This was the scene a few days ago at the Nanaimo Art Gallery in - just as you would expect - beautiful downtown Nanaimo BC Canada. The occasion was the opening for a group show opened called "Art and the Message". I had been invited to participate and I was very happy to offer up for the occasion, four of my favourite freudian slips.

Not all of the work I do as an artist is intended to have a 'message', even though text can be found reliably strewn about. Sometimes I am quite simply having the time of my life. Sometimes the message is meant for me, and viewers 'overhear' this conversation I am having with myself. At still other times, my feminism rears its strident little head and I clearly set out to make a statement. This one (below) represents all three of these conditions. You probably can't make it out, but the little note collaged onto the canvas bears the lyrics to Brenda Lee's "I'm sorry". I am sure he is.

Sigmund Driven to Edge

Well, I'm afraid I may have pushed Sigmund to the brink of his tolerance for artists mucking about with his likeness. He has thrown up his hands and his cigar in sheer exasperation and is perched perilously on the ledge of my back deck and all because I sent out into the world, a large canvas showing him reincarnated as a bird. You'd think he'd appreciate the gesture, you know, trying to free him from all of his mental encumbrances. This is the gratitude he shows me.
I suppose I need to work more on my giving to get.

sigmund, we have lift-off

Today a very old friend (she's not old, but our connection is) emailed me a photo of us from 1955 when we were classmates in kindergarten. I guess it got into me somehow. I know this because the painting I worked on shortly after getting the email shows Sigmund Freud as a bird, lifting off. I was originally thinking of having him in a housedress and turning him into a wife from the 1950s; something I am sure he would not have approved of. But instead he ended up flying. If I were on the couch today, he would no doubt have something to say about all of this.