Elevated Sleeping Bag, 1993, oil on canvas, 30 x 30 inches.
Elevated Sleeping Bag, pen and ink illustration, 1993
My studio in Halifax was shared with a fellow artist named Marc Gignac. I tacked my sleeping bag up on the wall to get a better look at the interesting lining one day. I left it there long enough that it inspired a few sketches and paintings. The painting is a 30 x 30 oil on canvas. The drawing shows the actual sleeping bag tacked on the wall and positioned behind the sofa and coffee table (which are adorned with their own checker board and polka dot patterns). The painting is mounted on the wall with the sleeping bag behind it. There is another painting (by Marc Gignac) that looks a bit like a spider also mounted on the wall, and inspired by the sleeping bag. I called the whole excercise “Elevated Sleeping Bag”
In the painting Mayan Dancer the shapes behind the dancer are the actual pattern on the interior of the sleeping bag.
“Carpeted Balcony” Oil on Canvas, 30 x 40 inches, 1997
This is a painting of the shadow cast onto the ceiling by a balcony. The shadow is upside down so the orange shape that looks kind of like a sun is actually a shadow of a plant pot with pieces of cutlery stuck in the dirt, can you see it? Of course the evenly spaced lines are the railing spindles and the large red shape is a plant in a pot. The smaller red shape must have been a towel or rag hanging on the railing. The shadow on the ceiling cast by this collection of mundane items was beautiful to me somehow and I painted it. The colours are inspired by a Kitsilano sunset.
