My art book, Great Canadian Emptiness, has arrived from the printer, and is ready to order.

Hi Everyone, My art books have arrived from the printer! The print quality is very good and I'm really happy with how they've turned out. Great Canadian Emptiness is $29 and you can order it online through my Shopify store at this address: http://aporia.myshopify.com/products/great-canadian-emptiness-artbook You can also send me a personal cheque if you'd prefer to pay that way. If that's your preference, email me and I'll send you my snail mail address. I know I originally thought I could sell them for $25, but unfortunately I forgot to take the US-Canadian exchange rate into account when deciding on a US printer, so I've had to bump up the price a little bit. Now I'm going to get back to the studio to try to get some new paintings finished for the Toronto Artist Project again this coming February. I'll have more updates on that as the date gets closer, but there's more info here: The Artist Project Thanks so much for reading, cheers, Marcel

Web site maintenance finally finished!

Super defender of the universe (detail)

Now I can finally get back to painting! (Woo!)
I've been working on the site over the summer, and I believe it's much improved, especially for browsing through the paintings.

• It's now responsive/mobile friendly
• I shrunk the header/navigation area so there's more screen space for the images
• I added close-up / detail photos to some of the paintings, so you can get a better idea of the texture of the pieces. ( see image above )

Have a look, and let me know what you think.

Cheers,
Marcel

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Fall Mini-Update

It's back to school time! Not for me, obviously, for my kids I mean. Anyway, I've been working on some fixes on my website, and on making a portfolio book of my art work.

 

Here's my computer screen while I was fixing up the images for printing. I think I've got it all sorted out. Once I get the proof and everything's all good, I'll send out an email and post here that's it ready if you'd like to get one.

 

I'm also going to be posting the paintings to my Instagram ( https://instagram.com/p/7xzskFK1_Q/ ) over the next few weeks in case you're interested.

Cheers,

Marcel

 

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Summer slow down

I haven't been doing much painting this summer, and I'm really starting to miss it. I've been attending to things like updating my website and looking into making an art book and things like that.

Soon I'll work my way through all of those administrative kind of things, and then I'll hit the studio with a long list of things to try out once I get back to painting.

In the meantime, I hope you're all having a great summer!

Cheers,

Marcel

 

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Ottawa Art Event Tonight, and new paintings

Event: Today at 6:30 - 8:30pm
Location: Wall Space Gallery, 358 Richmond Road, Ottawa
What: "Talent Untapped" - (see link below)

Hi Everyone,

I know this is really short notice, but Wall Space Gallery in Ottawa is putting on an event for my co-exhibitor Paul Wing, who is a subject of a documentary film, and I believe they are previewing the film tonight. Check Wall Space's Facebook Event page for more details. I will be attending the event too and it would be great to see you if you're able to make it.

I'd also like to say thanks to everyone who stopped by this past Saturday, it was nice to see you all again and chat about art and whatever else. I'd also like to thank everyone at Wall Space for doing such a great job putting on the show.

New Paintings: I've just finished two more paintings. (detail pic above) I've posted them on my website and I'm going to bring them to the gallery today. As well, in case you missed it last time, I've also posted an online preview of some of the paintings in the show.

As always, I post a lot of work in progress pictures of the paintings on my Instagram and Twitter (see links below). And if you can't make to the show, I'll also be posting images from the gallery.

Thanks so much for reading, and looking forward to seeing you at the show!
cheers,
Marcel

Ottawa show opens today!

I'll be there at Wall Space Gallery from 1-4pm, hope to see you there!

Here are some of the paintings,

Cheers,

Marcel

 

 

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My website is down today

The servers are getting some maintenance apparently. Sorry for the inconvenience. Check my Instagram for recent art work.

 

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New #workinprogress for my June show in Ottawa

"Stories and places" will happen at Wallspace Gallery in Ottawa, with the opening coinciding with WestFest, this will be one of the new pieces in the show.

Ok, back to painting,

Cheers,

Marcel

 

 

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Thank you, and new show coming up

Edge of Town (detail)

Hello Everyone,

I'd like to to say a big thank you to everyone who came to see my show at the Elaine Fleck Gallery this past month, it was great to talk all of you who were able to make it to the opening and get such supportive feedback.

For those of you who were not able to make it to see the show, I've put all of theartwork on my website.  

As well, I'd like to announce that I'll be having a show in Ottawa at Wall Space Gallery in June. I don't yet have a name for the show, but it will feature new paintings in my new 'undertexting' style. And robots, I'm thinking there'll be some robots. (You can read my artist statement about undertexting on my blog.) As well, the opening will be happening at the same time as West Fest, so there'll be lots of extra fun! 

As always, I'll be posting work in progress photos on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (links below), so you can follow me there if you'd like to see how it all comes together. (_If_ indeed it comes together, it could also be a slow motion train wreck, you never know. But it won't right? *nervous laugh* Well, either way, it'll probably still be entertaining. ) 

Thanks so much for reading, and looking forward to seeing you at the next show!
cheers,
Marcel

If you can't make it to the show...

... you can use this search that I've set up to see the paintings that will be in it.

I'll be posting photos from the gallery probably from my new instagram account on Saturday.

cheers,
marcel

'Undertexting' - invitation and artist statement

You're all invited to come to my show of paintings at the Elaine Fleck Gallery in Toronto. Come on by the opening on Saturday, February 7th from 2 to 4 pm and say hi if you have a chance.

Also, here's the artist's statement that I wrote up for the show:

Undertexting artist statement

Undertexting describes a new art making process I've developed, as well as the idea that we as human beings use stories to understand everything in our lives; that the cultural context of everything we've read and watched and listened to forms the underlying context of almost every moment that we live.

One could also say that undertexting is about the relativity of meaning, that all meaning is only ever understood within a cultural context, and how that cultural context is formed by the stories we consume. [One could also say that it's about how the background context of how we understand things is often a jumble, but that might just be a reflection of the disarray in my own mind.]

As a art making process, Undertexting starts with a layer of torn photocopies of pages from my favourite books, mostly novels, that I paste on to the panel over top of the original drawings. I then paint on top of that with thin layers of paint (much thinner than I'd been using in the past) allowing you to see some of the underlying text, making that cultural context more explicit and part of the visual story.

Undertexting is a new art making process for me not only because of the underlying layers of text, but also because I've completely changed how the paintings look: I've begun to explicitly incorporate things from my background in comics. These include the use of inset panels, which I'm using to show key scenes in the stories the paintings are describing, and the use of more abstract line and flat colour based backgrounds,  which set the emotional contexts and the settings for the stories they tell.

When people would ask me what my paintings were about before Undertexting, I usually said that they were scenes from imaginary novels, or what it felt and looked like to be in an imaginary novel. These new paintings that make up Undertexting are, with their underlying layers of text and their use of visual storytelling elements from the comics medium, even more about scenes from, or being inside of, imaginary novels. I hope you enjoy them.

Cheers,
Marcel Guldemond

Undertexting - show details

 

When: February 2015, opening Saturday February 7, 2-4pm

Where: The Elaine Fleck Gallery, 888 queen St w, Toronto

Hi Everyone,

(Note: this is the same as an email I just sent to my mailing list)

I'd just like to say that I have a show coming up in Toronto featuring the new painting style that I've been developing over the past year or so. The name I'm going with for this new style, and this show, is 'undertexting'. This will be the first time this new style of work will be seen in public.

As I mentioned in my previous email, rebuilding my artistic process has turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it would be. I'm happy to say though, that I'm finally getting some results that justify the hard work, uncertainty, and the potential for a serious artistic disaster. Maybe I'm being overly dramatic, but sometimes in the middle of a long process like that when you don't know if it's going to work out on the other side and you have no idea if you know what you're doing, it definitely feels like an impending disaster of your own making. Fortunately I seem to have avoided that disaster thing.

(If the following text is underlined, I don't know why that is, just that this Blogsy editor is kinda buggy)

One other thought that I had about the work, is that more of my comic-book making roots are showing through in these pieces and I'm finding that the comic book elements are giving me a much larger scope for artistic exploration. This is great and I feel like there's suddenly a whole new continent of images to explore. And part of me is wondering why I didn't do this earlier. Ah well, I could probably explain why, but I should be finishing some paintings right now instead of figuring that out. (A longer description of the new style is in my previous email.)

So considering all that, I'm really very pleased to be able to share some new images with you that I've included in this email, and I sincerely hope you can make it to the opening on February 7th to enjoy some art and some conversation.

Thanks so much for reading,
cheers,
Marcel

 

 

 

 

 

 

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