Saturday, August 30, 2008

l'esprit de l'escalier


I was once being insulted while I climbed up a flight of stairs [usually it is the other way round, when one thinks of a retort after one is already out the door and going down the staircase, as the case may be!]...I was so shocked that I could not think of a repartee until days later, and this was my "l'esprit de l'escalier": "Monsieur, it takes a very small man to feel the need to put a woman down."

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

parigigi


the lovely flowergirl pranced up and down the steps of the mairie in her elegant silk and tulle gown set off by cherry red hightops and a green plaster full arm cast...christmas colours at a warm june day wedding and a mischievous girl elf who can't quite contained her emerging eccentricities in a city full of such wondrous sights...

Friday, August 8, 2008

888


eight million light bubbles spark off the eiffel tower into the dark nebula of a paris night sky...
stop and wonder at the confluence of charmed lives that are all meant to be...

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

boulevard arago


boulevard arago [2008]
oil and acrylic on canvas; 75 x 100 cm

known as a vespasienne, after the roman emperor VESPASIEN [9-79AD], who originated the brilliant idea of controlling and thereby squeeze-taxing urine dispersal through the installation of public urinals, this somewhat comical-looking descendant remains sadly the last existing 19th century monument to french piss in Paris...[the others having been eradicated due to overly popular usage for many-manly activities - ironically, this final unsavoury sample has been preserved outside the populous jailhouse La Santé on the boulevard Arago where guillotined heads had once rolled!]

[even though this particular model was commissioned a century before his time, there is an almost prouvesque elegance to the compact structure - especially since I have not emphasized the belle epoque flourishes in the metalwork - the overt functionality of the design can be seen as a prelude to modernist aspirations...]

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Lido


Lido
[2008]
oil and acrylic on canvas; 75 x 90 cm

one of the cinemas that my father designed in the 1960's...in which I had watched many of the classics from the western cinematic repertoire...memorable films from Dr. Dolittle to Dr. Zhivago, from Disney fluff to James Bond buff...all forming my early exposure to american and european cultural dissemination, and inevitably leading to unrealistic and disillusioned expectations during my initial encounters of life in the canadian "wilderness"...