Mark Johnson Art Blog Wonder & Whimsy
So yet again I’ve submitted 3 pieces to the AWOL gallery annual Square Foot Show. This is a Toronto show that requires all submissions to measure exactly 12″ x 12″, be no more than 5″ thick, and able to be hung squarely on a wall. The gallery hangs one, two or all three of an artists submissions depending.
The Dancer
The Crane Visits
Spring Rising
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… Read more Square Foot 2012 AWOL Gallery
I was thinking about the stories of time gone by. Stories that have become myths. And these myths in turn, as the ages pass, have slipped away. New people, new lands, new stories, each in turn slipping into that deep and faraway place we sometimes connect into and call it a dream.
acrylic 24″ x 18″
… Read more Myth Becomes Dream
Evolution works with populations. Individuals are irrelevant (unless there crops up a group of individuals who release a game-changer such as self-replicating nano-bots, a sustainable black-hole released into the earths core, fantasy of that ilk). That Darwinian fact is repeatable – evolution deals with populations, not with whatever group is caught up in surges of silliness over religious affiliation or geographic origin.
I’ve got a couple of my Kuwaiti Dancers entered into the Spring show for the DVAC. They are easy to spot – nobody submitted anything at all like my drawings 🙂
I’ve been to Kuwait City a couple of times now and I am always struck by how creative and beautiful the modern towers are there. They look like the sails of pearl fishing boats, or waves, or palm trees. Curves, insets, spectacular uses of openings and windows. The first time I was ever made aware of the architecture of that place was when I ran across a photo of the Water Towers of Kuwait. Amazing. They are even better in person. And if you go up inside please note that the deserts in the restaurant are delicious.
The hotel in Kuwait City didn’t have any place for me to sit outside and enjoy the view, so I ended up spending a lot of time in our room drawing. Luckily I’d prepared for this, and was able to get a set of 4 Tree Dancer drawings finished.
I have an installation at the Homeway Restaurant ( http://www.homewayrestaurant.ca/ ) running through March 2012 and into April.
I want to share some of the images and words that I have accrued about our planet and the life that has transformed it’s outer skin.
I read a lot. Always have, hopefully always will. I don’t retain much. But from time to time I think of writing down some particularly articulate capture or thought. I had the happy thought that my Blog is a good place to collate these words that have accumulated over the years on scraps of paper, pages of sketchbooks or key strokes in various word processing programs. Wake up all over again to how many people have thoughts that are worth sharing. And you never know. Someone out there in the wide open spaces of teh World Wide Web just might find these snippets interesting or of value.
Tens of thousands of years from now, humanity will be climbing out of our own Oort Cloud and heading down into the next solar system in the same way humanity journeyed step by step out of Africa, across Asia and Europe, down into Australia and the far reaches of the Americas.