"Torso#3" Drawing

It was just the other day that I discovered I have coincidentally been drawing in a manner similar to that of Georges Seurat. The writer of the article says: "Seurat's technique of black conté crayon uses the weave of the paper to break up the solid black and produce a sparkle of light in shadow areas." It so happens that this very drawing technique (again using Conté pastel) appealed to me intuitively as I began, many years ago, to create many of my drawings using cold-pressed (rough) watercolour paper. In addition, my use of pen-and-ink - a totally different technique using a different type of paper - allows the white of the paper to peep through the cross-hatching, offering a similar "sparkle of light". The author of the article went on to say: "[Seurat's] structures... represent his reaction to the informality of the Impressionist composition and pose (while he looks over his shoulder to Cezanne, who had also wished to restore order and structure to Impressionism)." This struck a chord. To be honest I find much of what I see exhibited these days as being "somewhat sensationalist," perhaps even merely "decorative" but which often lack the "order and structure" indicated above. Not so with my instructors and colleagues at the Art Studio in Toronto (see below) who spent, like myself, many hours and much sweat in a consistent attempt to create beautifully structured drawings as typified by the Italian artists of the Renaissance who viewed their drawings as art in themselves or as a strong basis for their paintings. I have thus decided to remove several items from my site, leaving only those items that emphasize my preference for what I call "minimalism". The items that now remain on the site are essentially monochromatic: photographs, drawings, and monotypes. I will continue to build my body of work, with the exception of photographs. My body of photographic works will remain as it has been for many years. For the information of those interested, all of my photographs were created from film, and printed on silver halide coated paper. The supply of these photographs is, of course, quite limited. A few of them come in either 8" x 10", 11" x 14 or 16" x 20", formats, occasionally two or all three formats. P.