Just in case you wondered, I am a bassoonist who has always made art. I have had 7 dedicated solo art shows in my career and over 60 people own my art (in the beginning, I didn’t keep track, so more than 60). If you want to check the market values, go to my website (shop section).

Moving Sale Auction ends tomorrow…7:30 p.m. on Thursday, December 6 . An easy way to avoid the crush of bids at the end of the day is to post your max bid now. The system will only go up by $2.50 at a time, so even if your maximum bid is $100,000,000, the system adds your bid only when someone else makes a bid on your chosen items, so if the last other person high bids $20, you get it for $22.50  Quite clever, old chap.

On with the stories.  All of these are “parallel works”, i.e. pieces that I made while working on larger works or preparing concerti….

I’ll start with the silliest piece.

Lot 132
THREE FINEAPPLES (2018) – 8.5” x 17” sharpie marker on foam sheets

I bought a stack of 8.5” x 11” multicoloured sheets of quarter inch foam at a local Staples store, and made art objects from them, working on a few things with and for neigbour children, and making two art pieces of which this is one. I sold one work in this series, Three Fine Mice, to a collector in Montreal , the clarinetist, Jean-François Normand.

The mounting system is low-tech, comprising of 6 clear (or red, as in pic) push pins and is interactive, meaning there are three separate pieces and you can choose the order of the images, reverse one or two of them to create a band of colour bar or display them vertically.

I called this work silly but it WAS A LOT OF FUN TO MAKE. I use very sharp utility knives to cut the shapes and you will note that the negative shape is larger than the actual fineapple, allowing for the contrasting colours to show.  And because I trust it’s strength, I used archival bookmaker’s glue to secure the images, though I remain unsure of the archival nature of the candy-coloured foam sheets.

This relatively robust work fits into a normal mailing envelope and is the absolute cheapest to ship.

LOT 131
GOLDBIRD (1999) 8.5” x 11” – india ink on paper, saturated with beeswax and touched with gold leaf, secured with 4 golden threads to a piece of black paper, recycled from previous service as a backmount for a paragraph I wrote about the Mark Morris Dance Company.

I did many very intricate works that were based on antique middle eastern rugs and I would soak these ink drawings in beeswax and secure them to heavy painted paper… all of these works sold and one became an album cover for Pentaedre’s album, Airs Anciens.

All that remains in my personal collection are a few simple studies and this bird.  Though he is light-weight and small, the saturation with beeswax seems to have made him very strong and he has travelled with me since 1999. And though he is called Goldbird, it really is his environment that is golden.

Lot 139
ORANGE TABBY UNDER STARRY SKY (2014) 14.25” x 28.25” – watercolour on handmade paper from Quebec

Painted on unusually shaped and beautifully textured handmade paper from Quebec, this is a simple watercolour sketch of a very relaxed and slumbering orange tabby.  And one day, I had a brush loaded with mica-infused acrylic paint, and I added it to the background of the cat, making the deep smoky purple sky shimmer behind the indifferent feline; the frame (not visible in photo) cleverly enhances the shimmering effect but you have to see it in person to appreciate.

Lot 138
DUCK STORM (2009) 48” x 48” – oil on canvas
This is one of my anatomically incorrect domestic fowl with a lovely subtle texture both to the bird, his sorrowful small eye and the rippling background.

Lot 136
BRUSH FIRE (2009) 48” x 60” – acrylic on canvas

This big, vibrant acrylic painting has many textures and surfaces and is presently pulled off the stretcher so you would have to provide your own stretcher  (I used it’s stretcher to paint AIR MARE). It also looks fantastic just stapled to the wall.