OFFICIAL

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I've been busy in the past year with illustrative work, dollhouses, and projections. More to come and that will all be revealed at the new website. It's more professional and less confessional.

Get that girl a drink

underwater gardening

mobile of images

She wears the dress with the

central elephant

the golden sun at her hands --pendants fortuna

I can’t sleep when the wings are rocking the bed

Legs folded into pockets

A weeping mouth doorway

Constance feeds me trinkets

A battle outside warns us

Roman shadows strewn down the road

Restless churning of words say nothing 

of the noise inside

when connections are scattered I remain in song

this is blue bird. little energy of cells that dissolve in drugs. 

I never imagined you were there with me --I imaged you as a gathering of selves. 

the intersecting lights and shadows across the walls 

form patterns representing the new community.    

rare sightings

These are field studies capturing seldom seen sightings, images in passing, and small pages out of underwater garden studies. These studies captured the intricate life of one girl who swam from her small town creek to an interesting dance scene where women gather each summer to collapse under the weight of their own heart beat, sweating and thrashing their bodies to drive out their sadness.
I will call these rare sightings. If you enter the keywords RARE SIGHTINGS into a google image search, expect a return of pages filled with wildlife photos, mythological beings, fugitives, apparitions, secret gatherings, nudes on motorboats, water dragons, sacred spaces, and celebrity tabloid photos. 

ribcage

the upsidedown tree

everything starts over

she lives inside her worlds and recreates herself in relation to the external realms

until a storm rolls in and her trees and structures tumble and she is left with a sword

stripped down, she now sees herself as she was from the beginning and always had the potential to become

in absence of outside influences and of her body, she looks around, picks out the stones from under her feet puts her sword back into the hilt and her hands onto her elbows

this posture is her anchor to the ground, while her toes hinge onto the outer sphere of the heavens

her hair falls about her face

a canopy for the seedlings emerging from the earth

WHAT YOU SEIZE IS WHAT YOU REGRETS

OPENS SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27. OPEN UNTIL JANUARY

NEW ARTWORK BY JASON DUBLANKO AND CAITLIN SIAN RICHARDS

Improvised weapons are often used by guerrillas, insurgents, and criminals where conventional weapons may be unavailable. Such weapons vary in sophistication from simple sharpened sticks, to petrol bombs and home made napalm. Karl Paltunnil, an influential and prolific artist himself, is of the opinion that both Jason Dublanko and Caitlin Sian Richards approach their artwork as such. 

Fish G., local guru and SEE magazine historian, has quoted, "(Jason's) style of drawing is part Jean-Michel Basquait, part Tony Baker, fun and childlike in execution, full of Crayola colour and wonder." 

Caitlin uses drawing to search through torn up thoughts, black outs, roof chatter, accumulations of found images, and discarded histories.  Her figures are assembled from old drawings, scraped away landscapes, and bandaged over paint spills.

Philosophically, improvisation often focuses on bringing one's personal awareness "into the moment," and on developing a profound understanding for the action one is doing. The simple act of speaking requires a good deal of improvisation because the mind is addressing its own thought and creating its unrehearsed delivery. Thus mumblingly, and often using found objects, acrylics and oils, brushes, pens, wood, glue, and scraps of drawings in a collage of picture and personal letter, Jason Dublanko and Caitlin Sian Richards create their weapons of dialogue; their pictures of a thousand words.

In our art, the images and writing feed off of each other to capture a feeling outside of conventional form and function; a style without boundary / of endless experimentation. We are working together because we have yet to collaborate and are curious as to what our combined efforts might yield. Caitlin was in an amazing show with Tim Rechner at the Ortona Gallery in 2009 and the work that was shown there has stuck fresh in my mind all this time. It is our hope to achieve the magnitude of that show, with a barrage of images too plentiful and too interesting to take in with just one viewing.

sincerely, jason & caitlin

the bracket

It's been awhile since I felt the crouched dragon visit. She was a pathetic curved spine. Matter comprised from my ribcage. She took much of it. The feeling of being shielded, protected that when I lay on my back I had to cover my belly with my hands. She feeds off of me as much as I think I need to protect her. She crouches in my gut and knocks on my chest. I do not want to face her, she makes me afraid of the contents. Sometimes the pain gathers toward the moon. I let her out once for a night walk. We paced around the block until the car sounds drove her inside. I thought she was my reflection. She was skeletal and shadows capping over eyes. Now that I step back I can hear that she can be free. She is really a dragon with folded wings. Dragons are a source of power. If she leaps out into the sky she can turn transparent or convert to an element like fire or water. She is invincible. Inadvertently a sort of structure that made up my own spine. I thought I'd collapse without her. Now I can live without her and she becomes more than mumbling slothing motions. She could even have been a tree animating my limbs. I stretch my arms out and feel the spaces and their silence. I feel a breath that cools the loud racing summer night.

September

I saw this as the new beginning.

cloud

cloud shape

paint stain in form of a pinup

legs (with grass skirt)

figures

"Zarah In A Tree," mixed media on paper, 2008

"Departure," oil on canvas, 2008

Cut-out Doll (reposted)

The cut-out doll has no reference to an associated environment. The body is lifted from the house and place of origins, place of upbringings. Therefore, the body becomes the dwelling point. The cut-out doll varies from the paperdoll, who has interchangeable bodies/outfits. Paperdolls are often packaged with a paper house and accompanying captions detailing the history of fashion and place in society. Cut-out dolls are used in ritual as offerings or as a representative of spirits. They are a source of shadows dancing against projecting lights. We can project ourselves onto the cut-out. We can play make believe that we are someone else when playing with the paperdolls who have a story based on an already existing identity from historic sources. We relate to them having dwellings and the universally human aspects of their stories and can also romanticize from the unfamiliar and with the dress-up. They are grounded in and play out a narrative. We identity with the cut-out because it is modeled after a body. It is laid bare before us as a free agent/shape. I imagine it could lift right off the walls and jitter around, limbs flailing in the wind.
"Paperdoll 1," 2007, mixed media on paper; "Dolls from Make it Not Suck site III," 2007; "Golden," 2010, Acrylic on doorCut-out dolls are nomadic. They have no fixed setting. They are ghosts with images that flicker on and off of their shape against walls. Others have histories laid out along the body and in their clothing but only if they are defined with such details by the creator. I think about the figures in my artwork and how many live on a white ground. I tried making a few cut-out dolls with this tendency in mind. Making them as intentional cut-outs, I pasted a few on a construction site. Now they have a reference point that is temporary -they may eventually be torn down or the paper may start to weather and decay. Their environment begins to shape what they will become. When the walls get torn down then they will have a story. My cut-outs have portrait faces and wear clothing so they already have a fixed identity. In a way they are closer to paperdolls but change according to their settings. I considered the setting I pasted them on as I created them so they are suited to their environment. They are not a blank playing field as the traditional cut-out doll who is set up for various projections. I can't help but think how much the blank cut-out is associated with it's maker and it's shape modeled after the body shows how much we long to create from our image. I'm attached to the dolls I pasted on the street and care for their longevity. I have created more that are stored away until I lose site of them. And only in safety is this possible to lose track. I bring them out when I find a place for them. It is most likely they’ll end up being pasted into new drawings.
My drawings on clothing tags (see earlier posts) follow the paperdoll in the simple figure on white ground. Clothing left behind is another presence. Dresses are cut-outs from a figure and when worn and discarded become remnants of that person. Clothing tags itemize this presence.

I grew up in impermanent settings -constantly moving with my family and changing schools. I am pretty restless as a result. My art does not reference a physical landscape. The grounds are imaginary and psychological. The marks and planes of colour originate and extend from the body and as I abstract from the body, I move the figure toward landscape compositions. Bodies leave a presence or trace on landscapes, evident in every apartment or house I've lived in. In my dreams, all the places I've encountered combine and then fall apart into one white plane. Right now I am craving interaction with real landscapes outside of the city's generic shapes and that longing is coming through in my artwork. The body now takes form out of lines and shapes referencing trees and water. I'm painting imaginary landscapes from my head where a figure resides as a cut-out without a solid face and the presence of the figure is suggested by the landscape. Head to feet caught in the teeth of the landscape.

The cut-out also references family histories from those who are nomadic and uprooted. Their identity becomes something new, that has to be created from the absence of permanent dwellings and coming into new places. The cut-out doll is easily portable without a house or accessories to carry around like the paperdoll sister.
Another tribute to those who have been lost to history: paper figurines standing in for spirits who cannot be named.

A History of Monsters

I have been gathering up my resources for another exhibit on monsters..."A History of Monsters" part II. The late writer Gilbert Bouchard was so supportive of the concept of the 2008 "A History of Monsters" exhibit, at ArtsHab One, that he offered to write a catalogue and letter of support if I were to continue with the idea. He said it is worth pursuing and he'd put the fire under me and the other artists in the exhibit to develop the project into a more focused, larger exhibit. He wrote us a great preview in the Edmonton Journal. 
I write this as my pledge to commit. I am pursuing other directions at the time but think about this discussion with Gilbert often.

Artist statement I wrote is posted here: click on the "History of Monsters" header

"A History of Monsters" poster designed by Jodi Tychkowsky
Image from "Harness," by Caitlin Sian Richards, 2008

The drawing on the poster came out of sandpapered marks on washes of rapid draw ink on poster paper. I am working on drawings using a similar technique on clayboard and scratchboards where I can build up layers of paint and then scrape away through the layers until an image emerges. I then work into the image and reduce the areas for a strong graphic image. 


I am going to enlarge these monstrous figures into a new series about chicks and their familiars, nudes with masks, and women wandering in transparent jellyfish, angelfish fin dresses. Some women are birds themselves, posing infront of a classical painting of the famly's pet hawk, and holding taxidermy blue jays. Other women lie infront of the doorway with opium seed dresses, foxgloves, and disperse into the ink spills and eroded surface. I want them to be as elegant and slink by the viewer as this women with the harness and her dog. I originally wanted to title the drawing "night watch" as she appears confident harnessing power over and from her familiar. We'll see what happens.

of hair and teeth

hey there spindly legged woman bundled up
caught inside stare snares,
lie sideways down on the ledge.
they'll all sit across from your perch,
some will find you beneath ridiculed skin,
and maybe someday you will look into a restorative portrait,
and speak through the layers of hairs concealing you neck to cheeks,
lips pulled back for fish hooked smile, as if this was a choice encounter.
we weren't so different at birth, now you hide hide away beneath downward eyes,
hair in your face and into your throat,
guarding nets against the pills that will suppress the stories to tell,
if such features are imbalance then we should be rolling off the hills,
look down when you live under the big sky.
live inside outside to outgrow the old self.

"Cinderblock Girl," 2007

mixed media on canvas

centre of the party

"Centre of the Party," 2008

you brought into focus an image
located inside you and your friends' place
the image connected to a scenario
where she could be toppled and then brought back into presentations.
a faint line lingers in the living room, slinking along the walls and bending around corners.
the line rests as an arch, suggesting the partial shape of her,
the one who was at the centre of the party.
if you could feel her she would be cold from the inside.
this is not her portrait -it traces back the footsteps and sequences without eyes or voice.
her image dispersed long ago into the early morning,
directed toward the rain against the windows,
traveled amongst the birds gathered outside whose wings follow the width of instinct.

                       "Crow," 2010

3 blue girls road trip

    "Three blue girls," 2010

we departed for the longest stretch of time when the sun sets at 11 and rises at 5. guaranteeing us that we would not sleep. I had a pet spider that could spin lace from the light on the walls. one of my travel companions had a blue complexion and elephant tusk growth from her face. the other companion got sidetracked when she stopped along the road to answer her phone.

she caught up with us. we'd been sitting still for so long we couldn't stop. on her off road travels, she came across a line of roosters perched along an outlining fence, with elvis arms pointing toward the sun. the sun beats down on us so that we become aware of our lifespan. we have alot of catching up to do.

off from the way

I have been gone for a very long time
 (I will not sing for you)