Upcoming Show!!

This is the poster for an upcoming show that two friends and I are hosting at a Vancouver gallery very soon. All the new city/urban work I’ve been developing is in preparation of this show. 

Check it out if you can! Click to link to the event information.

This show will explore many facets of the city. People, structures, surreal utopias. The three of us interpret various details of what makes urban life so fascinating.

City Snapshots Series

I have began a new subseries of smaller urban works. While these are part of the overall theme of my current work - urban/city decay, metamorphosis and change, these stand alone because of their size and particular content.

These works are only 12" x 12", so they are smaller than the others. However, this is an intentional choice - as a city commuter, my work needs to be small enough that I can carry it on busses and work on it while travelling. I do this on my way to and from work - I am always drawing. Keeping this ongoing series will certainly be a beneficial step forward into growing the number of finished works.

Furthermore, the intent of these pieces is to cover the breadth of imagery available in urban centres. Cities are beautiful, decaying, ever-changing, and present us with so much visual interest. As I walk around Vancouver, I am taking many pictures with my phone to use as reference material. When I am starting a new one of these snapshot studies, I choose something particularly interesting and turn it into a work of art. The titles I am giving them "Homer and Cordova", "Pender and Cambie", etc reflect where I was in the city when I took the picture.

My hope is to make these for a long while..and eventually show a ton of them at a cool venue somewhere.

Golden Brush Art Battle

I recently participated in Golden Brush's Season 2, round 4 Art Battle at the Vancouver Urban Winery. The event is really neat - there are 4 teams of 2 people. Each team has 80 minutes to create a work on a 30" x 40" canvas. The fun bit is collaborating the styles and skills, and my partner Jennifer Harwood and I did a fun job of communicating ideas and working spontaneously and on-the-fly (while sticking to a loose, original plan).

I've done a few Live Painting competitions in Vancouver. I really like the whole experience. It's a fun time more than anything, a bunch of people who love to paint get together and we work in front of an audience! Time goes by at an accelerated pace, as when people are watching you and there are lights on you and you don't have time to think too much about decisions!

This is the stage set up before the painting started.

 The organizers of the show are really great. I've met a number of awesome people so far who I think for their efforts, and introducing me to great other artists!

The event was really well attended! There must have been a couple of hundred folks in there, and the energy was great. The Urban Winery is an awesome venue!

Here we are, working away on our piece! It's hard to tell if this was the first or second half from this angle :)We ended up winning the public vote. We even made it into the newspaper (Vancouver edition of 24 Hours) - that was a fun thing to read the next morning on the commute to work!

More City Pieces!

Here’s a new work I just finished. It’s called “Nine-To-Five” because it refers to my dayjob. I work in this building, called the Suntower, in Vancouver. The building is really cool and rad, and I’ve wanted to paint it for a long time. The colour on the roof was a lot of fun to work with!

New City Pieces

I'm continuing work on my city pieces. Here are some new in progress snippets of a subseries on smaller wood panels. I'm creating these on a smaller scale for variety's sake, experimentation, and breadth of subject coverage. I'm so fascinated with the city, and everything it presents to be represented through art, so this gives me a chance to really explore what I find super appealing. These will be ready within the week.

New Urban Series

I've begun a new series inspired by the city. Looking back on work in the past, I've always been drawn to the urban structure, urban decay, and the magical colours, textures, and visual density that occurs when years of people's marks and influence change the look of various thing around us.

Vancouver is a city with an unquestionable grittiness (quite a contrast to the bright, happy pictures we often see). The crumbling buildings and decay of the Downtown East Side (where my studio is) is a wealth of visual inspiration.

I've wanted to focus on urban decay and the city for some time. I started these pieces on wood panel and so far they are capturing a really awesome amount of attention. I'm really stoked to see this series start to develop.

These objects (like phonebooths) that sit idle and often unused..and collect years of writing, marks, stickers, etc. are a testament to the motion and activity around them. They sit there, collecting memories and watching out at the city that passes them by, slowly disappearing...

Yet they speak to the ever changing world of technology, social norms, behaviour and so forth.

Fascinating? They are to me :)

New Body of Abstract Works

I've admittedly not posted on here for a little while. I post consistently to my facebook page, www.facebook.com/jonshawpaintings. My excuse shall be that I've been too busy preparing a whole new series of abstract paintings :)

Previously I've shown some in - progress shots of them, but here are a selection of the complete ones/ones that are nearing completion.

These are being created for an annual open studios tour here in Vancouver called the Eastside Culture Crawl. It's a really great event where the general public gets to experience hundreds of artists and their studios. I like it because it shows a whole new set of people artwork they may not otherwise experience, and seems to do so in a very fun and unpretentious way (the way I prefer to see and present art).

Here are a few sneak peek images of what I'll be showing. I have some animal works to exhibit too, although I'm using this opportunity to exhibit the new direction of the abstract works.