Pappy

"Philippe Gilain"
20x30", oil on board
November 2006
SOLD


This is one of the family portraits I was commissioned that kick-started my career. It took close to 50 leisurely hours. I went about painting it in the same fashion as the Igor piece but over many sessions and the paint sometimes dried in between. I had browsed my grand-parents photo album for good shots of them. The picture I chose is from their 25th anniversary surprise celebration in the late 70s. I scanned the photo and worked next to my computer screen on an easel that once belonged to my step-mom's mother, she was a great abstract painter. The thing's got magical powers., no doubt about it.

Fire starter

"Eegs, devil on my shoulder"
24x30", oil on board
June 2006
SOLD


This was made a week after attending the Massive Black workshop. I had heard one of the dudes talking about painting with primary colors in the dark with only a candle as your light source or something? So that's what i did in the wee hours of the morning. I didn't have an easel so i painted on a mirror frame i had picked up on the street. As the daylight filled my bedroom, I saw what kind of crazy colors happened with the candle light trick and I finished the damn thing oh so smoothly. In 6 or 7 hours, I had painted a life-size portrait from a picture on which my friend Igor's head is as big as the tip of my pinky.

On the following Monday i gave my 2 weeks notice at the restaurant and declared myself a portrait painter!

I could! Because after showing "Eegs" to my family, I got 5 portrait commissions which would, with my accumulated 4% from work, cover my rent and living expenses for 6 months!

the first fluke

"St-Carley"
16x20", oil on board
June 2006
NFS


This is 45 minutes after my brand new brush dipped in student quality oils for the first time ever at the Massive black workshop in the Old Port here in Montreal.

My friend Carley came for a visit the same week-end and got body painted by Andrew "Android" Jones and posed for the traditional artists in the middle of this big old distillery building. With my best friend on stage and surrounded by a dozen of our generation's best (Shawn Barber, Dan Dos Santos, Michael Hussar) I bought a shitty paint kit and tried the feared medium... Holy discovery! Why didn't anyone push the stuff on me when i was 12...