This a painting I did as a birthday card for my boyfriend – dressed as the Queen of Mars. Look out Maira Kalman! He and I and a group of friends take Halloween VERY seriously, beginning summit talks on our annual theme usually sometime in August. This was part of an all-red  year.

(I was Hester Prynne. You can’t really see it in this photo but I had straw all tangled in my hair)

Here we are as “Bond Girls” from quite a few years ago, a card for our 10th anniversary last April. They tried to convince me not to go out dressed only in a towel, but I was in luck – it turned out to be unseasonably warm and I was quite comfortable!  Love you, babe! Thanks for ten years of ‘martial bliss’!

I inherited a nearly complete collection of After Dark magazines. Subtitled “The Magazine of Entertainment” AD was a terribly sophisticated monthly look at North American theatre, dance, movies, fashion and art from a decidedly gay point of view. It lasted from the late 60s to the early 80s and is a poignant window into the pre-AIDS era. I’ve been doing some new work inspired by AD images.

From a fashion editorial: someone please bring back the jumpsuit? I’m not kidding!  I’ve recently re-discovered the magic of the pencil. For years I’ve been doing all my sketches and final art with a felt pen, so a good old HB feels like a new world opening up.

Here’s a portrait of Wayne (later Jayne) County from a piece on the then-new punk phenomenon.

This one is a detail taken from a much larger picture of the Village People hanging out with some French chorines. Something is emerging out of all this, a show? a book? who knows? In any case, I’m having tons o’ fun! Thanks to my dear friend Bruce Jones, for passing along your collection, you’ve created a monster!

More TCAF news: “The Letter Q, Queer Writers’ Notes to Their Younger Selves” is a brand new anthology and I am one of the contributors, along with many other august personages! Whilst not actually debuting at this tear’s Festival, copies will be available at The Beguiling table. If you’re interested please pick one up and get it signed by me at the Koyama Press table. Below is the first of my two page “letter”.

This was a big challenge, I decided to revisit one of the most painful periods of my life, entering the public school system after eight years at a very sheltered all-Dutch-immigrant private Christian school. Spoiler alert: on the second page, I show my younger self receiving the letter and tearing it up in furious disbelief upon reading its contents. I then go on to show how certain factors made that time in my life bearable. This caused some consternation for the editors during the sketch stage. My story seemed to go against the whole point of the book. My instinct told me that all this wondrous news from the future would have been too disturbing and unhelpful to me in that situation. My first impulse was to make the requested change and soften my younger self’’s reaction. Over two decades of working as an acquiescent commercial artist had knocked some of the fight out of me, I guess. My partner encouraged me to at least try to mount a defense of my choices. I did and the editors decided to let the piece stand as is. Thanks, Gordon, for the encouragement, and thank you to Sarah Moon and James Lecesne for your patience and understanding! More info here: Scholastic

The Toronto Comic Arts Festival takes place this coming weekend. It’s kind of a big year for me as I will be at the Koyama Press table promoting “The World of Gloria Badcock”, a comic that debuted last November. I’m also in a couple of new queer-esque anthologies that launch at the Festival. I created an 8 page docu-comic for “Little Heart”, a comic anthology for marriage equality.

Above is a 2 page excerpt from my submission titled “49th Parallel Universe”. Same sex marriage has been legal in Canada for some time, so I thought it might be interesting to present a Canadian point of view on the subject. I interviewed 3 queer couples who were in various stages of  union: common law, married and in the midst of divorce. Thanks to publishers Justin Skarhus and Raighne Hogan of 2d Cloud for thinking of me for this. It was a big challenge, something I hadn’t attempted before: comic journalism!  I’m so looking forward to getting my hands on a copy next weekend.

I got the book “Cecil Beaton, The New York Years” last week, a collection of photographs, drawings, stage designs and paintings. Beaton is a lifelong obsession, one of the first photo books I ever purchased was about him. I dip into the diaries from time to time for a few laughs and am often surprised by how touching they can be in between all the bitchery, especially (as in most memoirs) towards the later sections which reflect on the indignities of aging and the gradual dying off of old friends. I’ve been studying the paintings particularly with a mixture of envy and awe. Here is a new gouache on coloured paper inspired by a Beaton fashion photo of a model in a dress by Lanvin from 1951.

I recently inherited an almost complete set of “After Dark” magazines.  This was a very gay publication focusing on the arts, entertainment and fashion that ran from the late 60s to the early 80s. They are an intensely rich and deep deep deep pool of inspiration – I feel a series coming on!

The final for my portrait of Faye Dunaway as Bonnie. I’m happy with the impressionistic background . Thanks, Lucinda, for the great commission!

I’m head over heels for Winsor and Newton gouache paints!! The last few weeks I’ve been messing around with them and here are some of the results. Above is a portrait of Fleur Cowles from a 2003 piece in the NY Times magazine. The Balenciaga dress is the same she wore to Elizabeth the Second’s coronation in 1952!

Balenciaga happens to be another obsession. I especially love his late work from the ’60s – modernity steeped in historicism.

Another obsession is the work of photographer Slim Aarons. The 2 volumes of his work documenting the very rich and famous published by Abrams are a constant source of inspiration. This portrait of Helena Rubenstein with husband Prince Archil Gourielli is drawn from 2003’s “Once Upon a Time”.

The de Young sisters at the de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco, also from an Aarons photograph.

Another tool I’ve been using is a brush-tip pen from Pentel. Love the dry look you get when you write stuff with it very quickly!

Here is a portrait of Babe Paley, one of Truman Capote’s “swans”.

This woman is the daughter of the famous conductor Arturo Toscanini and wife of the famous pianist Vladimir Horowitz. Also from a photo by Slim Aarons.

A Balenciaga hat.

Another hat by Balenciaga.

Here is a portrait of the divine Ms. Dunaway in her role of Bonnie from the film “Bonnie and Clyde”. This is a commission I’m still working on but I decided I like the loose unfinished quality it has at this stage..

Here’s an illustration for LA Mag showing a starlet arriving at the Academy Awards. The client asked for a b&w line drawing but we eventually decided to add the colour red, plus some tone for some extra punch!

In the opener, I was asked to insert some Harry Winston jewelry into a very simple image of the fictitious starlet. I don’t know photoshop and so, as always, had to rely on the folks at Reactor, particularly the endlessly patient Landon Whittaker, to put this all together. Well, there was a lot of fine tuning and backing and forthing and we eventually settled on this. The seemingly simplest pieces always require the most work, I find. Thanks, Steve Banks, for another fun job!

After around 4 months of renovations I am back in my Island housey, boyfriend of 10 years finally moved in! We are thrilled with all the improvements and are having fun arranging all our combined objets d’junk.

The changes are mostly subtle. The floor which was just painted sub-floor before is now a lovely warm natural oak finish.

The attic which was once cramped and mostly unused is now sunlight filled and freshly painted, a perfect home for my fella’s jungle!