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

roguegoat@hotmail.ca

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Josh has been working at *ahem* MY studio lately, partly because he copes better with working through interruptions than I do on the weekends...mostly because it has air conditioning. We don’t often work there at the same time, but today we were child free & went to work together, just like in the beginning when his saw was about eight feet from my sewing machine on our back porch “studio”. There are a few reasons why I like watching him work 😜 but the choreography of the cutting is near the top of the list. The longer the piece, the more he dances with it, the more dramatic the movements & obvious the effort...this piece was short enough that the physicality of it was almost extinguished into complete fluidity. He had just waxed his tabletop, this Maple commission was skating the surface, lightly guided by his fingertips, looking almost effortless.

Big Leaf Maple & patinated copper commission. The triptychs really arose as an answer to a technical constraint; Josh can only successfully cut a five foot length, max, and even that taxes his shoulders terribly. So we decided to break the picture plane into separate panels so that Josh could manage the wood as individual pieces & we could span a bigger space. Funnily, the first triptych we ever did was sold as separate pieces as the proprietor felt that triptychs “didn’t sell”. Take a guess what the most popular commission format is & which ones sell first at shows? 😜🤷‍♀️

I tried to take a photo of my new tattoo, finally healed after the terrible sunburn I stupidly got in Scotland, got distracted by Mike & Willis’s legs behind me, felt self conscious about it & felt a redo when I had actually showered & didn’t have a giant pimple might be in order, haven’t gotten around to doing so, resigned to posting this and noticed Willis’s 💄. 😂 This is basically the truest photo of my me ness ever taken, dirt, neuroticism, dogs, impropriety, tattooed bunny ears & Goat teats & all. 😜

Getting days and days and days of these cerulean blue skies in Ontario. I like the abstract made by my test splotches and water jug rings below, drawn into the figurative above. I have been working on this right at the window that face Willie the groundhog’s enclosure...sometimes he watches me, often visitors do. I have to steel myself to it but it’s a good reminder than this is a form of magic for others...the drawing of shape & form from chaos into meaning. At its darkest, there is hubris in the act of creation, in all of the arts, but at their best, something hopeful, a connection to becoming.

On the topic of long days & last light, of piles of dishes to do behind you & inexplicably, grape tomatoes strewn across the floor, tomatoes about which a child, sitting, unmoving for some time, helpfully called to tell you of as you entered the house; “There are tomatoes all over the floor”. On the topic of scarcity, again, as, upon picking up your veg & flower CSA from @sideroadfarm ,a child sat on the delicate blossoms, and later, a lamb wandered into the house through a door that magically resists being closed by the hands of anyone under 30, and ate the kale. Lastly, on the subject of excess, the remaining flowers finding redress in an armful of roadside sweetpeas & a belly brimming full of potato salad, dressed with ALL the kohlrabi and ALL the dill and ALL the green onion from the bounty of the farmers choice box.

Saturday’s moody details & accompanying thoughts; You know how when you see photos of famous artists studios, they always have jars brimming with paintbrushes? When I was young, I really thought that meant you were a real artist. The brush section remains the most beguiling part of any art store to me, yet I rarely indulge. I have...wait for it....eight brushes. I counted today. Total fake artist. I’m very parsimonious about art supplies, I’m not really sure why. Growing up my mum was very generous about supplying horse crap to my sisters but baulked at art supplies (one Stubben saddle = approximately three billion paintbrushes...oh, the injustice!) ...and my dad didn’t buy us “things”. So let’s blame them. 😜My frugality with paint was so ridiculous that one of the most common errors when we first started was I would try to only paint the area beneath the roots out in Payne’s Gray to save paint, instead of just painting the whole bloody bottom beneath the top contour of the wood...inevitably white areas would show through during assembling and I would have to redo the bottom. I tend to resist “wasting” materials on experiments, which can really limit growth and a sense of play. On the other hand, scarcity can be a great catalyst to invention. All those fancy colours on the paint racks are largely unnecessary if you know colour theory and a bottled colour is never as compelling to me as a mixed colour. And as far as paintbrushes, unless very varied mark making is a hallmark of your work (I can only think of a small percentage of painters this applies to), you will probably use the same few paintbrushes over and over. But then...sometimes abundance is the source of creativity for people. 🤔 Which do you tend to gravitate towards?

Two things go sideways most often in a commission; unarticulated preferences that don’t arise until later...and photo references. The first problem is a bit hard to rectify because quite honestly, sometimes you don’t know what you didn’t want until you are faced with it. A small detail can just throw it for you. I had a little bit of this with my tattoo design. Because I absolutely trusted Kate’s drawing abilities, I simply said a goat and four rabbits. Until I saw Nubian ears in the sketch, I didn’t realize I disliked them and wanted Saanen ears and felt so badly when I asked for her to redo them. But you have to love it (perhaps even more so when permanently drawn on your body!😜) Reference photos can also be problematic. This client cared more about colour palette than literal depiction of a place, but also had a great love of Maligne Lake and asked that the piece referenced it in some way. The issue with Maligne Lake, indeed any mountain interior location, is that in real life the enormity of the mountains both command your focus and create the scale. Yet in our work, because the foreground is rendered by the wood and squeezes the picture plane even further, it doesn’t translate to a successful composition. Particularly when the format of the piece is longer than it is high, condensing the sky, which is how I signify scale. The composition of a photograph isn’t the composition of a painting...it’s merely a piece of information. If the client is too connected to a literal interpretation of a reference photo, we lose our ability to find the space in between the technical considerations of what we do and to evoke the quiet emotion of place that we seek to communicate. I used to feel a lot of anxiety about knowing that there was a right way to realize a piece that wasn’t what the client was asking, would defer to the client...and the piece would be stiff. I don’t anymore. The client will always right about whether they like the piece or not. We will always be the ones who know the best way to create it. So, this piece is not necessarily identifiable as Maligne Lake, but draws together a sense of it with the other elements the client wanted.

Some people don’t like geese. 🤷‍♀️ Every night around 8, I come and sit here to watch the rabbits for awhile. As soon as I settle into the grass, my presence is like a magnet to all the beasts and the lambs, dogs, cats & chickens congregate around me. And the geese/guys, the tiny dinosaurs with their deliberate, dignified amble and sibilant speech. Our geese are, despite the appearances of this video, abnormally friendly. While they do bully the lambs (which they are scolded for) & cats (which I perversely enjoy), they have only curiosity for humans. Much in the way that we use our hands to know the real ness of things; the curve of a cheek, the strength of an arm, the vulnerability of a heartbeat...they use their beaks to learn our flesh. They aren’t aiming to hurt, only to investigate, and each night I tolerate the strange sensation of their saw beaked nibbling, the oddness of their tongues, the curious not-quite-painful-but-with-a threat-of-becoming-so sensation. After awhile, they will have learned something that satisfies their curiosity for the night, and they will settle around me to slumber while I return my attention to the rabbits.

Hope everyone had an amazing Canada Day! The studio, although sparse, was open yesterday & we spent the whole day immersed in our new community, meeting new people and collecting along our beautiful town waterfront for fireworks as night fell. (And an extra super sweet visit from the lovely @bluefrogheather ,one of our very first show friends! ) When we first considered this space, one of the concerns was ever having enough work for it to present as a gallery...it is first and foremost a working space. But the size and visibility demand an extended use, and I initially had a concept to use the large open area as a handmade boutique with a niche focus on things related to Canada & Groundhog Day...called “The Canadian Weather”. But then we started incurring $2000 a month utility bills because the Park systems hadn’t been separated from our building. The tighter budget increased the sense of risk in buying inventory (I am not a fan of consignment arrangements), months passed...and a question posed in an article was the catalyst for an epiphany. The article suggested that what you should ask yourself is sometimes not what you would start...but what are you willing to maintain? The answers are very different, aren’t they! Particularly for someone like me. I know people who really live in fear that they will hit a wall and not have a new idea. That’s never occurred to me. I always have new ideas and can try on all sorts of different projects, I love the start up phase with its’ novelty of problem solving and intensity of industry. But maintaining a project past that is not my skill. (Rogue Goat is the longest I’ve done the same thing.) My nature is to delve into things intensely and then grow restless. When I really looked at, I had no interest in maintaining the increased level of selling, marketing and admin involved in running a separate retail business. I actively want less of those things! If it was not necessary for personal or business growth or finances and it wasn’t something I had an interest in maintaining, then the answer to “should I do this?” became a hard no. It became merely a clever idea. Cleverness, blech. 😜

Despite the visual focus on animals, we are actually working. 😜 I’ve been thinking a lot about productivity. I am formidably efficient in the studio. I make a to do list the night before, I don’t take breaks, look at the internet, take calls...I’m focused and prioritize effectively. My daily studio window in non peak show time is usually four hours and ever minute is used for creating, never admin. There is literally no time management strategy that could better optimize my workflow. My working space is spare, organized and large so that I can circuit train through different pieces at different stages so I’m never waiting for something to dry, never wasting time. I detest distraction. My weakness is I don’t make time for experimentation. Josh on the other hand, sets himself to work in twenty five minute increments. He takes calls and wanders off for an hour to chat. He surfs the Internet, fusses with playlists, has a smoke, fiddles with something on his desk, heads outside to start or finish some other project. He can be in his workroom for a long time, but only a quarter of it is actual cutting. His workspace is a tangle of tools and wood, knickknacks and plants with barely a clear foot to even walk. He loves distraction. His weakness is structure & detail. One of these methods might seem better to you. One certainly seems better to me and is more likely to ensure things like deadlines and bills are considered. 😜 If you’ve ever met Josh in person, you will know that he’s a frenetic, twitching bundle of energy. I am not. But in creating together terms, the difference in our working styles means that I am the one mentally bouncing off the walls “waiting” for Josh to finish. And that can create a lot of tension. But there isn’t really a right or wrong here, just “is”. I’ve been making a concerted effort to step back from Josh’s workflow. That means that it’s less predictable & slower...but it’s also better work & we are happier. And for my part...when I’m not anxiously focusing on the work I could do if Josh was faster, I’m aware of how much time I have to do other things. It’s created a richness of possibility for new ideas and directions of my own.

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