Author Archive
Joseph Arthur
Joseph Arthur (born September 28, 1971) is a musician, painter, and poet born in Akron, Ohio. He’s been described by The Guardian as “a driven, visionary character… a genuine mad genius” and NPR Music as “a ‘triple threat’ artist since the mid-’90s, bridging music, poetry and painting with prolific creativity and unyielding inventiveness.” Discovered by Peter Gabriel in the mid-90s, Joseph became the first artist signed to Peter’s Real World Records. “It has been great to watch his evolution,” says Gabriel. “Jo is a really unusual, interesting, and talented artist in music and art.”
In addition to touring a solo musician, Joseph exhibits his paintings worldwide. Arthur’s music has been covered by Michael Stipe and Coldplay, and remixed by Justin Timberlake for the Hurricane Katrina benefit EP, In the Sun. He’s a member of RNDM with Jeff Ament and Fistful of Mercy with Ben Harper and Dhanni Harrison, and has released close to 30 solo albums and EPs, including Lou, a tribute to his friend Lou Reed and his 2016 album, The Family. “Jo is one of those rare writer-performers where you get the sense, whatever you believe, that something greater is being channeled through his music and voice,” says Michael Stipe. “It touches something very deep and universal.”
His artwork has graced the sleeves of his entire discography: the sleeve design for his 1999 extended play Vacancy was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Recording Package. He staged his first art exhibition in 2006 at the Vertigo Gallery in London, and released a 110-page book entitled We Almost Made It, a visual collection of his artworks, along with an accompanying instrumental CD titled The Invisible Parade in the same year.
Available works
Miles Davis
Miles Davis American Artist and Musician: Miles Davis was born in Alton, Illinios and grew up in East St. Louis. He was inspired to become a musician in the 1940’s and received first hand education from Charlie “Bird” Parker. The pioneer of the cool jazz era, Miles became a world famous innovator and his work in albums such as Bitches Brew and Sketches of Spain influenced generations of musicians.
In 1980 Miles began to focus his talent in a new direction and started seeking expression not just through his music but also through visual art. He began with primitive figures and then experimented in colour and composition. In contrast to his rich formal education as a musician, Miles as an artist was mostly self-taught. He became inspired by the Milan-based design movement known as “Memphis” whose theme was based on hot colours and clashing shapes. He worked under this influence for nearly two years during which time he created a substantial collection of work. As his work matured his direction changed with intergrating, swirling abstracts and strong African inspired textures, filling his studio with tribal masks and haunting images of Arican art. He was moved to incorporate the essence of this rich imagery in his paintings. He transformed his world of sound into shapes and colours and worked with acrylic, pastels, watercolors, pencil and markers.
Available works
Barney Bentall
Barnard Franklin “Barney” Bentall (born March 1956 in Toronto) is a Canadian singer-songwriter who is most well known for his 1990s-era band, Barney Bentall and the Legendary Hearts. Their most successful Canadian singles included “Something to Live For”, “Life Could Be Worse”, “Crime Against Love”, and “Come Back to Me”.
After ten years of recording and touring with the Legendary Hearts, Bentall started a cattle ranch in 1997 in British Columbia. Then in 2006, he released his first solo album titled Gift Horse on True North Records on August 3, 2006. In 2008, he released a DVD of his live The Grand Cariboo Opry show, which included a 12-track audio CD.
In 2009, Bentall joined Shari Ulrich and Tom Taylor to release the album Live at Cates Hill.
Bentall teamed up with Ulrich again in 2011 to form The High Bar Gang, a bluegrass-styled band. The band features Angela Harris and Wendy Bird for vocal harmony along with Rob Becker, Colin Nairne, and Eric Reed.
Available works
Buffy Sainte-Marie
Equal parts activist, educator, songwriter, performer and visual artist, Buffy Sainte–Marie is an untiring champion for Indigenous people and the environment. One of the most enduring and popular Native American performers, her music has touched millions of people around the world. From her start in New York City’s Greenwich Village in the early 1960s alongside Leonard Cohen, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, Buffy made a name for herself as a gifted songwriter, penning hits for Janis Joplin, Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond. Her best-known song is the Academy Award–winning “Up Where We Belong” from the film An Officer And A Gentlemen, but her most acclaimed song is “Universal Soldier,” one of the first anti–Vietnam war anthems to inspire a generation of activists. Power In The Blood, released in 2015, was acclaimed by CBC as the most important album of all time and won the Polaris Music Prize as the best Canadian album of the year.
Buffy Sainte-Marie’s huge artworks were among the first digital works to be seen in museums and galleries across North America. Her art has been exhibited at the Glenbow Museum, the Emily Carr Gallery, the Mackenzie Gallery, the Institute for American Indian Art Museum, The Isaacs Gallery, Ramscale Gallery, the G.O.C.A.I.A. Gallery, and the Tucson Museum of Art where her self portrait Hands is part of the permanent collection.
Available works
Graham Nash
Graham William Nash, OBE (born 2 February 1942) is a British singer-songwriter known for his light tenor voice and for his songwriting contributions with the British pop group The Hollies, and with the folk-rock super group Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. A dual citizen of the United Kingdom and United States, Nash became an American citizen on 14 August 1978. He was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Crosby, Stills & Nash in 1997 and as a member of The Hollies in 2010.
Graham is famous for his photography and art, and was one of the first artists to experiment with combining photographic prints on canvas or paper with original paint, ink and pastels. Along with long time CSNY road manager Mac Holbert, Graham founded one of the leading fine art & photographic printing companies – Nash Editions, with a view to optimal display or photographic art, and first coined the term Giclée for high quality printing using ink jet technology, now the accepted term in the art world for the printing technique.
Available works
Murray McLauchlan
Murray McLauchlan began writing songs and performing them in his late teens. After playing at major music festivals, such as The Philadelphia Folk Festival and Mariposa, where he appeared alongside Jim Croce and John Prine, he began to attract wider attention on the club circuit, playing such well known rooms as The Riverboat in Toronto, The Bitter End in New York, The Main Point in Philadelphia, and the famous Earl of Old Town in Chicago. Before Murray had actually recorded an album of his own, his “Child’s Song” was already well known after being recorded by American folk star Tom Rush.
Now, thirty odd years later, Murray has eighteen albums to his credit on both True North Records and Capitol Records. Murray has won eleven JUNO awards, as well as RPM “Big Country” awards and Toronto music awards. His songs have been covered by many other artists, most recently the U.S. rock band Widespread Panic, as well as being featured in high school text books. Murray has been both a radio and television host as well as the author of a book and in 1993 was appointed to the order of Canada.
The most recent projects include the critically acclaimed album “Human Writes”, released in the fall of 2012, and his ongoing contributions to the popular songwriting super group Lunch At Allen’s.
Thoughts on Painting from Murray McLauchlan:
” I come to painting naturally. I have enjoyed drawing and painting since I was a small child. I have found it to be an existential experience for me. Our brains are always chattering at us about what we have done or what we are going to do. Very rarely do we get to experience the moment we are actually in. Painting causes that voice to go quiet for me. When you are engaged in really looking at something, you have no option but to be in the moment.”
“I was fortunate to attend art school at the time Doris McCarthy was teaching there. She had a great influence on me that informs both song-writing and painting. She remained a valued mentor until her death at 100. Things she said still stick with me. “Any fool can paint a picture! It takes an artist to learn how to see!” was one of my favourites.”
“I always go out with some big idea. “I’m going to Red Lake and paint the vanishing float plane culture!” But inevitably I get seduced by the landscape. Most of these studies are predictably of that subject. In bolder moments, I like to play with shapes and not think of a painting as any attempt to be photographic. These are all studies of places I have been. I have a great ambivalence about showing and especially about selling although I have done both before. My paintings are in private collections of some notable folks as well as EMI music. I have also donated pieces for auction and raised a good sum for the Nature Conservancy as an example. But I paint for myself and for no other reason. Trouble is, I run out of room all the time!”
Murray McLauchlan, 2016
Available works:
