Beaver Pond – Acrylic on Canvas

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I exhibited in several commercial galleries in Calgary with no success. I finally figured it out. I was the best salesman at my own work. I did shows at the casino, Toronto Dominion Square in downtown Calgary. We had a trailer set up to transport our booth which cost $7000, Velcro, and all the artwork and lighting. Lighting in a black Velcro really showed off my bright colours to the best effect. I targeted my audience. I did the green elevators. Old pioneering villages that because of the dry does a prairie climate survive. I also get a series of paintings along the bow river.
I work for Sheldon Smithers have a TV show Canadian pickers on the history channel. I stayed in his log cabin in the porcupine hills. He knew the area and he pointed out the best subject matter. The Livingston Mountains, her a favourite area for the movie industry. Clint Eastwood film movies here because they were no windmills generating electricity obstructed the view.
I did the story of Ian Tyson‘s ranch and his famous song Alberta bound. In Calgary, I painted Peter Lawson‘s mansion, and it told his story. His grandmother is Cree Indian, and the family had major fortune on land. Speculation on a Canadian pacific railway went to Calgary. Period. Sheldon take me to Scotsmans Bluff. These were the cheap seats for the stampede. People could climb up on the hill, had a panorama of the stampede grounds and the bull river with a Calgary skyline and rocky mountains in the distance.
I have been to Moranville north of Edmonton with my country and western singer girlfriend. I feel Siri the cathedral and did paintings of the facility before it was burned down by the First Nations, and retribution for abuse at the residential school. The first nations felt discriminated against what’s the way the Jews did Nazi Germany, and we’re looking for restitution. Swastika was also a spiritual symbol before it was denigrated by Hitler and his Nazis.
Sunflowers, the Russian mammoths right by Ukrainian immigrants in the 1920s everywhere in Alberta. In the painting I did it Peter Lougheed mansion I use the sunflowers as a symbol of the family. Do you grey-haired Cree Indian grandmother is the gnarled sunflower in the foreground. Then there is Peter‘s mother, and his siblings are represented by various stages of the flowers.
We spent a day in the crows nest pass, Sheldon relating stories, the local history. One of the stories with the old cowboy at the pincher. Tweak legion. He loves to dance and one Saturday afternoon with the band playing the red hot tomato from Toronto showed up. He was enamoured with her flaming, red dyed hair in Toronto fashions. He pursued her with great energy and finally got on her coach. whoever this is before the anger was invented and he was having problems. He got in his pick up truck and headed off to Lethbridge to the sex shop. He chose a five speed vibrator. He got in line but was not used to this kind of graphic environment. The young couple ahead of him were discussing with the proprietor, your sexual problems, and how are they were going to use these various devices help out. Your cowboy finally turning red slammed his $120 down on the counter and said there’s a blizzard on the way I have to get back to pincher creek and headed out the door quickly. As far as we know he lived happily ever after in the arms of the red hot tomato from Toronto.
Sheldon pointed out the house of joy. In the mining towns in the early days there is a shortage of women in a brothel still a raging business. The nearest cigarette, but for a chimney fire set the whole town on fire. The Madame went to the young firefighters and said you save my house and you get a lifetime pass, this is the only heritage building left in the town. For convenience the broth it was close today to the Catholic Church call Myers 6 1/2 hour week and made a dollar a day. Sex with three dollars and a shot of whiskey with $.75 Saturday afternoon after working a half day shift he would get roaring drunk spending the night in the brothel sneak out through the cold Shuttle door slip into the church get absolution from the priest and were forgiven for their sins. Which during World War II. The veterans often told his story about how pilots training in the commonwealth training schools on the prairie will get lost. In those days it was no radar and on the ball Prairie it was very easy for a pilot from South Africa, or Australia, to lose his way. The solution was the fly around until you found a green elevator read the name on the elevator, and that would tell you where you were. You could look it up on your map and getting a bearing as to how to get back to base. Necessity is always the , mother of invention.
I did several paintings for a gallery in Oka tokes, which is a suburb of Calgary. I always target my audience. I asked the locals and they think of their hometown. What are their favourite places. That’s what I was with paint. Wherever I travel in the world I’m very good at finding a local motif, that will arouse peoples emotions. Whether I am on a cruise ship or when I was a student backpacking around Europe.
One of my father’s favourite stories