on the walls

There are very few things more rewarding that seeing children engrossed in one of my films.

So I finally have my film, Perfect Detonator, on the walls of a gallery with my paintings, including some big oils, watercolours, and "accidental" artwork that came out of the process of creating my film. I'll be posting more of the paintings in the next week or so.

This was my original intent with the film. I kinda forgot about it after all the years of creating the film. It feels good to remember why I did it, and to see the final product.

Framed Production Painting from "The Perfect Detonator" short film.

I prefer having my films presented in a space that is removed from the normal film and TV viewing experience. I don't want there to be expectations of instant gratification or a handy remote to change the channel if the first 5 seconds doesn't grab you. I want people to watch the film, then have a period silence to think about the film instead of being instantly popped into another film or a TV commercial.

The space of a gallery also lets me share my fascination with the process of creating animated films.

I like that people can walk around before and after the film and see all the incidental art that happened along the way. I showed a few of those things on this blog - background paintings that I found interesting, or a series of classically animated frames, done in pen and ink.

Now that I have the show up, I can document it and shop it around to other galleries in places where I really want it to be shown. I'm excited about that.

"French Creek" - Watercolour, Pen and Ink

An important breakthrough for me is that the show is not limited to one side of my creativity - I'm showing all different media and styles, but everything still looks cohesive. I suppose that's because it all came from the same brain. The wider spread of styles feels good because it's a good representation of how my creative process works. I like to jump around with the work I create. This gives me tremendous freedom to use whatever medium I feel like and know that it's going to work with everything else I'm making. My shows will be more like "This is what I've been up to", rather than "This is a series of paintings," which has limited me in the past.

"If Only You Knew" - watercolour, pen and ink

The other exciting part is that the gallery show finally completes my Perfect Detonator Canada Council of the Arts Grant. I can finally start applying for funding on other projects.