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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

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6 of 6. This probably doesn’t look that different to you. Essentially, it isn’t. Almost ineffably, it is. It’s all there, the familiar qualities. But there is a delicacy to this set that persists throughout, an almost imperceptible shift in technical skill that made me hiss “yessssss” under my breath in (restrained) self congratulation. Josh doesn’t see the pieces until the very end, wrapping it up to ship...he too, the soft intake of breath, the need to run his palm across it. Question the process, go deeper into it. Arrive. It’s the work, it’s the meaning. $2925 plus tax, only available to Signatures clients (for pick up at the show! ). SOLD. handmadelive

5 of 6. The finish? Last year, resin would have been on this ingredient list. Materials can be a strength and a weakness. Are they doing the work, the tricks & character intrinsic to the medium or are you? It’s good to question what is gained and what is lost. For me, what I love about resin is the depth, how it amplifies darks and how it unifies textures. It’s not the shine, not the perfect surface, not the fuss & mess. Not the sameness. This new finish invites the hand, a soft glow, tactile, a secret. It lives.

4 of 6. The speckling, an old photo tarnished, a rainy window, vision distorted. The memory of emotion. Something quiet and solitary, something simple and present. Observation, contemplation.

3 of 6. Evergreen trees, always, stark, yet soft. Moody, preferably, but not sombre. A landscape conjured largely by contrast, a shorthand for the complexity of reality.

2 of 6. Ethereal colour, movement, depth. A sense of place, but not a single place. These watercolour bleeds in atypical scales, pushed and pulled. Knitting randomness into meaning with brushstrokes.

1 of 6. What makes it a Rogue Goat piece? The wood certainly, with the delicate, detailed roots cut through live edge wood, dancing with the natural tones and character of the grain. The spirit of an object made by hand is the distillation of intent, the attentions of the maker possessing the materials.

Step 5. Once the large areas of wash are built up, the next step is working in background areas that are slightly more defined, like the tree line here. I have only been painting in a way that borrows from watercolour techniques these last few years, and it demands that my hand be much lighter than the way I painted before (which was more alla prima...working wet, thick paint into wet, thick paint). Instead of building up light by adding more paint & tone, I have to remember to let the light come through from the layers beneath. It’s about using less rather than adding more. In describing the questioning of the creative process in Step 4, I realized that I was inferring that the questioning ran much deeper than it does, had a permanency. Questioning my work, demanding that it answer to my vision is a strength. I don’t see it as a weakness. Without it, I wouldn’t grow. It’s more prevalent for me in the earlier stages of a piece, partly because all paintings go through awkward and ugly phases, partly because (especially on large pieces) the random qualities inherent in my techniques haven’t presented their consequences yet. But as the painting starts to settle, during the passages of focus abstracted from the whole, there is an unassailable feeling of rightness. It’s not quite confidence, as it’s not tied to the ego as much as that, but a perfect unison of hand and skill as a conduit to what becomes. Flow. No matter the self criticism or doubt that develops in an hour or a day of the work (usually amplified by letting too much of the destination of the piece into the studio; the clients reaction, the show sales etc), it is always balanced by the surety of the compulsion to make the next day, to return to the problem, the trust in my agency to find the path.

Remember this? Very Important Lessons in slow and simple pleasures of our analog past for Taryn today. *Josh’s face when I pulled this off was a sublime distillation of pure envy and fascination. He’s never been able to stay still long enough to let it dry and misspent his glue filled youth rubbing it into moist balls before it was dry.

Storm coming, prairies. 18x24, maple, patinated copper. Painting commentary by Goth Bob Ross; “Let’s get crazy! That’s it, let’s build a sinister little cloud over there. Easy now, don’t overdue it! I love the shadow of pestilence about to blight the land. Let’s build a happy tree! Ohhhhh...here it comes! The tree is happy because nobody lives in that house anymore, trees hate people. Let’s make two! Neither of them want to be your friend.” 😜 #handmadelive

Willis, deep in thought, watching the storm earlier. Today Josh got stuck & I tried to rescue him, but then I got stuck too, about 2 km from him. He had told me not to come (literally said “don’t come!”), but I never listen to him. Not one, but two, snow plow drivers arrived shortly after and said “fuck this” and turned around, saying they were calling it in as a road closure. Luckily we were only stuck a half hour walk around the lake, met some neighbours, saw some grouse, laughed, enjoyed the time. The county heavy equipment operator came and picked up Josh just now to help move the car & the truck, he followed our tracks through the snow. Someone had the foresight to replenish the whiskey stocks today, but that is not the same person as the one currently drinking most of the whiskey, at home, on the couch. 😜

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Welcome
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Rogue Thoughts…

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