscover and liberate your creativity. (This is one of the few workshops with a fee. Contact the instructor at mlowden@dccnet.com). More about the gallery's activities can be found at: www.gibsonspublicartgallery.ca.

GPAG Opening

Yesterday afternoon was the opening for Facing the Light: Portraits at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery. Thanks to all who came out. It was an honour to hang these images in the Eve Smart Gallery. I knew Eve and her bequest has enabled artists to partake of this wonderful new space.

The show is up until September 3, 2013. It features 10 large photographs (2 x 3 feet) mounted on aluminum sheeting. Two works on paper (3 x 4 feet) and some smaller works. The publication of the book has been delayed slightly - it is expected in about 2 weeks.