TAR

This week in T-shirt design

2011-10-25T17:18:00.000-07:00

In the past month I have been designing t-shirts for myself because my oldies are getting to tattered.

I am also lost in deciding what to give as Christmas gifts, so some of these just may do.

Here I did a line illustration with the old text of a CBC classic.
If you never new of Louis Del Grande and the classic CBC TV series from the eighties then here is an intro

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryWsVFkJ1QI

Rob Ford Nation has just recently had its first year bossing Hog Town around. So I needed to make up something to commemorate his first year, and for us all to remember the special, and I do mean "special", guest Rob Ford had speak for him.

Question, does Don Cherry even live in Toronto?

If you have forgotten this very intelligent welcoming speech by Mr. Cherry, here is a link to remind everyone.

and a T-shirt for Don Cherry, I printed mine white on hot pink.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHzCoUZG2Js

About Art

2010-01-16T17:25:00.000-08:00

Art
Like every thing in life, practice and an obsessed determination, through an aspired task, leads to the souls language.
Only through making a form, natural through determined work, can one master the intuitive nature of the medium in relationship with one’s soul.

How can the soul speak of the art, if the soul does not know the art?
The process over the product is what is the art.
Cause, statement, political emphasis, are all spoken languages that need not ART to help define.
Art is the souls language, with a medium that makes the artist one, (like a marriage), it is the vessel that speaks to the heart.
Statement, cause, and “trying to hard” are the devil to true inspired work.
To experience the moment of practice, “Erika”, it is to BE in the MOMENT of god.

Randal Gordy Lee
Winter 2010

What is in a quote?

2009-07-25T17:51:00.000-07:00

The purpose of a quote, to be quoted, is in the eye of wonder. Excepted by the peer and enamoured by the mass, we see these short statements from idealized members of society, as confirmation of our beliefs. A voice that echoes our feelings with words we cannot have said ourselves.
So what is in a quote, self acknowledgement or reprisal of our spirits?

These are my favourite quotes, and links to inspiring individuals that I feel will be quoted for many generations to come. People who's passions are to make a better place for all of us.

Creativity and the future of our childrens education.

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
Albert Einstein

Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we're educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.

Watch his inspiring speach on TEDtalks
and visit his website to learn more about him.

http://bit.ly/w8Jj0

http://www.sirkenrobinson.com/

Live Paint Night - Stencil show

2009-07-21T08:06:00.000-07:00

Sunday, July 26th from 5pm till midnight @ the OY (www.theoldyork.com) 167 Niagara St. will be TAR's next Live Paint Night.
We will be presenting for everyone to participate in a Stencil Show. TAR(torontoARTrevival) and the Old York will supply the the wall sized canvas, paints, basic stencil shapes and brushes.
Since there will not be any sharp cutting devices allowed, please feel free to bring your own pre-cut stencils, that you would like to incorporated in this large cooperative painting.
Enter our draw to win the Live Paint Night collective masterpiece.
This is a free event but we welcome donations to help keep these amazing events running.
follow us on our TAR (torontoARTrevival) facebook group
and on Twitter

The Road Can Be A Rash Reality

2009-06-30T16:59:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, was supposed to be my last chance to get a ride and some games of squash in before my wife went on vacation. The bent out of shape evening it did become, was an ambulance ride and almost a full night in emergency at the hospital. My bring home gifts: road rash, a swollen jaw, six stitches in my ear (splitting the cartilage), a separated rib, wip lash, all this and of course the headaches, fatigue and aches that would come with all that rattling noise. I've never had an accident like this before. I look quite the sight, worthy of stares, and questions, but without much of a great story to tell. Doing 40-45km at dusk I momentarily look back to see if my friend saw which turn I took, and as I turn back, Wham, speed bump. Where did that come from? No marker, no paint, it must of launched me 10-20 feet. I remember being air born. I remember hitting.

Then I remember a half hour later, some vague recollection of walking, in fact walked the remainder of the distance back from the spit to the main road were we flagged a car, and they called the ambulance with Dave's request. I did not feel much pain till the next day. Two days later and I'm an aching mess. Dave walked my bike back to his place, and unbelievably, when I went to get it, my good old trusty steed was in sturdy and stellar shape, aside from scuffings and blood spatter. I think I must name my bike now after this dramatic evening, so if anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears even the split one?

I will be giving the details of the next "Live Paint" in due time.

Live Paint Night

2009-06-27T14:38:00.000-07:00

Portrait yet to be completed.
Ómar with Puffin Daddy @ the OY - 2009

Last Tuesdays Live Paint Night did not have as many participants on stage but again it was a wonderful night of painting and conversation. We did not start until 8pm, and didn't let the paint start to dry till one in the morning. A much different out come to the abstract line piece of the previous week.
We did not end having a draw this evening. Being a portrait of Ómar and the Old York's mascot puffin.
TAR (torontoARTrevival) has decided to give the canvas to him after completion.
I will post photos of the finished canvas next week.
Our next post will also give the details of July's Live Paint, and I will be giving lots of notice to make plans.
John Viljoen was in attendance for the night and added in the fun. John is a excellent portrait painter from Toronto, see his works here: http://bit.ly/FxH9x
If anyone is interested in seeing my work online, heck:
http://bit.ly/VU5OL
or
http://bit.ly/lvUFI

TAR (torontoARTrevival) Live Paint Night

2009-06-20T13:10:00.000-07:00

Well we are coming up to another Live Paint Night @ the Old York.
Tuesday June 23rd, from 7-9pm.
(mind you, last Sunday night went until one in the morning)
Some great photos were taken by Ómar, and put on the Old York facebook fan club.
<----- like this one :)
This piece was given to Erin after it was signed by TAR.
I like how this collective piece has no single name, was produced in flux, and no monetary value was associated to it.
On Tuesday, I will be planning to create a raffle so that the piece will be given away in a draw. One does not need to be a participant, they can be a part of the audience.
I like how this process over product exercise leaves ego outside the door. There is no name to associate to it and there is no pressure to produce something that may not look great.
Just a physical presentation that is about bringing art back to a place that I think it is missing, It`s soul and unexplained connection to all of our creative potentials.
I hope to have a great series of photos for this show and maybe even a video.

Father, Son and Friends

2009-06-12T18:38:00.001-07:00

Last night I set up at the OY (theoldyork)
www.theoldyork.com
an eclectic salon style show of works from myself and my son.
It ended up being a late night, as I had to wait for tables to finish dinner and the crowd watching the Stanley Cup game to move along, but I eventually got everything up.
On Sunday June 14th, we will do a live canvas on stage from
4 to 6pm.

Elliott Lee
Elliott has always come out drawing and sketching with me at the cafes and galleries around Toronto since he was an infant. By the time he was a year and a half (with the fascination and determination to do the things I was doing) he was holding and drawing with my pens. He was born December 2003, and now has a wonderful way of forming his ideas with imagery. I remember one time when he was three he drew circles within circles, and I told him how it reminded me of the rings of a tree. I then pulled a cut log from the stack of fire wood on the back porch and described to him that for each ring in the cross cut, represented a year of the trees growth. In the case of the tree I was demostrating, it was 35 years old.
I drew this log in perspective to illustrate. He drew it this way for two weeks, with branches coming from it, and animals crawling around it, filling pages and pages of 17” X 22” sketch paper.
I always look forward to my time drawing with Elliott at places like the Old York, where friends that we know gather and speak of their own artistic practices in the art that they do.
Every Sunday for the next month and a half, I plan to do something there for anyone that wants to come by between 4 and 6pm.
Check in on this blog for updates, including a possible draw for a free original Randal Gordy Lee and Live Paint Sundays

"In The Studio" new works by Randal Gordy Lee

2008-09-14T06:44:00.000-07:00

"Home" acrylic on board, 42"X58", 2008

My paintings are composed from many sketches from journals that I write and draw in nearly every day. From these sketches certain compositions and postures haunt me and I have a need to repeat them. It is only when they find themselves in the process of the painting that I find a home for the image that I need to express. Sometimes this comes quickly and sometimes it will take longer than the rest of the paintings I am working on combined.

"Starling" acrylic on board, 42"X58", 2008

I like the strength that line can give to two dimensional painting. The play with perspective, showing as much of a story in a confined space, and leaving allot for ones imagination to fill in the rest. In part these paintings are as much a mystery of what they will become for me as they for the audience.

"Writer's Block" acrylic on board, 42"X58", 2008

This series of paintings and sketches has been greatly about solidarity. There has been allot of change in my life in the past few years and this has been the first story of work since these changes. The paintings, because of the devoted time it takes to make them have much more significant meaning to my expressionist style than the completed ink works in my recent past.

In my next blog I will talk about the change in my ink work and how I feel it is different in its process to the paintings I have been doing in the past eight years.

"Writer's Block" acrylic on canvas, 42"X58"

"In The Studio" new works by Randal Gordy Lee

2008-09-04T16:27:00.000-07:00

"In The Studio 1" 50"X50"

acrylic on canvas, 2008

I am an expressionist with an attraction to line, which is very present in my paintings. I’m a modern romantic that loves to portray narratives in timeless settings that tell stories through theatrical moments.
“In The Studio” is a series of works that are the result of several sketchbooks that I had done in the cold winter months. The feel of line at winter, especially on very cold sunny mornings, is sharp, hard, and reflects quickly from the surface.
I was born and raised in Nova Scotia. I have lived in Toronto for the past eight years with my wife and two children. Before coming to Toronto, I lived in Vancouver, B.C., and Canmore, Alberta. I have no formal art education, but I was encouraged early on in life by my Mother to explore and nurture my interests and talents in art.
I had personal art tutors in high school and I was home schooled in the three years of junior high school.
I was an avid bird watcher; John James Audubon and Robert Bateman were admired. Later I became fascinated in architecture and designers like Frank Lloyd Wright. Edgar Degas and William Blake I loved for gesture, form and anatomy and the power of story through art. Later I would find a connection in Edvard Munch for his raw soul searching expressionism.
While living in Toronto, I have been in several group shows and art auctions, such as RAW (Riverdale Art Walk), Sunnybrook Art Auction, Art Party, Exile Group show and many others.

"In The Studio 2" 48"X62"
acrylic on canvas, 2008

Waiting

2007-07-31T06:51:00.001-07:00

I still see a glow after I close my eyes.
I find myself thinking of home again.
The battered bulb,
The incessant moth,
The acrid summer night, lost in my own back yard.
Shooting beer bottles of the lightning rods.
Burning the earth to stone.
Pounding the deafening night with music,
Trying hard to escape the home I never sought.
Now I try to slow down as my speeding past accelerates to infinity,
The black tar of reality.
I will return too broken bottles and empty chairs,
Stars left lonely waiting to stare down on me,
And the thoughts that took me away from there.

One

2007-07-13T09:31:00.001-07:00

"One" acrylic on canvas, 72"x96", 2002

When I was in the process of making this painting, I became engaged to my wife Danielle.
Aside from some mural work this was the largest painting on canvas I had done to date. I was not living with Danielle at the time, and I could not paint it in the studio I was presently in because of its sheer size. So some really great and wonderfully creative friends of mine lent me the living room of their house for two months. I thank Norman, Annie, Bernice, and Mark very much for the fun afternoons of painting in their beautiful home. On weekends Norman would invite friends over, turn the couch towards the canvas (at distance), and people would watch me paint. The images are very forefront. Exposed in their sparse bedroom at dawn, a barren light bulb flicked on, and the figures so oversized that one cannot help but feel like they are intruding. It is a very voyeuristic painting. So I guess, in this context, very appropriate that I had an audience at times watching me expose this painting to reality.

New Study

2007-07-12T10:59:00.000-07:00

I started on some watercolors this weekend. A continuation of the last series of inks I had done. The imagery is similar, manipulating human form to express mood. There is something in this that I want to see more of. The placement of the form in a super exposed environment, leaving a stark reality to the disfigured form’s nakedness, a desert, an ocean, places that the self can't hide but can very much be forgotten by society.

There is always a key or a way out of our hardships but we are often unaware of them because of the fury of negative thoughts we are overburden by. How many times does one today, stop for even one moment to not think about anything without the wave of, "must do this, and must do that", washing up upon our shores of rushed responsibilities.

I've been puttering at cleaning up my studio. So much paper, so many little things that I don't know what to do with. Things that you know would get used if they had a proper place to be remembered.
Thoughts are like this. Our awareness of our environment is like this. Coincidence is not some gift given to guide our direction, but rather your sudden awareness of something that was always there in front of our eyes wide shut. It is when the mind is quiet from our stress and responsibilities that we can organize the clutter, giving a proper place for those thoughts we need to express.

I would not want to know myself if I had not continued to write and create art and be inspired. If I had let the gods of hopelessness and anger and depression blind me of what I could become, then I would be an empty spirit waiting till the end.

Your glass is never meant to be full because one needs room to fill it.

The beginning

2007-07-11T09:14:00.000-07:00

The Beginning

This blog is my own way to communicate my views about life and art, my loves, my losses, my revelations, my growth in being human.

I hope to find a little of my past, and dream a little of my future. But mostly I wish to focus on myself, in the now, and in the present moment, snapshots of my thoughts without what could be or could have been, making best of the present.

I have had more time recently at home due to minor surgery caused my Cohn’s disease. I usually write in my journal everyday, but I decided I would try and get with the times and try this blog. I sketch and write allot but a new business that my wife, Danielle, and I opened a year and a half ago has taken up allot of my time, so my time to visit my old art friends, do the gallery hop and promote my work has become less important than just making sure that the story of my work represents me. We also have two beautiful children, Elliott who is 3-1/2 and Polly Joe who is 1-1/2. They are a huge handful, but they open your eyes to what is so great about life and never fail to amaze you in the way they perceive and approach living and adapting.

Last fall my wife was diagnosed with locally advanced breast cancer. She, a powerful pillar in my life, has cemented the belief in me that she is a hero. To have gone through the battle she has endured in the past nine months to keep cancer from conquering her spirit gives me great pride in being her husband. Her recent CT scan showed negative to any spread, and her tumor markers are normal. She has changed to a macrobiotic diet and meditates as often as she can. She fully understands the importance of living in the moment.

The name of this blog is TAR, Toronto Art Revival. Whether this name will go any farther than these pages, I can't say. It is just a name and what will come will hopefully give it definition.