Kate MacDonald Joins American Fever Crew!

For those of you who haven't been following along, American Fever: A Tale of Romance & Pestilence is a live blog novel by the considerably talented writer-filmmaker Peter Christian Hall. After following along on my own for quite a while, I am incredibly proud to announce my appearance illustrating some of the novel's final days.

You can find my previously unpublished dystopian postcards beginning on Day 215-8: Free for a Night with Bird Sanctuary (now showing at London's Nolias Gallery) and on Day 219-20: My Burning Tire with You Are Here. In an interesting coincidence, the quoted lyrics that preface You Are Here are from one of my favourite songs (Warrior by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs) that I have been listening to in my almost obsessive way the past weeks. (Alright, entirely obsessive to any neighbours within hearing range.)

If you haven't been introduced to American Fever, it's not too late to check out is likely the future of the modern novel. Begin at the prologue with More than 'A Blog of the Pandemic Year' and soldier on.

*tlc Magazine Feature Out!

It's not every day a girl (never mind an artist) finds herself featured in a swish magazine, but the right planets must have aligned to pull this together. Check out the tlc* December gift issue - you can pick up a hard copy in Vancouver or Berlin or read it online the modern way - my interview by Ron Coldham is on page 23 and features a big red W with bonus blimp.

If you're actually looking for any of the mentioned lightboxes, you can find them online at my etsy shop or drop me a comment. Because it's dollar forty-nine day, I'll include the shipping and track down some of that Woodward's peanut butter I hear Nestor's is reintroducing for Vancouver consumption. Damn, I love peanut butter.

Thanks to this little city and Ron Coldham for a great feature and congrats to Nestor's and everyone else moving into swank new digs in the Woodwards Building!

POSTCARDS FROM DYSTOPIA - exhibition announced!

Invites to the December exhibition I'm participating in are finally going out - stop by for a visit if you happen to find yourself in London. (I understand that it's only a short walk from the Tate Modern and there's likely somewhere to stop for a pint and a plate of crisps along the way.)

3 of my own dystopian postcards will be exhibited - Chandelier Migration, Bird Sanctuary, and Eagle Crossing (pictured at left and likely my favourite, being partial to both the drive home from work and all.) Each digital collage was assembled from my own original imagery, before being printed, hand tinted, and mounted on board. (Final size 5 x 7 x 2" - a petite menace as it were.) New works from the series will be going up on my website later today and at least a couple will be featured in the closing days of American Fever (check it out if you have a chance.)

Now on to the who, what, when and where of the invite -

“A futuristic or imagined territory where a universal menace prevails”

An international exhibition of thirty artists presenting visions of a menacing universe within a collection of postcard sized works. Our present culture holds a fascination with the concept of our own ordered civilization's collapse into chaos. 'Postcards from dystopia' explores this idea by delving into the realms of the imaginary and issuing visions from a dystopian and desolate environment.

Artists: Jessamyn Bailey, Nick Barratt, Anna Beam, Maria Colom, Giles Corby, Benjamin de Brousse Ian Gamache, Linda Griffiths, Takayuki Hara, Joseph Hartley, Andrew Hladky, Gareth A Hopkins, HRLCK, Isabel Howlett, Julia Iwasz, Fiona Leighton-Crawford, Kate MacDonald, Ruth Martindale, Nick McLeod, Tutte Newall, Raksha Patel, Federico Penteado, Maria Theresa Santos, Satch, Fred Schimmelschmidt, Angela Smith, Carly Troncale, Lisa Vuerich, David Willis, Esther Yuan.

Curated by Tutte Newall.

December 3 -21

Private View: December 3, 6-9 pm

Nolias gallery, 60 Great Suffolk street, London SE1 0BL
(5mins from Tate modern)

Gallery open: Tues - Sun 11 am - 6 pm and Mon 21st 11 am - 5 pm

Tel: 07722563357

Last Meal : Darrel Grayson - The Problem with Alabama

"Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of men’s hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed." ~ Harper Lee, "To Kill a Mockingbird"

“The poor quality of indigent defense is still the ugliest scar on capital punishment in America.” ~ Bryan Stevenson, the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama in a NY Times article published June 9, 2009.

I’ve been taking turns at the easel with the Darrell Grayson Last Meal painting that I began this past summer and while it’s been kicking around the studio the whole time, it is more often than not covered. This serves two purposes – it keeps me from brooding over what has to be changed to move the composition forward and saves me from answering any questions about the innocence of Darrell Grayson. There are a myriad of issues surrounding the debate about capital punishment and innocence is not the only one.

As I’ve written previously, Grayson was executed in Alabama in 2007 for the rape and murder of an elderly woman in 1982; while he freely admitted being capable of committing the crime, he had been drinking heavily and reportedly had no memory of that evening. While physical evidence was collected at the scene of the murder, the State of Alabama repeatedly refused requests to have a DNA test performed that would either confirm or deny his involvement. A black man with little income, he was represented at trial by a court-appointed divorce lawyer with no experience in capital cases and was convicted by an all white jury. (His last meal, by the way, consisted of a cheese omelette and sliced tomatoes.)

The lack of representation in capital cases is a particularly troubling issue throughout the United States, but particularly in Alabama which has a long history of ineffective legal support of capital defendants and which has no public defender’s office. Following conviction (in trials that often take days as opposed to weeks as in other states) death row inmates are often forced to navigate the appeals process without any legal representation even when new evidence has come to light that might prove their innocence. There is also no legal requirement or procedure by which an inmate can obtain DNA testing of evidence, nor any requirement that that evidence be held, meaning that the evidence by which an inmate might be able to prove his innocence may actually be destroyed before he has secured access to it.

In a state in which judges campaign for office on the promise to use the death penalty and can overturn a jury’s sentence (and many do – almost a full quarter of Alabama’s death row inmates are there due to a judge overriding a jury’s lesser sentence) it is imperative that defendants receive the best defense possible, however the small amounts paid to public defenders is so low as to be laughable. To my mind, a black man who finds himself in Mobile might just want to keep moving on up the road.

To quote Ken Silverstein in his article, "The Judge as Lynch Mob" (from Machinery of Death, edited by David and Mark Dow, 2002)

“Alabama’s death row occupants are overwhelmingly poor – 95 percent are indigent – and they are in the racial minority. Blacks make up just 26 percent of Alabama’s population, but 46 percent of death row, higher than the national average of 43 percent.…[T]he lingering effects of Jim Crow attitudes on the state judiciary are obvious: there are few black trial judges in Alabama, the court of criminal appeals is all white, and the only two African Americans on the Alabama supreme Court were both voted out in November 2000.”

This post is admittedly brief, but there’s plenty of information available for those wishing to learn more about the application of justice and the death penalty in Alabama. Aside from the abovementioned NY Times article and the collection of essays in Machinery of Death (which is recommended reading in my house), the American Bar Association has issued a damning report of Alabama’s justice system and recommends a number of changes, as well as a full moratorium on executions in the state. For current stories and more information on issues of racial bias and inadequate counsel surrounding the death penalty, visit the Equal Justice Initiative website.

WTF is wrong with Texas? More on Cameron Todd Wilingham and the Last Meals Paintings

It seems I can’t shake off thoughts about the Cameron Todd Willingham story and it’s a good thing – it means a lot of citizens of Texas won’t be able too either. While I’ve long believed capital punishment is a grievous wrong, the execution of an innocent man must give pause to even the most ardent supporter of the death penalty.

The crime he was accused and convicted of was shocking – the murder of his 3 young daughters in a deliberately set house fire. As it turns out, however, the fire Willingham was executed for in 2004 was likely accidental.

“I am an innocent man, convicted of a crime I did not commit," Willingham said angrily. "I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do."

While Texas authorities dismissed his protests, a Tribune investigation of his case shows that Willingham was convicted based primarily on arson theories that have since been repudiated by scientific advances. According to 4 fire experts consulted by the Tribune, the original investigation was flawed and it is even possible the fire was accidental.

Before Willingham died by lethal injection on Feb. 17, Texas judges and Gov. Rick Perry turned aside a report from a prominent fire scientist questioning the conviction."~ Chicago Tribune, December 2004

In the 5 plus years since the Chicago Tribune article, evidence continues to mount that the fire was not deliberately set.

Last Meal: Cameron Todd Willingham was the second in my series of paintings about the death penalty and quite possibly the most taxing mentally. Aside from the chilling details of the case, the difficulty I routinely have in preparing and eating the requested meal in preparation of the composition (I’m already squirming to remove myself emotionally from the process by introducing the technical aspect of the work) was multiplied by Willingham’s symbolically grim request of 3 BBQ ribs. (I could barely choke them down, so I’m not sure how he did.) Revealing to my friend, Ed that I actually ate the meal prior to painting it, he wrote that it “help[ed] make sense of the unnerving intimacy of [the] paintings.”

These paintings are deeply intimate to me and because of this, I rarely discuss them in any detail; I do not want to appear to inject myself into someone else’s tragedy, but wrestle with the fact that I create them to encourage debate around the issue. If I don’t dust them off and talk about them, who will?

While I didn’t know Todd Willingham or his family, I can not consider his case without imagining what it must be like to lose your children to a fire you witnessed, be arrested for their murders, grieve alone in prison, lose your wife, and spend 12 years on Death Row to be executed, knowing that evidence of your innocence was submitted to the state in time for a stay. Choke on those ribs? I choked on them every day that I stood in front of that painting and that's nothing compared to the anger Willingham likely felt.

Which brings us circuitously back to Governor Perry and today’s news in this 18 year old story.

Texas Governor Rick Perry’s decision to replace 3 members of the Texas Forensic Commission on the very day they were to review the evidence in the Cameron Todd Willingham case is extremely troubling; not only was today’s widely anticipated meeting cancelled, it is reported to have set the Commission’s work back by several weeks.

The clip below from this evening's news features reactions to Perry's shakeup of the commission by author Kerry Cook ('Chasing Justice') who spent 20 years on death row before being cleared by DNA evidence and Aliece Watts, one of the commissioners replaced by the governor.


So, WTF is wrong with Texas? Looks like it starts at the top.

If you’re reading this on facebook and the clip from tonight’s broadcast isn’t attached, you can check out my blog here.

Cameron Todd Willingham - Evidence Towards the Execution of an Innocent Man in Texas

Last Meal: Cameron Todd Willingham was among the first paintings I completed in my series of work protesting capital punishment in the United States.

Condemned to death in 1992 and executed in 2004 for the alleged murders of his three young children in a house fire, evidence of Todd Willingham's innocence was first publicly reported in the months following his death in a Chicago Tribune article in which noted fire investigators suggested the alleged arson was actually an accidental fire. Fast forward almost 5 years and David Grann's compelling New Yorker piece "Trial by Fire: Did Texas execute an innocent man?" may finally have created enough interest to have a long hoped for moratorium on executions declared in Texas - that most killing-est of states.

A Nightline report on September 17 finally brought the story to primetime television, and as you can see from the clip below, the response by Willingham prosecutor (and now Judge) John Jackson to expert interpretation of the facts is nothing short of chilling. With lawmen like this, it is a wonder that more innocent men aren't executed (and therein lies the argument for an immediate moratorium on executions in Texas, as well as throughout the United States.)

Learn more about the case and sign the petition asking Texas Governor Rick Perry to acknowledge Willingham's innocence or discover more about the particular issues informing the fight for a moratorium on executions in Texas.

Downtown - New Vancouver Cityscape Off Easel

My latest cityscape is finished just in time to coincide with World Art Day and a well-deserved vacation to the interior. (Beer, beach, BBQ, grape, anyone?)

Downtown (admitedly not my most inspired title) measures 20 x 16" and features a street view of downtown Vancouver and a various assortment of office towers and apartment buildings. While not enamoured with the actual act of painting straight lines and managing realistic perspectives, I admit to taking comfort in the act of condensing city sprawl of the into repeating patterns of windows, light and shadow. (Is there an irony inherent in being a realist artist who constantly attempts to remake their own reality, or is that actually the point?)

Perhaps surprisingly the part of the painting that I find most satisfying is the orange crack of light in the upper lefthand quarter. Perhaps too bright and perhaps too separate, it is the singular part of the painting to which I have any emotional attachment. If I lived in the painting (and in some ways I might) then this is my room.

It's been a busy week of proposal writing and plans for new work (watch for Postcards from Dystopia in London, December 2009 when Kate participates in a group show across the pond) and I'm ready for some serious R&R with my sister and the boys on the beach.

"There is a crack in everything/That's how the light gets in." ~Leonard Cohen

Paintings in Progress - Last Meal: Darrell Grayson

Having recently begun Last Meal: Darrell Grayson, the next painting in my death penalty series, I thought it would be interesting (if to no one but myself) to record the progress of the piece from beginning to end. In some ways I find this difficult, as I like to get past the awkward first stages of a painting as quickly as possible to the meaty details of piece.

The beginning of a painting is rarely pretty, but one has to start somewhere. All of my last meal paintings begin with a yellow ochre ground (background) that is obvious in the early stages of the painting and helps unify the tones as the work progresses. The ground may be applied a few weeks or months ahead of painting as I like to prep a few canvases at a time (it's good busy work when inspiration fails.)

The dark/shaded areas get painted before any blocks of colour, finally finishing with the brightest parts of the composition. The technique of painting dark to light is classic in approach; the theory being that blending light into dark (as opposed to dark into light) avoids muddying the colours.

After the first session, the shapes are vaguely defined and the edges soft; there's still some opportunity to rework the initial composition, but I consciously attempt to resolve all proportions and relationships the first time through.


By the end of the third painting session, the ground is almost completely covered, the darks are becoming darker, the brights lighter (admittedly difficult to tell from the glare in the photograph) and contrast is increasing throughout the piece. Details begin to emerge and structural brush strokes have begun to assert themselves in the brighter areas of the painting, although my preference is to maintain as flat a surface as possible, especially in the early stages. To advance the perception of depth, the darkest areas are scrubbed as opposed to brushed; this lends these areas the appearance of receding, as the brushed lighter areas push themselves forward.

By the end of my fifth date with a painting (at least of this modest size - 14 x 18") the objects have begun to 'turn in space' and the contrast between dark and light has appreciably deepened. At this stage I am just beginning to make hard decisions as to which transitions of shade/colour will be hard and which will be soft, often dependent on the light and specific object depicted. Slight imperfections in shape are now detectable and the objects are beginning to take on a realistic appearance as they slightly overlap the background.

Stay tuned for the next stages, when I promise to photograph the work more faithfully and will provide some close ups of the details.

For more information about Darrel Grayson and this painting, please see my blog post Last Meal Painting Finally on Easel. For information about Darrell Grayson's case and execution, please visit this article on the Innocence Project Blog. To view my complete series of death penalty artwork, check out the Last Meals page on my website.

Facebook readers can find my full blog here.

This week's playlist.... My Top Ten!

I love the (rare) hot muggy weather Vancouver's been recently blessed with (it almost makes me want to move back to the Maritimes for a sticky summer) so I took an extra day off from my air conditioned office to steal some time at the easel this week.

Painting's a 20 minutes on/ 5 minutes off sort of thing for me, as my eyes are only fresh for 20 minutes at a time (and some days I doubt they're any good that long!) That 5 minutes is often spent standing at my laptop (like now,) but Tuesday I spent those extra minutes crafting a playlist for myself.

There's been much discussion amongst my friends the past few years about each of us compiling our own Top Ten songs to be played in the event of our death. (Selections are often hotly debated, but only after a bottle of bourbon hits the table, of course.) Having yet again been raised as a topic of conversation on Friday, I undertook the challenge and burned my own top ten. Surprisingly, it was harder to find 10 songs to list than 10 influential albums (there always seem to be too few songs and too many albums, but songs - as I'm sure most of you will agree - are really getting down to the nitty gritty.)

My list is below and may or may not contain a few surprises (depending on how well or how long you have known me,) is not at all maudlin, and makes for a good afternoon of painting. It's also a lot of fun to dance around to - I’d be happy to be invited to party that included this set list - except for being dead, of course!)

Much to the chagrin of my neighbours and the amusement of the construction workers on my patio, these are my chosen top ten songs in order of track sequence (I guess they'll just have to get used to it because I'll be playing it for most of the summer) --

I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got - Bettye LaVette (I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise)

RC's Beliefs - Kingsway & Counterrevolutionaries (Brand New Golden Oldies)

Sweet Jane - Lou Reed (Berlin: Live at St. Ann's Warehouse)

Kiss Me Deadly - Generation X (Generation X remastered)

Bird on a Wire - Jennifer Warnes (Famous Blue Raincoat)

Hospital - The Modern Lovers (The Modern Lovers)

Gold Lion - Yeah Yeah Yeahs (Show Your Bones)

Gloria - Patti Smith (Horses)

Bad Reputation - Joan Jett and the Blackhearts (Bad Reputation)

A Little Rain - Tom Waits (Bone Machine)

Have you ever made a Top Ten (or even considered it, morbidity aside?) What would you choose that I forgot to consider?

New Last Meal Painting Finally on the Easel

I began roughing in Last Meal: Darrell Grayson this morning, but in truth the work itself actually began a few weeks ago. Unlike most of my pieces, which are typically composed and begun in a matter of hours or days, the paintings in the series of death row Last Meals take much longer (no pun intended) to execute.

To research and make a decision on which execution to highlight is difficult for me; while the impetus to select an innocence case is sometimes overwhelming, it is the grey areas within justice, society, redemption and punishment that I ultimately find more compelling. I haven’t met anyone that believed the execution of an innocent person was not a terrible injustice; however opinions vary as issues of race, legal representation, sanity, police misconduct, and evidentiary procedure are raised; and tempers flare as the nature and types of crime are revealed. It is within grey areas such as these that a society defines its humanity.

Preparing and consuming the inmate's last meal can be emotionally draining and some meals are simply more difficult than others. (Take for example, the 3 barbecue ribs from Cameron Todd Willingham’s last meal – executed for the arson deaths of his 3 children in a fire now widely believed accidental, each bone on the plate was both eerily symbolic and repulsive at the same time.) The excesses of some meals (James Colburn’s 6 tins of Coke come to mind) contrast with the simplicity of others (Tookie Williams’ oatmeal) while preparing, serving, and dining result in a host of conflicting emotions, as the complementary roles inmate/chef, guard/state/executioner, and condemned man converge. While I photograph the leftovers immediately following the meal, it is often several weeks before I gain sufficient distance to formalize the composition and actually begin painting.

Which brings us back to Last Meal: Darrell Grayson. Darrell Grayson was executed in Alabama in 2007 for the rape and murder of an elderly woman in 1982; while he freely admitted being capable of committing the crime, he had been drinking heavily and reportedly had no memory of that evening. While physical evidence was collected at the scene of the murder, the State of Alabama repeatedly refused requests to have a DNA test performed that would either confirm or deny his involvement. A black man with little income, he was represented at trial by a court-appointed divorce lawyer with no experience in capital cases and was convicted by an all white jury. His last meal consisted of a cheese omelette and sliced tomatoes.

To learn more about Darrell Grayson's case, visit the Innocence Project for news articles surrounding his execution.

Agree with me? Disagree with me? That's what comments are for!

Tags: art death penalty, death penalty art, Kate MacDonald, death row Last Meals, painting

The Target Paintings

Lucky girl that I am, I was given an early Christmas gift last year when my good friend and author John Moore ('Three of a Kind', 'The Blue Parrot' and 'The Flea Market') presented me with a dozen used police targets he'd recovered from a nearby firing range. Illegal for civilians to use for shooting practice, they are often destroyed to avoid being re-used by sports shooters. (We'd been out to see our visiting friend and fellow author Jim Christy perform his latest spoken word poetry that evening, so making it home with the targets in one piece was another present all in itself!)

While almost immediately I began experimenting with affixing the targets to different substrates (finally settling on a cradled panel and PVA sizing as the adhesive of choice,) what I would actually do with/to the targets was another question entirely. I sketched and stared and circled the first panel for almost 3 months before fed up with Vancouver's burgeoning drug war (aha! a theme emerges) I decided I would just have to begin (if you've ever played cards with my mother, she'll tell you that the lord hates a coward. Besides, what's a little paint?)

The first two are nearly finished now (and while they bear little relation to each other at this time, a pattern is emerging in keeping with the original theme.) The first (which at this time remains oddly untitled) began as a much brighter study of Klee's s tonal harmonies before morphing into a vaguely aerial view of rooftops (I did say vaguely.) Number two will be recognizable to anyone who enjoyed a misspent youth hanging around video arcades (relive your Space Invaders high score here) while number 3 is in the planning stages and may further unite the series as a whole, so stay tuned.

THE REINCARNATION OF W Chapter 2

Remembering how much I enjoyed Yun Lam Li's Reincarnation of W after viewing it at our Gallery Gachet Woodward's show in Nov 2007, I went searching for it again on youtube, only to be pleasantly surprised to find chapter 2. His work is breathtaking and any opportunity to see it properly screened is a must see. You can check out Chapter 1 in my post about Opening Night at Gallery Gachet.

From Yun Lam Li -

Woodwards had completed its journey. It waits for its turn to reincarnate while solemnly watching the world it left behind. Visit www.lambmedia.com for more details of the project "The Reincarnation of W."

Latest Vancouver Cityscape Finished!

There's nothing quite like the feeling of finishing a piece that you've laboured over (except for perhaps selling it!)

Woodwards Construction with Crane (24 x 36" - oil on canvas) is the beginning of a subtle shift in my cityscapes; the perspective is gradually becoming flatter and pattern has begun to define depth. Going forward, I suspect the 2 dimensional plane might finally overtake my manipulation of the object to "turn in space." The detail is also sharper, perhaps sharper than I am typically comfortable with, as it eschews the motion blur I am so fond of. (That should silence the critics who suggest I am incapable of painting a properly straight line!)

Another cityscape that I am currently working on continues in this vain while a new series using firing range targets (tentatively titled Perforations) may finally break my absolute lock on realism. Only time will tell.

BACK ON TRACK

Getting back to painting following sommelier school has been a tough slog, but I finally feel like I'm making progress as canvases in varying stages of completion stack up around my easel. They will require judicious weeding with a critical eye (what works, what should be abandoned, what should be burned) but to have finally returned to a regular painting schedule is the true success of this year.

The act of painting is (however unfortunate) only part of the work of being an artist. While appreciative of what I've achieved, I recognize that the business chores have been neglected for far too long. Going forward, I will have to motivate myself to make time for this as well.

The very wise Vancouver artist Haruko Okano Arboretum/Arboresence) once told me that "your work isn't finished until it's hanging on someone's wall." She's right.