Metal Flake Remix.

Preeeesenting:

Big Art Weekend.

It's finally summer here in the GVRD*. And what better way to spend a summer weekend than being immersed in art?

Friday night, bring a proud, card-carrying member of the Vancouver Art gallery, I attended the Collecting Matisse and Modern Masters opening. I honestly had no idea Matisse was so prolific, much less in so many mediums. His pen-and-ink work in particular really caught my eye - the linework was beautiful, and so fluid.

It was nice to see another Van Gogh and another Renoir, too. I feel a real kinship for Vincent in particular.

Saturday was mostly spent outside in the park, barbecuing and soaking up the sun with friends. That night we moved the festivities back to my buddy Mike's place for drinks and general good times, before closing the night at the Dover Arms. While we were all at Mike's, I whipped up a couple more Sketchbook Diary entries, including this ashtray:

And today (Sunday) I've been working on the playlist for next month's Metalflake Remix show. I haven't sorted all the details yet, but it'll be taking place the night of Saturday, June 16, and I'll be creating live art all night (expect an official announcement very soon).

In other art news, potential new painting concepts seem to be popping into my head on a daily basis now. Here's a couple to tantalize you:

Hope everybody else's summer is off to a great start.

*Greater Vancouver Regional District.

Sketch Diary.

So I bought a new sketchbook recently, and started carrying it everywhere. When I'm in a new place I try to find some small object to sketch - nothing major, just kind of a visual souvenir.

Last weekend I paid a visit to a city I haven't visited in a couple years, Victoria, B.C. Just needed a weekend away from Vancouver, and see some new faces and decompress. While I was there I saw this wooden rhino and had to draw him:

And yesterday I went to a fun little Sunday-brunch outing at one of my favourite restaurants, Cosca. Lots of cool visual details in the place, so I had lots of options to choose from. In the end I drew this lamp that reminded me of the restaurant's symbol (an artichoke):

And after that I spotted this chandelier:

I definitely need to do more of this. Stay tuned.

Bret Taylor
Vancouver, BC
May 21, 2012

Hold On.

Had a very nice walk home through the West End via the quieter side streets last night. Felt like I hit a level of inner peace that I haven't felt in a long, long time.

Now as you may or may not know, the past year has been an incredibly tumultuous one for yours truly. Every couple months has been marked by another sea change - one dramatic shift in tone, content, mood, cast, dialogue, conflict, theme, plot, etc. after another. Bret Taylor circa August of 2011, for example, would be floored by the day-to-day (and especially night-to-night) life of the Bret Taylor from a mere month in the future.

And so it goes.

For a long time I got lost in all this, just struggling to keep my head above water. Maintaining any sense of perspective was an nice idea in the abstract sense, but an impossibility in practical terms. So I did what anyone would do: I tried to keep it on the path, and I adjusted my worldview as I went, based on the current day's data.

And ultimately? I failed.

You heard me. Failed. And miserably, at that - I lost my path altogether. Let some very (very) important people down, couldn't live up to heartfelt promises and blood oaths. I dropped the fucking ball altogether, if you must know. Paid an absurdly high price for that failure, too. And in the process lost more than I even knew I had to lose - more than I could ever handle losing again. But then, nobody said any of this was fair, right? I mean, fairness is great as a utopian ideal. But how many times have you actually seen it play out in front of you? Once? Twice?

Be honest.

So. This brings us to yesterday. The morning started out with disappointing news, albeit not the kind of news that could change a man's life (a cancelled date, if you must know). Yet that news hit me hard, out of all sense of proportion and in a way that left me off-kilter for most of the day. Even my old standby, paint therapy, absolutely could not snap me out of it (of course I publicly blamed paint therapy).

This has never, to my recollection, happened before. A real measure of how far adrift I am right now, you might correctly surmise. I had honestly thought the method to be infallible.

In the end I dragged my much-bruised and abused ego into the kitchen and focused my flagging energies on sustenance instead. Whipped up a mindblowing batch of meaty, chipotle-dominated chili. And when the bulk of that work was done and I was waiting for the mixture to reduce, I turned my attention back to the painting in question.

And goddamn, but everything flowed. Hit exactly the right marks when mixing my glazes - tone, saturation, volume. The highly-reflective silver bits (my trusty Tri-Art Liquid Mirror) drybrushed over the glass bead gel took the phthalo blue and alizarin crimson glazes perfectly. Ditto the more subtle highlights I'd carefully worked in over the past few days.

Then I went out to visit friends. Had a couple drinks, talked some things over, watched some TV. Y'know, everyday stuff.

And made that fateful walk home. And the rest you know. I guess the lesson here is, the therapy won't take when you're not receptive to it. But it'll work when you're ready.

Deep, I know.

Bret Taylor
May 6, 2012.
(Not to be confused with the Bret Taylors of September 2011 or January 2012.)

Soundtrack - "Hold On", by the Alabama Shakes.