"When did you fall in love with rainbows?"

I was fourteen. I'd just realized that you didn't have to be gay or straight...you could fall somewhere in between. Suddenly I was able to put a word to how I felt and suddenly, I just really wanted the world to know. I think it was subtle at first. Just necklaces and bracelets. Given that I hung out with a lot of raver types, people just thought it was a candy-kid thing.

The hair should be a dead give away, though. I've been dying my hair since I was fourteen too. The first time I did it blue. Blue has always been my favourite colour and when I asked my mum if I could she only asked if she'd have to pay. I old her no and she said I was free to do as I wished. I don't think she suspected it would go the way it did. I had blue hair for four years, almost constantly. There were the few times I'd start fresh by shaving my head, but as soon as there was enough to bleach there was enough to dye and I'd be blue again.

I'd always wanted to try and do a rainbow so for Pride one year I bought bingo dobbers in six colours. My hair was growing back in from the latest shaving so it was easy to draw the lines of colour on it. One of my best friends helped me with it and marched with me int he parade the next day. It was all right but it rained and the rain got my head wet which caused the bingo ink to run. It was neat, but just didn't work how I wanted it to. Unfourtunately, at $20 a tube, using the same colour as I used for the blue seemed impossibly expensive.

Eventually I saved up and sucked it up and went for a properly dyed rainbow. I bought the dye progressively over a few months so the cost wouldn't hurt so much. Then I just went for it! My first Pride with rainbow hair, with the Bingo Dobbers, I was seventeen. At eighteen I did it properly and now every year, when the first day of spring has just passed, I prepare my canvas. I get my hair bleached professionally but I do the colour myself. I use a three section mirror and my own sense of touch to get the lines right. This is my seventh year of rainbow hair and my tenth year of coming out. I've managed to get my hair the dykiest it's ever been (A rainbow fauxhawk with a rattail? How much gayer is there?) and while it will be ticking me off in about two months because maintenance is so hard, I'm loving it right now. Right now it's my favourite most renewable canvas. It's my declaration of my spirit and my passion for colour and artwork. It's my imagination. It's my creativity.

It's just something I'm in love with.

Tarot Cards con't

The World

Emcee

As a past YAP participant I have been asked to emcee the Winter 2009 intake screening on Thursday, March 19th.
I'm so honoured by this, it's unbelievable. For serious... *glee*

In other news, I'm busily working on my next three tarot card paintings: The Fool, The World and The Lovers. The World is nearly completed. Sketches and progress photos will be posted eventually, of course.

Tarot Cards pt. 1

I got my first deck of Tarot cards from one of my best friends. The beautiful artwork of tarot had always inspired me and it was after I discovered my talent for doing large scale paintings that I thought I might try my hand at painting tarot cards that I could hang on my wall.

This piece is my latest one and my new re-attempt to begin the deck. I've done many card paintings int he past but I did them for someone else and I've decided to only do them for myself from now on. This is the High Priestess card, represented with my first cat cat, muse and companion, Gummitch. I brought her home when I was oen and she decided to stay. She was my first best friend and a great inspiration to me. She died at 21, a well loved and spoiled creature. This card represents knowledge, spirituality, the supernatural and self growth and discovery.

The pictures uploaded out of order but you can see the sketch and the progress of filling it in. It was a lot of fun to paint. I always do research into the various symbols represented on each card I paint. I chose to make the pillars twisted, gnarled trees instead of marble posts. The torah seems to be one of the symbols that cannot be lef tout of the card and I really liked balancing it's placement ont he canvas with the swirl of the rainbow. The moon was probably my favourite thing to paint as it's somethign i've wanted to do for a while now.

I'm currently working on The Fool and The World and the next oen i plan to do is the Lovers.

For Every One of Us

Random Happenstance!*

*Credit to Joss Whedon for the title...and is that how you spell his name? Whedon? There is an 'H', right?

On Friday I get this frantic sort of message from a friend and fellow selection committee member of Fairytales telling me to call the woman who runs the Uptown because they're screening 'Milk' and want to screen 'Affinity' prior to. I do the necessary follow-up and confirm that they can, indeed, show my film, if they'd like. They offer up two passes and seeing as I have Friday off, I figure why not? Seems like a fun thing.

So I'm going about the whole situation pretty casually because I don't think much of it, until I get a call on Tuesday from the Herald. When the guy introduces himself and the paper he's calling from I'm ready to say, "Not interested, news is depressing and I wouldn't read it anyway."
That's when he clarifies that he's calling for an interview, "We want to do a focus on more local arts and we'd like to do a bit on some local film makers. I notice your film is screening this Friday at the Uptown. Do you have time to talk now?"

As it happens, I do. This is an oddity since I work almost constantly. Divine intervention = the Universe works in beautiful ways. So i take the random time i happen to have to do a ten minute phone interview for the Herald. When i hang up it occurs to me, this is sort of a big deal! 'Milk' is, for those who don't know, the story of the first really 'Out' gay politician. He is, as my brother put it, 'sort of like the Martin Luther king of gay people.' This movie is huge and critically acclaimed and my little animation is screening right prior to it.

Gotta say, I'm really honoured they asked and happy I was quick on the uptake.

So, tonight, 6:50 at the Uptown. Come see 'Milk' which will be preceded by 'Affinity'.

*grin*

Holidays

Oh Christmas...

So, I've been working a lot and with all the holiday gathering to attend to I haven't really had time to Blog. I've been working on a lot of art though! Had to wait until after Christmas to post again since most of the artwork i've done has been gifts. I've got a few things I will be posting pictures of but I don't have pictures right now because, like a doofus, I deleted all the photo files from my computer. It was a dumb accident and most of them can be recaptured.

In the mean time, I have some more lovely shoe designs I did.