Doug "Killer" Gilmour

This one is complete. A portrait of Doug "Killer" Gilmour who began his playing career with the St. Louis Blues and won the Stanley Cup with the Calgary Flames. On Jan. 2, 1992 the Toronto Maple Leafs and Calgary Flames completed a blockbuster deal in which the Flames sent Doug to the Leafs in a 10-player swap. He impacted the Leafs in a huge way and brought the Leafs to the conference championships in the 1993 and 1994 seasons. He has scored over 1300 points in an illustrious career, earning a place in the top 20 of all time.

100 Small Paintings Show & Sale

The 100 small paintings Show & Sale is coming up between November 24th and December 17 at the Visual Arts Centre in Bowmanville. I’m submitting two hockey pieces, Curtis “Cujo” Joseph and Ed “The Eagle” Belfour. These are both 7” x 5” and are very affordable, a great gift for a Leafs fan.

Doug Gilmour WIP (Update)

Another update, this piece is nearing completion. The hockey stick, various details such as the helmet straps still need to be worked on. The straps on the main figure will be faded out at the ends. It is gouache on illustration board, size 20" x 30" I hope I will be able to have Doug sign it and I would like to produce a limited number of prints as well. This is an image taken with my iPad, so colour and quality are compromised somewhat.

Lyrebirds

I’m proud to say that my son Michael presented his defense on October 23 to achieve his Masters degree in Commmunications from Ryerson University. He used the album he wrote recently, Lyrebirds, for his presentation. Below is a summary that describes, in his own words, what the presentation entailed. I’ve included an image of his album cover image, although that may change as it is an “in progress” project at the moment. "The album was written using insights from rhetoric, philosophy, and cognitive linguistics. The central theme is catachresis, which is a linguistic trope like metaphor and analogy. Catachresis is traditionally thought of as a misuse of metaphor or language, which can then create new meanings and associations. This is the way Shakespeare seems to have invented many English words. My idea was that catachresis doesn’t just exist in language, but in all meaning systems and therefore in music as well. I would argue that artists like The Beatles, Frank Zappa, and John Coltrane made extensive use of it in their work, even if they were unconscious of it. For my project I tried to see what would happen if I used catachresis as a tool in writing my music, the same way a poet might deliberately use metaphor."