The Red Toque

Lost in the Woods is the title of the Moose and Blanket painting that will be part of my upcoming mixed media exhibition at the Winchester Oak Bay this April. The show is filled with the Canadian iconography that I love so much and revisit periodically. All of the 2d pieces are done on 1/4" rotary mahogany. I like the thin plywood because it's light, rigid and able to withstand the onslaught. In addition to using my collection of blankets, hockey sweaters and flags as reference material I use a lot of public domain photographs in this series. Some of these photos have been altered in Photoshop, waxed (collaged) into the piece and worked over with oils, stains and tar. This is quite visable in the small portrait pieces. Encaustic is the perfect medium for collaging in this manner and also allows me to blur the boundaries between 2d and 3d work.

Lost in the Woods is intended to poke the big Moose (Canadian culture not Mark Messier) in the eye. As the old saying goes ......."It's all art until a Moose loses an eye".

The title of this piece is derived from how I think much of the world (especially the USA) sees us. A nation of toothless backwood Hockey and Figure Skating crazed Lumber Jacks and Jill's wandering around in the woods yelling "Game on....eh" or "Triple salchow anyone?" After all Canadian culture is fairly shallow....... which suits a hick like myself just fine. When I go to the pool, with the odd exception of peeing in the deep end, I spend most of my time in the shallow end anyway. I'm just so Canadian, I don't really like to make waves.