While we busy ourselves with Christmas shopping and baking, gift-wrapping and good wishes-mailing, my artist friend Eric Metcalfe spends every day completing one or two extraordinary drawings or little paintings. He listens to Classical music, preferably Handel, or some of his vast collection of Jazz. But recently he was listening to news from South of here and became increasingly angry.  The resulting drawings are of horrid, angry, military, political, piratical men. Guess what he was hearing.

Alan and I were invited to a super party to celebrate the Winter Solstice last night, in the wonderfully renovated Heritage home of Raider Mina Totino and her husband Stan Douglas in Strathcona. I decided that it would be a good idea to deliver all the recent painted plates to Eric’s home at the Western Front on the way to said party. Lucky us! Eric invited us to join him and Karen for a bowl of his home-made smoked salmon chowder and then go on to the party together.

Over a glass of wine he showed us his latest drawings. There are some amusing explorations around the depiction of iconic shoes, some of his series of abstract drawings and then there were these two angry, powerful men. He has given me permission to share them here as I said that I’d like more people to see what he’s done. We’d be interested to read in comments what you see in these drawings. He acknowledges the influence of his Victoria mentor Maxwell Bates, and one can see a progression of ideas from earlier drawings. These images won’t be painted or used for painting plates. They are simply drawings, made as part of his incredibly prodigious daily output.

I’m impressed by Eric’s collection of Art. Here is Alan surrounded by paintings and pots in Eric’s studio/dining room/kitchen. The kitchen sink is surrounded by tiles I made and he painted, a very long time ago now. They look splendid!

A nice juxtaposition to seeing the recent work was finding, in Mina and Stan’s house, a platter I’d made for Eric to paint back in 1999. The Western Front had commissioned me to make it, Eric donated his artwork and the platter was donated to Stan and Mina to thank them for their work on the board of ‘The Front’.

We thoroughly enjoyed meeting several past and present Raiders and many other artists and curators at the Solstice Party as cocktails and fine food were served. Thank you for inviting us to a great start to the beginning of longer days, Mina!