Saturday, April 2, 2011

Art, Food, Life

It has been far too long since I tried to record anything here. I guess I’m just not a very interesting person, since I seem to have nothing to say.

I will say, though, that I have lately been following Cameron Switzer’s YouTube videos. Cam is from Winnipeg, Manitoba, and he has been living in Japan for about twenty years. you can find him here: http://www.youtube.com/user/camswitzer.

Now a slight change of subject (but it’s all related). Today, my Beloved Wife and I went to the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina to see and drool over some paintings by the Chinese Canadian artist Huang Zhong Yang. Zhong Yang has an MFA from China, and another MFA from the University of Regina, and his paintings are unbelievable; his current show consists of image from China in the time of Mao Zedong, and even though some of the subject matter could have been depressing, the beauty of the paintings almost made me cry. Zhong Yang’s paintings are like music on canvas, and I wasn’t surprised to learn this week that Zhong Yang has a huge knowledge of classical music, too. Indeed, some of his landscapes are symphonies in paint. Had I $20 000 to $50 000 or more to spare for each, I would happily buy as many of his paintings as I had wall space for. Ideally, I’d buy more than half a dozen, but that would take more wall space than I have, and would cost somewhere up to $30 000 or more, which I also don’t have. Sigh... Most of his works go to galleries in Asia and Europe, where they sell instantly. You can see some images of his paintings at the Assiniboia Gallery’s site at http://www.assiniboia.com/dynamic/artists/Zhong_Yang_Huang.asp .

After the gallery visit, we continued to Safeway for a few groceries, where my Beloved, inspired by the beautiful paintings, decided she was craving Chinese food. Since I’ve been in Cam’s world in Japan for the last couple of weeks, I was craving sushi, and we knew the teenage mutant stomachs at home would be wanting pizza. So we bought some egg rolls, sushi, and ham-and-pineapple pizza with our groceries, and proceeded home to enjoy a wonderful multicultural supper. Ever eaten pizza with chopsticks?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello Neil! I just switched to wordpress and realized I'd lost your blog from my reader!

I hope you and yours are well :).

Gaina

Lene said...

don't have your email, so am leaving a comment here... thanks for the nice things you said about my Rust Bucket pics. ;)