Christmas Card from Walters Falls

now that winter seems to be here to stay
having finished shovelling and blowing the lane
I sat down  to look at a painting outside
it reminded me of ice fishing

equinox

today

among the snow bombs

deer in evidence 

close to the house

an open spring 
a distillation

of recollection

of imagination

in transition

between 

dimensions

cross fade

still

a number of paintings 

in their interaction describe

a place in perception wherein

the peripheral of vision 

discribes

different realms  

intersecting 

at right angles 

vaporized 

as the earths crust 

ignites in the 

change of state 

from solid to lava

molten shell cools around

solid surface remnant

containing

bacteria

and RNA 

in prion form

like a 

message in a bottle

Video: Kenny Baldwin at Peter Beckett Gallery 2008

Recollections from my “Accidental” Art Gallery– 2007-2008

 I had no intention of opening an art gallery. It began as a one month solo exhibition. The Leftside Gallery was  well suited to exhibiting large paintings, Unlike stage actors, painters are usually a few steps removed from their audience so I decided to start paying the rent to see what would happen.

Observations: Cultural Anthropology and

Field Notes, Winter 2008

My initial exhibition included paintings and artifacts that related to sailing and wooden boat building –I had been living aboard a wooden ketch on Martha’s Vineyard during the previous winter.   The work in the windows has more to do with free-jazz and the winter landscape but for some reason the art gallery still attracts a disproportionate number of sailboat enthusiasts. Perhaps it’s their spirit of adventure.

I had been doing  free-jazz-painting collaboration in the gallery with Kenny Baldwin and Roger Martindill. I went to art school with Roger.  Kenny played music with Graham Caughtry – who was one of my favorite Canadian abstract painters from the 60s– so we were all familiar with improvisation in both languages. Some of the paintings were continued outside in the woods to include quieter voices. These paintings were the basis of the final exhibition which ran until March 15th 2008.

WinterJazzLandscapes 66 x 80 in.




















"To have a jazz trio rehearsing in the gallery on Friday afternoons

was a pleasure. It reminds me of my artist-in-residence days in Santa Fe– painting with piano and opera soloists rehearsing next door."

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