Image and photo credit: Tonik Wojtyra, Hard to Pronounce, 2012. CSA Space

Do you mean you dictate as you walk? No, I mean my thoughts take form in steps. I admit my thinking can be schizophrenic, and writing is a means to control it, but I don’t even know if I believe that. It sure makes sense though. We’ve been talking for two hours, which is pretty good given we were up till two maybe three the night before. Agnes Martin got everyone plastered! Too much beauty and innocence for all. Yeah I think I saw you running. Yeah I think I started running. But 12 hours later we each have a coffee in hand and pull apart the Russell Baker chairs to have a chat. We talk about the chairs. 1980s West Coast Modernism. Visible Japanese influence. They are outside of our time. We are totally hung up on time. I only have 90 minutes, but I give 120. The room is just so welcoming. I would have no idea that this is about The Black Madonna. The subtlety of things. I stand up to take a look at the cobweb. It’s a joke that I don’t get. Am I really writing down “Finnish Fetish”? This is jumping around already. We are at the altar. We begin with  nationalism. That’s been a hot topic lately. Or maybe all the time. Do you feel Chinese? Do you feel Polish? We both shrug yeah. Do you feel Canadian? There was less shoulder movement. This has nothing to do with Toronto. The bamboo painting gets better the longer we talk. Not formally, of course, not formally. But the wall and the corner meet at the palette and we are onto iconography. Has he made a conceptual bamboo painting? Wow if he did. And he just might have. He is channeling a lot of different traditions between the bamboo and the totem and the religious pilgrimages, but somehow that’s pretty reflective of Vancouver right now. Don’t get too hung up on traditions was some good advice he got. Not from me though, I’m in the same boat. He’s also painting monochromes with reflective backs. They glow. That’s a pretty good reflection of Vancouver too.