Monique was recently visiting her friend, Pierre Henry, who is a Quebec artist and whose work I have admired for years on Monique's walls. Monique got him looking at my art portfolios and I was fascinated by what he chose as interesting to him (Some were in my "possibly throw out" file!). When I asked him for more details he very kindly took the time to make some thoughtful and intriguing comments. Just for fun I've made up a set of bookmarks on the ones he commented on and am going to post them here.
I'm thinking about my six favourites which I will post eventually and if anyone else wants to give me their six favourites and why, I'll make you up a bookmark set.
This could be fun to see what people like and why! (P.S. I notice I haven't got round to posting everything in the portfolios but these are what Pierre looked at.)
Comments by Pierre Henry:
When looking at the work of someone like you (who claims not to have ever imagined being able to do art) it is usually clear that there is a lot of pleasure deriving from the act of drawing, or painting. Usually, the end product is pretty tame... not too many risks are taken. This is not the case with what you do and quite a few of your compositions are completely "out of the box", as the expression goes.
In your 2002 production, I was particularly interested by the way you treated the cyclists and the action in the one entitled French water sports.
In the 2003 production, the beauty and simplicity of Notre-Dame-de-Paris make me believe that you must have copied someone else's work. (Nothing wrong with that... It shows you have recognized the beauty art can achieve when executed with talent). If, by the way, I am wrong in this - that is if YOU made this all by yourself, the only thing I can say is WOW!!!
Another remarkable piece is the Deux Chevaux from 2001: simple, clean, showing good aptitude for line drawing, (Not that common).
In 2004, La Promenade des Anglais and English Bay (2006) are most interesting... Particularly Promenade des Anglais where you re-arranged the perspectives in a most intriguing way, flattening the buildings along the beachfront and succeeding to create a very pleasant composition by using the outline of the canvas surface to place various elements in a somewhat abstract, well-balanced, reconstructed group. This may be accidental... but I think there is more here than an accident.
Don't be too influenced by what I am saying. It is just the opinion of one person!
My response:
Notre Dame is completely original and simple because that’s all I can really do...the tree was to hide my pathetic (compared to the cathedral) design. The "rearranging of perspective" is really just getting mixed up and ignorance about doing perspective. I amazed myself by capturing the action in Watersports..just a fluke! English Bay is a favourite of mine as well.... probably mainly because I included things I love about Vancouver.
