Wallflowers is part of my Landscape series. Completed in 2015, it serves a very special role:

It is an idyllic image of a perfect day at Fish Creek Provincial Park in Calgary Alberta Canada. What’s more, it is an encyclopedic painting depicting a range of attractive wildflowers which have been declared invasive species, because their hardiness and vigorous growth habits endanger bio diversity in natural areas by pushing out native plant species. This is a problem because animals and insects who rely on those native plant species as food sources may be adversely affected by their displacement.

I created this piece in cooperation with the Friends of Fish Creek Park, as an aesthetic intervention and educational tool. The idea is to educate viewers about invasive species, recognition and control strategies. Educated viewers can get a print of the painting as a resource to keep. The idea is to enjoy the beauty of these invasive species of wildflowers by displaying them on our walls, rather than in our gardens, where they could inadvertently be spread to our parks and natural areas through storm or surface water run off, animal transfer or human disposal. Hence the title of the painting: Wallflowers.

If you would like a print of this work, I would recommend contacting the Friends of Fish Creek Park to find out about the next educational event where the painting will be presented. Either that or watch my newsfeed for announcements of upcoming viewing for this painting.

Pancake Breakfast, from my western series, is a fairly straight forward piece. Growing up in Calgary Alberta, one of my favourite traditions of our annual (July) city wide Stampede celebrations are the free pancake breakfasts. For ten days, rich or poor, young or old, if you can line up on a sunny summer morning you can have a great breakfast, and entertainment, and possibly swag, all free of charge.  Breakfasts happen all across the city every day during Stampede. Put on by community groups, churches, corporations, politicians, dentists, you name it, they are a great expression of community inclusion and caring. Even if you can’t afford to go to the Stampede grounds more than once, or at all, there is still a plate of pancakes and some country music waiting somewhere for you in this city.

The Dime Novel Paintings are part of my Western Series, which you can see here.

They are still life paintings referencing the covers of early 20th century Western themed weekly fiction publications.

The West lives as much in the imagination, in hyperbolic stories of legendary skill and courage, as it does in historical fact. We are much nearer to the source of the legends than earlier stories of medieval knights or Greek heroes. We even have photography, which can show us the real faces of some of our legendary figures, should they actually have any base in reality. Yet this vision of the west does not always line up well with historical accounts. Jesse James, for instance, was not a hero or a Robin Hood figure. Rather today many of his actions might be war crimes.

I find theses covers interesting to observe in the way painting something forces you to observe and think about it. I appreciate them not only for their aesthetic qualities, but for their perspective on a west that was already skewed toward legend and myth despite being nearer to the events pictured than we are now.

I also find them interesting from a socio-historical perspective. Like watching movies about the future that were made a generation before the current time, it often tells us more about the writer’s concerns and worldview as a member of his or her time than it does of the time being written about.

Hi there again, and happy Friday the 13th! Hopefully you all ate your Lucky Charms cereal this morning, and don’t have any work to do under tall ladders or anything.

Following Legends is the second of two paintings thinking about female western legend Annie Oakley. The legend of Annie Oakley forms the backdrop, the wall paper, to the life of the little girl from Wild Roses (last week). The little girl grows up and perhaps becomes one of the flag bearers at the Calgary Stampede, our equivalent to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. And so “the show goes on”, and “on with the show” as the text at the top of the painting mentions.

You can see more of my Western Series here:

I began the tedious task of taking action on my New Years Resolution to spend my mornings on administrative work (like updating my website) and afternoons painting. While there is a daunting backlog of updates to be made, I made good progress on my landing page today.

The image above, Wild Roses, is not in the web-galleries yet. Updating those will be a job for next week, and when that is done you should be able to link to a bigger image. (update: Western Gallery is now online!)

Currently featured on my landing page, Wild Roses is one of my most recently completed paintings, from the body of work that I am painting for the  Western Showcase.

I am a born and raised Calgarian. In Calgary the biggest annual event is the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede. It is billed as the greatest outdoor show on earth, and the entire city takes 10 days off to celebrate our western heritage. Growing up in Calgary, I could hardly have avoided internalizing a perspective informed by our western heritage. Part of this body of work is looking at what that means to me.

Wild Roses shows a little girl in western dress riding a hobby horse. Behind her is a wall covered in wallpaper featuring a repeating pattern based on historically iconic photographs of Annie Oakley. Text in the margin reads “Legends of the New West.”

In Wild Roses I was thinking about how  western themes are typically seen as suitable fantasies for little boys, hence their role models, the Cowboy, the Gunslinger, etcetera, tend to be presented with a masculine face, while females populate the setting of the hero’s story. I wondered what historical western female characters little girls might choose to emulate in their heroic fantasies, and what lessons they might have to teach.

Annie Oakley was an early western female sharpshooter who made her fame and living performing with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Growing up she had the deck stacked against her, but through her strong sense of individuality and commitment to her personal strength and vision she rose above her circumstance to become a staunch advocate for female independence, and someone worthy of inspiring a new generation of western women to create their stories on their terms.