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contemporary Canadian folk art

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Suite 2, The Coal Shed,
402 William Street, Wiarton, Ontario

roguegoat@hotmail.ca

By Appointment Only.

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Creative integrity is not efficient. This set of photos represents a series of attempts at one commission...you can see the wood is the same in each, although the composition and colours change. The first photo is the finished piece, on its way to Halifax for a soon to be new mum with a new house, who has been craving a piece for a few years. The second photo is the first one I did & the client was happy with, so I began the resin process. But I wasn’t quite settled with it...purple always throws me, quite honestly and the request for it had come near the end, when I couldn’t really integrate it into the sky with any intensity. It should have been easy to just be happy the client liked it and sign off on it...but I just couldn’t let go of knowing it would be better if I redid it, including purple during the step that it really needed to be. But it was the last board of this size, so I redid it on top of the resin, which always makes the paint bleed differently. The water turned out amazing but the client felt the sky was messy...but we both liked the shift in composition better.So this time I ordered new boards, started again and we are both happy with it. But I also hate wasting materials (and the time invested in the redo’s)and really loved that second attempt’s water, so I went back and altered it again. (fourth photo). If I can find a piece of wood that suits it, I’ll nudge it further into something cohesive. Josh (of course) thinks we were both crazy and each rendition was perfectly fine. 😜

A few years ago on the @autumnleavesstudiotour , a very helpful young child took it upon himself to teach me how to draw a deciduous tree as he felt that I was avoiding them out of a lack of skill. 😜 However, the know it all little twerp was incorrect and I can actually draw/paint deciduous trees but my preference with RG has always been a form of minimalism and the complexity of the limbs detracted from my aesthetic .Deciduous trees always convey season as well, which is useful or limiting, depending on the piece. And something about an evergreen silhouette communicates Canada in a much stronger way. There have been little deciduous trees in the backgrounds of RG pieces since the very beginning however, in browns, grays and whites delineating fields and horizons. There is also a long line of maples that’s line both our drive and the road to the dock in front of the studio. My drive to work along the high shore ridge overlooking the bay is permeated by the staccato of weathered tree trunks and every changing canopies, stark yet soft against shifting skies. What was a small detail of the background came forward as a stylized illustration of my daily observations. Change. 24x36, Big Leaf Maple, gold leaf. $1300

Anyone want to buy this little set as a second before I separate it? Finished it up today and discovered that the (cherry) wood on the far right panel has staining in the wood that just wouldn’t come out, regardless of how long I sanded. :( It’s not terribly distracting but is there...please see the last photo. Regularly $1525, as is, $1300. Cherry/gold leaf. 12/18/12 x 24. SOLD

I’m grateful for almost twenty years of impulsive and addled non decision decision making that created a wide age range of four childabeast consequences who all have loved this particular beach, a place I know and remember and relearn in lessons of the dissonant congruence of change and constancy.

October marks the start of all your favourite craft/art show circuit ponies launching into feverish productivity. Oh yes, the sage & industrious amongst us begin holiday show season prep far sooner...but as soon as October 1 ticks over, all of our avaricious brains start translating hours into dollars and long days & late nights now into weeks off later, with a ticking doomsday clock set to shipping windows, flight times and show dates. No one will ever get done exactly what they intend to and everyone will resign themselves to it on the first day of their first show of the season. From anxious self reproach to beautific acceptance in a few sleep deprived hours, every time. 😜 At the top of fall, we are all shiny eyed with the expectation of travel & sales & revelling in the privilege of lives that rise from our hands. When November creeps in, we will all be complaining about our wizened, aching bodies and snidely predicting the sometimes baffling conversations in our booths. 😜 But then the crates are unpacked & staged, you start that first show day with little to zero sleep...and the days will pass with great conversations and crap kiosk food and our depleted bank accounts fill for the long quiet winter ahead. Still, right now, that knowledge is a very distant horizon and focus is required. I won’t be replying to ANY messages enquiring about exactly what we are bringing or commissions in the New Year until November. I will be at @circlecraft in Vancouver November 7-11 with one of my most delightfully disruptive friends (😜) as an assistant, while Josh keeps the children & animals alive and continues working on the Edmonton collection, for Butterdome @signatures.ca , November 29- Dec 2. Fall flock, cherry, gold leaf, 18x36. $975.

For M, who wanted a moody set, with mountains & reflections, copper and an occlusion. So we found a piece of wood and...it disintegrated. Sometimes this happens. The wood will have a flaw within that once the tiny scroll saw cuts enter it, cause irreparable blow out. It’s always an expletive laden day. But we still had the original reference tryptych and the wood happened to fit M’s set. Generally I loathe trying to fit wood to a piece already painted & would rather just start over. But in this case, the yellow tones of the spalted maple suited the duskier blues of M’s set better than the turbulent greener tones of the original. And then as luck would have it, we came across a plank that matched and improved the original set.

It’s hard to see why in this photo, but this is one of my favourite skies ever. There are some days in the studio that I get really critical about my technical skills, when my vision of what I want the paint to settle into is far from what I manage to make happen. Sometimes it’s just a bad day where my heads not right, not focused...more accurately, the days my ego & self impede just letting the work answer to itself. Partly it’s just the zig zag of creative growth...you have to question your abilities to want to do better. I know sometimes when I talk about this, people want to cheer lead me out of that feeling. Honestly, I don’t need it! I think the questioning is healthy and integral to doing better. I am so irritated when people say you shouldn’t question yourself...of course you should! But also acknowledge your successes and deeply know your value and accomplishment. So...this sky. The days I wrestle with pushing this technique are validated by the days I finish this sky and think, “Fuck yeah! I’m balancing an intuitive technique with an element of randomness in a controlled way on a surface and scale it’s not typically used on”. David Lee Roth high kicks and rabbit binkies of joy all around. 😜

Excuse the the extra crappy photos...which I’m actually editing on here for a client’s first (and hopefully last!) look before the finish goes on. This has been a challenging commission. The client wanted four seasons, day and night and the Three Sisters featured ,but initially wanted four equal sized panels that spanned the same width as these five. But I felt (rightly or wrongly) that the Sisters needed to be central or they would skew the compositional balance over four panels. The four seasons are more difficult to convey with coniferous forest, so a bit of artistic license to pull out some of the evergreen density and add in deciduous trees was taken. I tend to baulk a bit at the seasons motif...it feels a bit gimmicky and fights against the quiet minimalism I prefer in our work. So, you really have to pay attention to the subtle cues indicating a season change in this set. This span was also just a little outside the normal range of plank length we can access, so required two pieces and cutting different sections from each and still trying to keep a grain flow. And...the client wanted six roots in the centre piece to represent family members, which meant balancing that density too, alongside ensuring each panel worked separately but the whole still had flow. Although it’s great that clients are always more impressed by the work when they receive it in person as they don’t represent well in photos, it’s also challenging for them to know from these shots if it’s perfect for them. I edit them a little for brightness, as the overhead fluorescents dull and flatten, and a bit for structure, as the dimensionality can get lost...but not for colour, saturation or contrast. There’s a fair amount of anxiety on my part at this stage as to whether or not the client is going to like it. Anxiety that’s very at odds with my own sense of it being successful, and the facet of commission work I like the least.

A few weeks ago in the evening, a porcupine appeared at the top of the pear tree. He took one bite out of each pear he carefully chose and threw it to the ground, just like I tell the children not to, and then off he went...the quiet gentleman of the forest. And he didn’t return the next night nor the next, despite our anticipation. Josh & I were staring up into the tree Monday at chore time, wondering if the pears at the top of the tree had fully ripened and I remarked that perhaps that was why “our” porcupine had appeared and disappeared, that his visit was to test the crop and it had clearly not been ready. He would return at a time that suited the wisdom of a forest beast attuned to the sweetness of August pears and we would then know through him. Sure enough, a rash of pears appeared on the ground in the morning, marked round by distinctive teeth finding gleeful purchase in the ripest of flesh & tearing it off with a dedication to thorough consumption. And so we knew that harvest had come earlier this year than last & it was time for Josh to endeavour to reach the branches our lumbering, prickly, connoisseur reaches with ease. While we would have discovered this anyway with our daily tastings, it’s a special benediction to emphatically know something through the guidance of something wild. There is the wisdom of beasts and the ingenuity of ladders and the seamlessness of some days with both.

About
Welcome
Art
Commissions
Where to Find Us
Care Instructions
Rogue Thoughts…

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