George Is Finished!

And you should see how I treat my enemies! This sinister looking guy is really deserving of a Happy New Year!

Now and then I feel like throwing over the traces! Now that expression dates me! In this strange game of making pictures I like to have a bit of fun, but my economic situation has sometimes been constraining to say the least!

Thanks to those who have patronized me in the year past, I have done somewhat better than breaking even, as was the case in 2006. I have made contact with two Nova Scotian patrons from three decades back and will be doing a commissioned work for one of them in the new year.

Sometimes I think that a formal art training is a liability, but that is certainly not so when it comes to portraiture. There are solid ways and means of creating this kind of work and why reinvent the wheel? But the result does not have to be formal; sometimes less is more; and it is the twenty second century!

My new web pages (some 300 in number) go up tomorrow before I lose it in Christmastide indulgences! If you delve deeply enough, you will find a few pages detailing my struggles with this painting of a friend. The basic theme however is "the old years in a new year." My series "A Neo Victorian Childhood" has been rejigged to cover all that I remember from 1934 until 1939 (not much); and what I remember in 1940, 1941, 1nd 1942; when it seemed to those of us on the home front that we were losing the war with Nazi Germany.