LIFE OF AN ARTIST Comic Portraits Neil Gaimen

Neil Gaimen giving "instructions" of the utmost urgency.

Each and every morning I set aside a short sequence of moments in which I find both pleasure and business in the act of reading. In pleasure the time spent allows me to escape and enjoy life in an unusual manner and in the business of thought I always learn something, a new word , a new connection or how to avoid police suspicion after committing a diabolical act.

I generally tend to choose the readings based on the amount of time I can allocate and find my self frequently returning to short stories, articles, and comic books due to the limitations one decree's as a freelance illustrator. Today however I figured it was best to take a comic to the cafe not because my time is limited (obviously) but rather because the peculiar prerogative of the February wind chills. It is damn cold outside but nothing like the previous winter and I had calculated that I could last outdoors with my coffee and the fresh air for approximately 20 minutes.

Therefor I reached blindly into my library grasping a copy of Neil Gaimen's "Dream Country" and decided to kidnap Calliope while i caffeinated myself. I must have read this a million and six times by now and it never gets stale. The spine tingling sensation and un-namable understanding that comes with good horror I got from these books as an adolescent hasn't faded a bit. These were among the first truly incredible comics I ever read, and , having been bored and disgusted by the exchange of script for slash which dominates the genre, restored my faith in the macabre. Thanks for all the wonderfully pretty stories Mr. G.

As is also part of my daily journal's and artistic warm up, I followed the inspiration with a little sketch of the monstrous muse. I looked at some press shots of Neil and thought they were as silly as a sandstorm in the sea so I did the drawings while watching him read one of his poems entitled "Instructions" instead. The portraits took about 5 minutes to draw, which is how long it will take you to listen to the story on youtube.Highly Recommended.

LIFE of An ARTIST STREET MURALS

Kensington Market Street Art

HEY APATHY! I spent almost the entire day working on-line. The fiasco which has become my life (as an artist) was enveloped by resizing and uploading images since 8 am this morn. I have been trying to apply online for the 2010 Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition for a couple of days now. Unfortunetly I had to wait until yesterday to get in contact with a staff member because we just had a long weekend here in Canada. Nevertheless the crew over at 401 Richmond running the T.O.A.E. is incredible and all my queries were answered first thing following the holiday lay off. So I proceeded to prepare my slide list and support materials only to discover late last night that I did it all wrong and my images turned out to be way to small.(Oh there is never a dull moment in the life of an artist.)Following my uploaded defeat, I gave up on the application and worked on some sketches for the remainder of day.

Today, however, was a new day! I completed the resizing and uploading in record time without a single glitch and I suppose I got into it and carried away. I just kept uploading and resizing and uploading and resizing and only a few moments ago ( it is now 14 hours since I started) came to a standstill having completed about 5 new pages for my website. I am building the damn thing myself so don't expect too much on the technical side but I think the curation of my madness could not have been handled by any one else. Check out my updated MURALS page at www.heyapathy-comics-art.com/MURALS.html . I uploaded all the image and text links today so there a new galleries within the gallery. I'll try to get the essays explaining the significance of each mural on there tomorrow but for now I am very,very tired.

Toronto Garage Mural Acrylic on Brick 2007

LIFE of an ARTIST ink portraits Francis Bebey

Francis Bebey & quote playing a flute of one note.

Another February day passes quickly away as I fill out forms, attach attachments, and rewrite proposals accordingly. I actually got quite ahead of myself in the submission processes today, completing not only those which are due immediately but venturing forth into the March deadlines as well. Unfortunately I hit a few minor set backs on the latter submissions which will require human assistance but today is a holiday. My inquires will have to wait until tomorrow. It's a good thing I got on this early, it would have been quite problematic to encounter these minor technical difficulties the evening the applications were due!

Anyways the day was productive enough that I was able to check out a website sent to me by my good friend Hunter Vaughan. Hunter is a long time friend and former fellow street artist whom I met out on the Queen West pavement. Hunter works in clay sculpture & pottery as well as saxophone, flute and percussion. (We practice music socially on a weekly basis with a number of other creative people) He is also an endless resource of information when it comes to world music and all oddities involving sound and performance. I got a wicked link from him this morning and was shortly thereafter introduced to Francis Bebey.

Francis is listed as a musician and writer and proves himself quickly in the little video I saw. I was so taken with this strange new (to me anyways) character that I could not but help capture his words and likeness in ink and post them here for all to see.I'm not going to describe the man nor the documented events , just check him out at www.keyofgrey.com/2010/02/francis-bebey-plays-a-one-note-bamboo-flute/ . If you're already familiar with Francis check out my website instead it is all about "savages in the city" http://www.heyapathy-comics-art.com/ (how's that for a shameless self promotional segue!)

Life of a Canadian Artist

I saw IGOR's FireBIRD Suite on Friday Feb12 2010 !

Okay I'm about a day late on this post in the Life of a Canadian Artist, but this time of year I generally find my self writing endless proposals and booking all my shows for the upcoming season (two of these submission packages are due tomorrow!). As a result I usually have to sacrifice my drawing schedule for a couple of weeks in Feb. in order to handle all the bureaucratic paper pushing. Anyways I said to hades with it all this morning and put together this little sketch.


This drawing was inspired by a sequence of unusual and amazing circumstances which befell me over the past few days. I recently met my new house mates of whom I was previously informed were musicians. Naturally I rolled my eyes at the thought expecting a couple of pot-head techno DJ's or some wannabe fashion model mick jagoff impersonators, (I live in Kensington Market and this is pretty much all we ever get around here). So I finally bump into these fellas outside our home and they were actually nice and well spoken individuals. I told them of the rumours I'd heard regarding their profession asked them what kind of music they played. "WE ARE CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL PERCUSSIONISTS" and I replied "Edgar Varese!" and Ed , my new house mate responded "Ionization!". If you don't know what I'm talking about look it up. One thing led to another and a few short days later I received a pair of tickets to see Ed & Dan play the "Firebird suite" at Toronto's new and magnificent KOERNER HALL.

Ed and Dan are part of The Royal Conservatory Orchestra of the Glenn Gould School and it rocked. The show consisted of 4 musical pieces including Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony No1. in D major, Op 25 "Classique", a little watery throwback to nineteen century, Francis Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra in D minor, which I was unfamiliar with but am no longer (this stuff makes Sun Ra look like a Republican!) and a beautifully sung french piece entitled Sheherazade by composer Maurice Ravel. The show closed with the feature Igor Stravinsky's Firebird suite. The Firebird was (and always is) ridiculous. I haven't enjoyed myself so much in a long time ( rarely escaping my studio workload )and highly recommend any who have the opportunity to get out to the new Conservatory and experience some of this crazy music! THANKS Ed & Dan and orchestra and IGOR!!!

This is a picture of the hall from the program, really wish there was an orchestra playing though I think it would have looked way more interesting.



I've got a couple of other sketches & stories regarding this music/experience however I''ll have to save them for another day ... my application deadlines approach showing no signs of mercy

Life of a Canadian Artist

SUBMISSIONS!SUBMISSIONS!SUBMISSION. Today was a day of buearocratic paperwork. Alas the life of an artist is not all killing monsters and blowing up buildings. Sometimes us creative folk actually have to do work. Especially those of us without representation, so it goes. Fortunetly for me my organizational skills are starting to come together and I've much experience in the feild. The result being that these proposals get easier each time ( and subsequently increasingly profitable). This is a particularily busy time for the paper work as a number of the events I take part in annually have deadlines falling between Feb 15 - March 1. I sent a few things out over the web today including my Nuit Blanche application. Last year I did a live street painting & musical performance on Queen West. This year I'm going to try and get you guys to do all the work as I hope to install and conduct a sort of open canvas workshop in the same location. Truth be told I sick of drawing pictures and if I can get someone else to do it all the better! Just kidding. Actually the most exciting part of all my public performances and interventions has always been the interaction between my self, my art, and the audience. I thought it might be interesting to try and break the boundaries between artist & viewer through a more interactive performance this year. It will defenitely be interesting and very likey quite messy. Here are some samples of the kind of work I have to put into these proposals.

Floor plan foor a 10 x 20 ft. Multi-media Public installation:



The proposals also require visual support material of past projects. This one's from the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition:

CANADIAN ART, THEATRE & LIVE PERFORMANCE!

HEY APATHY! Here are the first pics in my "life of an artist" blog. I've got two little amateur press publications going on in here. The first, which I haven't updated in a while, is my "ONLINECOMICBOOK" journal. That title is dedicated to a behind the scenes or directors commentary if you please, of all my comic book experimentation's. That blog is only going to list the HEY APATHY! comic book pages, revealing the motivations, inspirations, and secret codes behind the sequential artworks regarding the city of gears. I'm posting all my comics chronologically starting with some strange stories from 1999 on twitter and am using the blog to attempt to justify myself (my imaginary psychiatrist's orders...) The online comic also includes new autobiographical pages in order to contextualize and tie all the short adventures together. The last posting was in June 2009, but I am going to start up again full-force next week. The last eight months or so were spent trapped inside a computer in a near futile attempt to create a build-you-own style website. Now that the site is reasonably complete I can actually get back to work on the mythos. check out the first volume on my website.

This new diary is going to document all the other aspects of my artistic endeavors. Not only do I create comic books, but I am actually an active investigator, performer, fine artist ( whatever that is) and amateur musician. In this blog I am going to try and document the 3 dimensional aspects of my life as a Canadian Artist. Not to say that anything I do is actually interesting or even of the slightest importance, I just enjoy writing and figure the more I practice the better I'll get. This author/auteur aspiration actually started out on the streets where I discovered that the explanation of my work seemed to effect the audience equal to and often more than the visuals or drawings themselves. I am now attempting to translate the spoken word aspect of my performances into paragraph form on the new website/graphic novel and have come to realize that it is no easy task. Anyways bare with me as I attempt to replace my ers, ands, ands ums, with subsequently, incongruously, and quite possibly a number of of other sagacious verbal abnormalities.

LIVE PAINTING & THEATRE at the PASSE MURAILLE

Here's some pics of me painting at the PASSE MURAILLE live theatre for the performing arts this past Tuesday Feb. 9/2010. The theatre had a cocktail party, silent auction and live dance/play performance fundraiser in which I was asked to perform and donate my artwork in support of the amazing venue. I was set up in the main lobby and got to work on this little cartoon landscape around 6:30. The entire painting was finished in just under an hour and auctioned off to a patron named Jane after a modest but fruitful bidding war. I had actually met Jane a few years back while painting out in the wild (Queen Street West) and instantly recognized her. Jane was very excited to have found me and said she had been looking for me on the streets but feared she would never see me again. I'm glad the painting got a loving home.

Almost Finished! The auction, and painting was from 6:30-7:30

The amazing thing about doing these performance artworks is the fact that I actually get to interact with people, sharing opinions and ideas in a manner unobtainable in the studio or gallery setting. I always find that although many people could take it or leave it, those who actually approach me end up getting (and giving) a somewhat mystical experience and exchange. One of the onlookers, whom I had never met before, was absolutely amazed at my creative process and told me that "it is the theatre, music, and arts that make the rest of the world bearable" I don't think I've ever received such a high compliment in all of my days.




Another fellow called me a "fake" and attempted to accuse me of being a Kieth herring impersonator. I told him that Herring's artwork and approach were extremely influential to my minimalist performance pieces and that I truly respected and honoured the lineage but hoped to always add my own brand of Gothic metropolitan pessimism to the paintings. His shoulders relaxed and he replied " Yeah it's fun, but effective". I call this "talking zen" and truly thrive on changing skeptical opinions about not only what I do but about life in general. I promise you HEY APATHY! is much more than a parody, it is a means of communication, education, interaction and of hope.




As well as the praise and degradation, I also find the providence of experience in live painting unlike anything I have ever known or studied. The ability of the paintings to connect with peoples of all ages and of all walks of life is incredible. I have sold t-shirts to homeless derelicts and been a guest at some of the worlds most revered dinner tables as a result of my mentally unbalanced campaign. The Passe Muraille event was a rather ritzy one and everyone wall dressed to kill and the scent of perfume drowned out that of the champagne. I always end up meeting and associating with the servers, the performers, and the honoured guests and never feel out of place or class regardless of the spotlight or otherwise. The laughing lady in the red (first photo) is Olivia Chow, former Toronto city councilor and member of parliament. She came up to me after the auction to congratulate me on the piece and was rather amazed at how quickly I was able to produce the work. The man in the snazzy coat is Chris Bell (second picture), a member of the board of directors at the theatre and a true patron of the arts in his own right. Chris has been an integral contributor to the HEY APATHY! project for many years as he financed my first website as well as the amazing Wollesely street mural ). Chris also saved my a- before the show. I was running late and made a few mistakes in preparing my supplies for the event but fortunately Chris was more than willing to provide the necessary transportation to get me & my paints to the show on time. We had to put some paints, a stretcher, easel and paper into his classy convertible but Chris was more than willing to take the risk. Luckily nothing was spilt or damaged inside his beautiful automobile. THANKS CHRIS, Jane, Aviva, and all the other folks who made the Gala a roaring success!