The painting presents a small congregation of human figures—partially schematic, front-facing, and legible less as individualized portraits than as recurring “types”—arranged around a dominant horizontal plane that reads as either a table edge, a barrier, or a shared surface of social contact. Their enlarged, simplified faces and the thick, dark outlines organizing the bodies evoke … Continue reading T.A.E.’s Art Reviews – La Foule Québécoise: Sept
T.A.E.’s Art Reviews – La Foule Québécoise: Cinq
The painting presents a compressed, portrait-like image built from two predominant vertical forms—left and right—framed by a warm field of ochres and yellows. Rather than constructing a fully naturalistic figure, the work cultivates an emblematic presence: a lack of eyes becomes the most legible of “features,” a face encircled by a thick, dark contour that … Continue reading T.A.E.’s Art Reviews – La Foule Québécoise: Cinq
T.A.E.’s Art Reviews – La Foule Québécoise: Quatre
This painting presents five standing figures rendered with a deliberate, flattened figural logic: human bodies are reduced to tall verticals, simplified silhouettes, and frontal—almost emblematic—poses. Their heads, each contained within a dark oval, are simultaneously present and withheld. Facial features are minimal to nonexistent, so that the work does not ask the viewer to identify … Continue reading T.A.E.’s Art Reviews – La Foule Québécoise: Quatre
T.A.E.’s Art Reviews – La Foule Québécoise: Deux
The painting presents a paradoxical figure-ground relationship: a luminous human form emerges at the right, yet the surrounding space refuses stable depth, collapsing into a field of gestural colour. This visual strategy—recognizable as a hybrid of expressionistic figuration and painterly abstraction—positions the work between likeness and atmosphere. The result is not a portrait in the … Continue reading T.A.E.’s Art Reviews – La Foule Québécoise: Deux
T.A.E.’s Art Reviews – La Foule Québécoise: Un
The composition presents itself as a deliberately hybrid surface—part pictorial scene, part textual artifact, and part emblematic portrait. Its dominant field of burnt-orange and vermilion functions less as “background” than as an ideological climate: a warm, saturated plane that is scratched, rubbed, and worked with visible texture, suggesting a process-oriented practice in which meaning accrues … Continue reading T.A.E.’s Art Reviews – La Foule Québécoise: Un
Jubilation – Sheet-music Scribbles 2023
It's amazing to me how often I forget to what extent I love drawing expressive faces and just how much it scares me to start new ones at the same time. Ahhh, that imposter syndrome is deeply ingrained in me! I started this with the blue background and red-orange hair. On a side note, I'm … Continue reading Jubilation – Sheet-music Scribbles 2023
Colourful Pastures – Sheet-music Scribbles 2023
I started worrying about the3 angles and perspectives of this odd bull-cow thing, then let that go when I knew it was going. to be about rendering a fun Southwest colour palette. here are not really the traditional oranges, reds, yellows and browns I associate with Southwest art, but the warmth of my pastel crayons … Continue reading Colourful Pastures – Sheet-music Scribbles 2023
Candy – Sheet-music Scribbles 2023
I'm not sure what inspired this simple cat. Perhaps it's those moments when you cat wakes up and does their weird stretch. that feels like they are actually scrunching up their whole body and pushing their spines upward. I'm thinking the original impetus for this one disappeared when I started to enjoy the colour play … Continue reading Candy – Sheet-music Scribbles 2023
Bone Tired – Sheet-music Scribbles 2023
I think my favourite aspect of using messy oil pastels is that when you rub them, they develop volume, tonal changes, and textures similar to the painted glass one finds in great cathedrals. I tweeted the lighting. on this one a little and it looked like it's lit from behind. I'm not sure if I … Continue reading Bone Tired – Sheet-music Scribbles 2023
Bird, I Suppose – Sheet-music Scribbles 2023
This is kind of how I feel at the end of a good day. of teaching... fulfilled by the joy of working with my students and drained from being so very, very "ON" all day. I look back at my day feeling more full of colour and satisfaction, but having little mental bandwidth left to … Continue reading Bird, I Suppose – Sheet-music Scribbles 2023