Author Archive
David Francey
Born in 1954 in Ayrshire, Scotland, Francey immigrated to Canada with his family at age 12. A proud physical labourer, he spent more than 30 years toiling in the Toronto rail yards, the Yukon bush and the Eastern Townships’ construction sites – hitchhiking across Canada at least three times in the process – all the while quietly chronicling in song the triumphs and hardships of life in the trenches. He played no instruments, never aspired to a career in music, and only reluctantly took to the stage at the age of 45 under pressure from friends and family.
Within two years, he’d won his first Juno, was touring internationally, and got to thinking that perhaps he should quit his construction job and try this music thing full time for a while. Since then, he’s won two more Junos and been nominated a total of five times. His songs have been covered by the Del McCoury Band, the Rankins, the Barra McNeils and Tracy Grammer – among countless others – and his “Skating Rink” video aired several times on Hockey Day in Canada, earning Francey the fandom of host Ron MacLean. He performs regularly at some of the world’s most prestigious music festivals – Tonder in Denmark, Port Fairy in Australia – and he’s been the subject of a nationally-televised feature documentary (Burning Bright).
The Georgia Straight called Francey “The closest thing Canada has to Woody Guthrie.”
Francey currently lives in Elphin, Ontario with his wife Beth Girdler.
Available works
Gilson Lavis
Gilson is one of the most experienced and talented musicians still working at the forefront of the music business today.
As an original member of Squeeze he enjoyed considerable success around the globe performing their global hits “Tempted”, “Black Coffee In Bed” and “Another Nail In My Heart” at the most iconic venues: Maple Leaf Gardens, Madison Square Gardens, Hollywood Bowl and The Royal Albert Hall.
He has spent the last 25 years drumming with Jools Holland on his UK Late Night TV show and for internationally famous performers including, Adele, Eric Clapton, Barry White, Cher, Ronnie Wood, Steve Windwood, Joe Cocker, Tom Jones, Kylie Minogue, Paul McCartney, Al Green… the list goes on and is still growing. Gilson resumed his painting career a decade ago. He explains:
“Art has been an anchor in my life. It played a key role in my rehabilitation from addiction and is a calming and peaceful place for me to return to whenever I can. In the privileged position I find myself, working regularly with many of the best artists in the world I have tried to capture the essence of their performance. A tall order but I am very proud of the results.”
Available works
Martin Tielli
Martin Tielli is best known as a songwriter, vocalist and guitarist for the Rheostatics. In their 20 years from 1987 to 2007, the band released 11 studio and 4 live albums, two of which – Melville and Whale Music – have been have been cited in numerous critical and listener polls as among the best Canadian albums ever recorded. Martin has also released 4 solo albums, and 2 with the band Nick Buzz (Tielli, Hugh Marsh, Jonathan Goldsmith, Rob Piltch). He also collaborates with Jennifer Baichwal and Nick de Pencier of Mercury Films, having written music for the documentaries Act of God, Payback, and Watermark.
Martin began his art career as a scientific illustrator for the Royal Ontario Museum’s Department of Paleontology at the age of 18. He has created the cover art for over 40 albums, and was nominated for a Best Artwork JUNO Award for the Rheostatics’ The Story of Harmelodia. He has also done illustrations for the Etobicoke Guardian, Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail and several books. In addition to a number of solo shows, Martin’s paintings have been included in the Collector’s Series – Happy Mediums (guest curated by Kevin Hearn) at the Art Gallery of Ontario, June 2010, and at the McMichael Gallery’s Autumn Art Sale, October 2014. His recent work featuring landscapes, birds and plants reflect his lifelong interest as a naturalist. Volumes of field sketchbooks serve as a source for more finished paintings. He uses most mediums but as of late is focusing on Oil and Casein Tempera on wood.
Available works
Terry Watkinson
Terry Watkinson was born and raised in Thunder Bay, northern Ontario. He was enrolled at the University of Toronto, studying Architecture for two years before being caught up in the music scene. This led to his joining the rock band Max Webster, which toured extensively in Canada, the USA and Europe, and produced five Gold albums. When Max Webster broke up Terry returned to the U of T and earned a bachelor of Science degree in Medical Illustration. His work can be found in many medical textbooks.
Terry moved away from medical illustration work and now concentrates on his fine art, with one or two feature gallery exhibitions a year for the last 20 years. Terry still plays music in various settings and recently released an album, ‘Ask’, which features him on keyboards, saxophone, pedal steel guitar and vocals.
His paintings are largely stylized landscapes of northern Ontario, where he spends his summers. Rather than paint actual places, he prefers to assemble imaginary scenes using elements of the northern Canada landscape, which he cherishes, and visits as often as possible. He works exclusively in oil paints on canvas.
Available works:
Patti Smith
Patricia Lee “Patti” Smith (born December 30, 1946) is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses.
Called the “punk poet laureate”, Smith fused rock and poetry in her work. Smith’s most widely known song is “Because the Night”, which was co-written with Bruce Springsteen. The song reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1978. In 2005, Patti Smith was named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture, and in 2007, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Patti Smith’s journey as visual artist began with making drawings and taking photographs in the late 1960s. She was most recently the subject of Camera Solo, a survey of her photographs organized by the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (2011), which travelled to Detroit Institute of Arts (2012) and the Art Gallery of Ontario (2013). In 2008, Smith’s photographs were exhibited at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporaine, Paris, and her work was featured at Artium Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. Strange Messenger: The Work of Patti Smith, a three hundred-work retrospective, was organized by The Andy Warhol Museum in 2002 and traveled to numerous venues including the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, and the Museum Boijsman Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Her work has also been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum Eki, Kyoto; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Triennale di Milano, Milan; Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels and the Pompidou Center in Paris.
Available works
Tamara Williamson
Tamara Williamson has been a mainstay in the Toronto music scene since the early 90’s. Tamara’s musical sensibilities began to blossom in a series of small, independent bands she formed in London beforere locating to Toronto in 1991. In 1993 her band Mrs. Torrance and was signed with the major BMG Canada. They released two full-length recordings before disbanding in 1998 the band toured extensively.
In 2000 Tamara produced and released her first solo recording “Nightmare on Queen Street” The song Rope from this record was in rotation on Much Music and Tamara was featured on “The New Music” television program. Over the years Tamara has written and recorded seven more albums released in Canada and Europe. She has been a guest on “les femmes s’en mêlent”” tour in France twice with Feist and Shannon Wright and been recorded for the Black session’s on French commercial radio. Tamara was dubbed the “God Mother of Indie” by Eye magazine in 2002 and In 1999 NOW Magazine voted Tamara Williamson fourth best concert of the year just after Bjork and before GreenDay.
Tamara went to Richmond Art college in England in the 1980‘s where she studies Graphic Techniques. Her father was a very successful Graphic Designer and as you can see in Tamara’s work she has a facination for shapes and depth.
Tamara produced many sketches and acrylic painting’s in the nineties but took a break from painting when she became a mum. She has now moved into working with oil’s and produced nine paintings in 2015. Her signature eye ball can be seen as far back as her doodles as a six year old. She has no idea why!
Available works
Kurt Swinghammer
Kurt Swinghammer is a Canadian musician and visual artist.
He studied at the Ontario College of Art (now OCAD) and is represented in the permanent collection of the Canada Council Art Bank. In addition to painting, Kurt has directed groundbreaking videos for rap legend Maestro Fresh Wes, designed wardrobe for The Shuffle Demons, and illustrated a children’s book of Stompin’ Tom Connors songs.
In addition to his own releases, he appears as a session guitarist on albums by Ani DiFranco, Serena Ryder, and Royal Wood. He has worked extensively as a composer for film and TV and his credits include episodes of The Nature Of Things. A live solo performance is included on the album Concert For St Stephens, released on True North Records.
Kurt’s Canoe Lake – Turpentine Wind WAV series pieces are signed and dated on the back and come with a copy of his Turpentine Wind CD and BluRay. These paintings are based on the WAV files of the vocal tracks from Turpentine Wind, Kurt’s concept album inspired by Tom Thomson. WAV files, the visual representation of sound, can surprisingly resemble shorelines or islands reflected in a lake. Swinghammer uses abstracted interpretations of these artifacts of digital recording to pay homage to Thomson – whose depiction of the rugged, untamed North was an existential reflection of a unique aspect of the Canadian identity.
Available Works:
Jane Bunnett
For more than 30 years, celebrated Canadian flutist and saxophonist Jane Bunnett has been bridging the gulf between Cuba and North America, introducing jazz audiences to some of the finest musicians the island has to offer. With her new sextet Maqueque, she introduces the world to some of Cuba’s newest female musicians. Their debut album won the 2015 Juno Award for Best Jazz Album – adding to Jane’s numerous awards celebrating her musicianship.
In 2004, she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2006, she was awarded an honorary Doctorate by Queen’s University at Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Jane is also a talented visual artist, working primarily with acrylic and canvas.
Available works
Louie Pérez
Louie Pérez (born January 29,1953) is an American songwriter, percussionist, painter, prose writer, and guitarist for the multiple Grammy Award-winning and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominated band Los Lobos. Pérez, as the group’s primary lyricist, is a keen observer of the human condition and his work has been showcased on every Los Lobos recording, beginning with And A Time To Dance (1983) and continuing through the band’s recent album, Gate of Gold (2015). Pérez also co-wrote songs with his writing partner David Hidalgo for two critically acclaimed albums by Latin Playboys (their side project). Pérez also wrote songs for Tony Kushner’s 1994 theatrical adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechwan at the La Jolla Playhouse in California as well as co-writing the book for About Productions’ play Evangeline, the Queen of Make Believe which premiered at the Bootleg Theatre in Los Angeles.
Pérez’s songs have been covered by many artists including Waylon Jennings, Jerry Garcia and Robert Plant. His prose work has been published in the Los Angeles Times Magazine, LA Weekly and the New York arts journal BOMB, to name a few. He has also served as art director for a number of album packages including all of Los Lobos’s recordings to date. On the Los Lobos boxed set, El Cancionero: Más y Más, Pérez was credited with Editorial Direction and Art Supervision; the set was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Boxed Recording Package in 2001.
As a visual artist, Pérez has shown his painting and sculpture since 1975 in many prominent galleries and museums including The Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), Plaza De La Raza-Los Angeles, El Museo Del Barrio-New York, San Antonio Museum of Art, Museo De Arte Moderno-Mexico City, The William Grant Still Art Center-Los Angeles, and The Vincent Price Art Museum – East Los Angeles.
Available work:
Rich Robinson
You may know Rich Robinson as a renowned guitarist, songwriter, and co-founder of seminal rock act The Black Crowes. He is also a music producer, photographer and abstract painter. His paintings presented here reflect a great use of texture and layering, in oil, gold leaf, bronze and metallic on canvas.
“My inspiration to paint comes from the possibility of what could be. For me, the painting process differs from music because of the solitude involved. It starts and stops when I decide. The similarity is the way I’m influenced. With music, it’s the sonics that influence me. A tone can spark a whole song. With painting, it’s the color and textures that influence me. I layer on the paint and as the textures develop, the painting takes shape. The general relationship is different because of the number of senses used. With guitar it’s my ear that dictates the song and moves me. With painting it’s the feel of the paint, the feel of the brush in your hands, the smell of the paint and the depth of what I’m seeing. Music is much more ethereal.” – Rich Robinson (taken from Paste Magazine)
Available works
