the luckiest man alive

Sometime the different between life and dead are so close before you realize and happen to you.

On April 13, just like every morning as I was crossing the street to catch the bus as the light changed green. I was struck by a fast approaching car. All I could remember was a flash of white and I was stuck with impact. After my body was throw a good five foot where I was, Before I knew it , I was laying on the pavement with shocks all through my body, I couldn’t move! The driver came out and other all gather around me, all I see were all the faces looking down on me.

I spent all morning and early part of the afternoon being tested and I was fine nothing major except my left leg is very sore and painful to put any weight on. I am walking very slowly and having difficult to go up and down the stairs.

All the time when I was laying on the hospital bed thinking how amazingly I am still alive I must be the luckiest man alive!

Finally, when I turn on my computer and open my email to found my friend Ed has passed away with his long struggle with Cancer. I meet this senior couple by chance while I was taking photos of their flowering magnolia tree three years ago They are the kindest people I ever meet whenever I visit them we shared many laughs, food and stories. I have no explanation how I escape this accident with not even a cut on my body and my computer, camera had suffered no damage. I believe Ed was protecting me from this accident.

Here is the photo of me taken by the EMS guy Dave with my camera.

painting for Chinese New Year 2010

This is another painting for this year’s Chinese New Year: the color red or any shade of red are very important for Chinese New Year as it is a lucky color, it is the most common colour for home and business decoration during the New Year.
This painting with the three open cymbidium orchid also offers a special meaning, the number three sounds like life or alive in Chinese and the number four has the same sound as death which is a taboo for the New Year. During the New Year, one often brings in live flowers or plants as to bring in new life and energy to one’s home.
So, this painting it means to bring you wealth, good luck with your life of the coming year with of life and energy.
Watercolour on 90lb Arches rough watercolor paper, 20”x23”, 2010

Past meeting Present

This afternoon, after I feeding the squirrels at the park which was just steps from my studio. As I was walking toward to my building, someone walk by me and say how’s going? I turned around at look at this man but had no idea who he was. He looks like on the homeless old men usually hangs around at the park as I study at his face hoping I could remember who he was. He must sense this and introduced himself as JC!
J.C. was a teaching assistant at the printmaking department at OCA when I was a student there but it was 30 years ago. Eventually, he gained a full time teaching job there but I had no contact with him since I graduated.
As we making some small talk, I couldn’t help to think how time hasn’t been kind to him and how much he has aged. I wondered how he still recognized and remember me after all these years.

Afternoon at the Ballet

I have a friend; a senior often offers her theater tickets to me whenever she was not able to attend. Last Saturday, it was the ballet Sleeping Beauty. It was glorious! The costumes and the set had a French influence with lots of gold and warm jewel tones and sometimes highlighted with pastel colors. All the costumes are full of beautiful details and most importantly the dancing was magnificent!
Princess Aurora was danced by Bridgett Zehr and prince florimund by zdenek konvalina both were outstanding and received loud applauds from the audiences. One surprise was Rex Harrington, the former heart throb principal dancer returns in a non-dancing role as King Florestan with few extra pounds from his old dancing days. It must be surreal for him to sit on the throne at stage most of the time and watching someone else dancing the role he was acclaim for.
Another highlight was the elegance and airlessness dancing by Keiichi Hirano of the blue bird. At the end of the performance they received a long standing ovation.

My seat was on the third row centre and so close to the stage, I was able to see the farcical expression and the sweat of the dancers. I was almost close enough to touch the conductor’s blond hair!
I noticed there were numbers of first –timers at this performance: parents brought their little girls with them. Many were dress up in their fancy dresses and one little girl even wearing pearls. However I don’t think young child has long attention for this three acts ballet. Unlike the nutcracker, the sleeping beauty doesn’t offer much amusing things for young child. In nutcracker, there were the dancing bears; the mechanical muse and snow flakes to keep the children entertains. By contrast, the sleeping beauty has a mean witch and her scary helpers. No doubt the little girls were rather fearful as the princess Aurora was picked by the needle and fallen to sleep. The Kingdom got dark by the second act and the little girls had became rather restless and after the second intermission all the little girls and their parents were gone which left me with lots of space to stretch my legs. I guess they will not become the future ballerinas then.
There were some interesting incidents within my seating area at the theater:
A mother tried to snap a photo of her two little girls and her husband before the performance was told there were no photo allowed in the theater and was told to delete her photo! There goes the family memory of the first outing to the ballet.
A woman near me brought back two glasses of beer for herself and her friend during intermission was told there was no glass allowed in the theater. Sadly I think she must dispose them in the washroom as it was not enough time for her to drink it at the lobby.
I was rather outrage all these unreasonable rules and decided to snap a few photos when all the dancers took their curtain call and I was the only one either.

How Toronto Garbage strike brought me 2 minutes of fame

I always compose, reuse, reduce and recycle: I only produce a little bag of garbage every two months. Since the Toronto city workers strike started a month ago, many faced the great inconvenience to deal with their garbage, however it has no effect to me. After seeing the garbage piling up in downtown near my studio and most of them should be recycle but when the strike is over most of this would just end up in the landfill. I decide to do something about it and started to use some of the garbage I found on the street and use to create art.
Shortly, after I posted some of these samples on the internet it caught the attention of a Global National reporter. Within days, she and the crew came to my studio and filmed a feature on me and my recycled art.
On the same weekend, I was one of the 500 artists showing my art at the Toronto outdoor art exhibition at Nathan Phillips square. Thinking it could be a great opportunity to educate the public how to reuse some of these garbage so I brought along some of my recycle art to show along with my paintings. To my surprise many collectors brought my art made from garbage.

And even better, my feature was showed on prime time at Global national news on July 14 and the night before during prime time they used me as their promote for the next day’s news. I was called “Rembrandt of Garbage”!
So the Toronto garbage strike brought me my two minutes of fame!

Artist fought back internet theft with humor

Few days ago, I discovered a internet site called “Toronto Property Organization”torontoproperty.org/ lifted two of my photos from my flickr account and used on their home page without my consent.
Since I joined Flickr, often I received requests to use my photos. One year I even granted Toronto City Hall to use my photo as their Holiday card for free .In most cases if they were using my photos for non-commercial use. I would let them use them free of charge only if they asked first. However, I dislike how this one just took my photos without even ask or credit me for the photos. After I emailed this company and asked them either to remove it or paid me. I never received any reply.
One of my flickr friend suggested since this site was using my photos by directly linking at my flickr photos: I could just replaced those photos with something else, something not what they expected!
Yesterday, after searching my many photos I have stored in my computer, I replace them with one of a hospital bed titled “short term rental” photo and another of a shot of the cemetery with a no dogs allowed sign titled “no dogs allowed long term residence only”. Just to see how they like them!

After I wrote about this incident at the flickr group, “Toronto”, other photographers started to replaced theirs with more amusing ones and by 8pm this site has removed all the photos both from their home and contact page with Youtube videos.

Artist Impersonator

Sometime life is stranger than fiction but this is a first for me: someone is impersonating yours truly!
Recently, I discovered a Bangladesh born artist currently living in Toronto, has copied a major part of my biography from my site, www.alfred.ca and only changed the year, name and the country. The worst is he also uses my works as his own!
At his site, site www.nandonnikfinarts.com at the page of “about us” he has this link www. nandonikfinearts.com which open to my site!
.I suspect he been doing this for some time because I updated my site about a year ago and from his description of his work( my work) were from the older version.
I checked on his site he runs an art school at his studio for kids and was using my site to promote his class. He does display his own works at his site and they are very different from mine.
I had never meet this person, Mohibul Islam I really don’t know the real reason for him to do this? Was he trying to boost his own art career with someone else CV and portfolio?