Succumbing to Addiction

My brother's got my camera and gear in BC -- he's actually shooting a wedding as a gift to the bride and groom, he having once been a pro photographer for a wee while a long time ago -- so the shot here is taken with He Who is Here Now's point and shoot digital. The combination of low light, the need to all but punch the "button" to take the shot, and the famous lag time between button push and image capture on most P&S digitals leaves us with a pretty blurry photograph...

This portrait in oil is by Toronto painter James Huctwith.

Much of Huctwith's work I love -- very dark, leather, S&M stuff (which I'm not into at all, sexually) but with deep allusions to the Masters or Biblical themes (which raises the works from the realm of fetish; well, of one sort, at least, given what’s more fetishistic than religion?)-- but much of his work is of huge canvas size, and I do mean huge. Interestingly enough, Huctwith is also associated with a Vancouver gallery, where he shows cityscapes in an absolute opposite theme. Here in Toronto his work shows at the O'Connor Gallery (run by the truly wonderful Dennis O'Connor and his master framing wizard husband John -- so for god's sake take all your framing needs there. You'll get incredible framing strategies and beautiful framing results, plus a whole lot of laughs to round out the experience).

Anyway, Huctwith also does quite a few portraits, mostly, I figure, as treatments for the bigger works, and these are much smaller and thus available to those of us who are vertically challenged (e.g. no wall space) and financially unable to fork over the $$ for an oil painting that is measured in metres, not centimetres...

This particular just completed portrait is of the artist’s "long lost love" (so I’m told) and is done from memory and a couple of old photos. I googled the subject's name (as it is unusual) and it would appear he's an artist/art academic in BC. Just nice to know those lips (!) are still up and around, smacking, pursing, pouting, smiling, frowning and being licked.

The colours used to render flesh tones is foolishly remarkable and the eyes, welll... If I have a disappointment it’s that the background is (minus some heavy brush strokes) bereft of any real texture – but the (gasp!) colour works well in my apartment ☺ When I get my camera gear back I plan to do some work with my macro (very close up) lens and show details of skin colour and eyes from several of the paintings I have.

For now, this "soft" photo will need to do as I reveal my glaring fall from the wagon, breaking my self imposed prohibition from buying art. It's He Who is Here Now's fault. His mandated (in matters related to my art buying addiction) "no, no, no" failed him on this painting, he loves it so much (even though he doesn't actually like the lips, go figure).