The Red Toque: Jack Pine

Showing posts with label Jack Pine. Show all posts

Monday, February 11, 2013

Cheeky JACK

PINE Living the Life of Riley.

A rough and ready lumberjack is a chick magnet in India....who knew? JACK seems to have a small fan club already. Apparently if JACK were Muslim he could have up to seven wives......

Monday, January 28, 2013

A little money riding on the Maple Leafs

I'm sitting in the KLM Lounge at Pearson Int, drinking Heineken and starring out into the fog. Snow, freezing rain, fog nothing seems able to push me off my track. I had a nice visit with dear friends in Toronto but the time has come to go overseas. Kathryn has checked into an Ashram in Rishikesh, north of Delhi. She will meet me in Delhi sometime on Feb 1st.I have two days to check out my old stomping grounds, Amsterdam. I'll definitely check out the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum also a few of the contemporary commercial galleries. When your self employed you are always on. I'm looking forward to a Trappist beer and what ever else comes along. I haven't been in Amsterdam since 1983, I bet things have changed. Toronto was a good thing for me art wise, doors are opening for me and I'm ready to step through them. I'm looking forward to sleeping in Kathryn's arms again, I think this is the longest we have been away from each other since we got married!

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Walrus Gala Toronto

Encaustic work fetches $7500.00 at Walrus Gala

Blanket III

Last night I attended the Walrus Magazine 10 anniversary Gala in Toronto. Many familiar faces in the room, everybody you can imagine from the CBC..Gian Gomeshi, Stuart McLean Amanda Lang ....Also many of Canadas top CEO's and board members. I was lucky enough to sit beside the charming writer/publisher/Canada Council board member Anna Porter. What an amazing event! Great food and wonderful entertainment. Last fall the Walrus approached me for a donation to their silent auction to which I obliged. I donated Blanket III to their cause which supports art and artists in Canada. The piece was offered in a silent auction and fetched $7500.00. Not to shabby!!

Next stop Amsterdam and then off to Delhi.

Detail of Blanket III

THE WORK

Molloy's work focuses on culture through the use of its stereotypes, traits and artifacts.

Jeff employs a wide variety of distinctive techniques, tools, and personal processes that result in truly unique, instantly recognizable work. Jeff is curious. His creativity shifts and twists in response to his materials. Beeswax, tar, pigments, remnants of human civilization – all react differently to the tools and techniques he employs. Carving, painting, sculpting, applying heat and blunt force all contribute to objects that may resemble paintings, yet may just as easily be mechanical and functional in nature.

To Molloy, line is a physical thing, something that is cut and gouged. His surfaces are built up and scraped away. Jeff uses homemade tools to draw, paint, carve and burnish his surfaces of wax and tar until they reflect their own history.

“I've always believed that experimentation, not technical skill, is at the core of creativity. Artists should be explorers, and the world of art should remain a place without rules or boundaries.” Jeff Molloy

In 1995 encouraged by a photograph of Jasper Johns’ famous encaustic work, Flag, Molloy began to experiment with encaustic. He comments, “I recognized in Johns’ piece a number of aspects that have become paramount in my own work. The impact, power and inherent meaning of cultural objects and how they can be used to evoke emotion and memory...I wanted my work to mimic the real thing but, as an art piece, be more interesting than the motif itself.” Molloy achieves this by tapping into these emotions and memories and presenting them as highly articulated works of art. The encaustic works tread the line between painting and sculpture. Where paintings tend to provide context for their subjects, Molloy’s pieces intentionally strip away everything but the object itself.

“The context for the work is the environment in which it is shown. It just makes sense to me that the space should play a role in the perception of the work,”