About the Artist

Blenderman is a regular contributor to Profile Kingston, a city magazine published bimonthly. His colourful watercolours can be found throughout each issue.

He is also a regular contributor to the Osprey Media-Kingston Whig Standard. Pen & Ink drawings of local cityscapes grace the Editorial pages daily. A new icon is featured on the first day of each month.

On Falling In Love...

When I was 12 years old, living in the German small town of Bensberg I fell in love…reading the stories of Jack London… I fell in love with Canada.

When I was 14 years old, my father took me with him to Cologne. He was busy so I walked to the Canadian embassy and told the man at the counter that I wanted to be a cabinet maker and live in Canada. The man at the counter told me to go home, complete my apprenticeship, save my money and return to the embassy when I reached 18. I did exactly that.

I was 19 years old…standing on the deck of a ship docking at Montreal…Canada. All I could keep thinking, saying in my mind was Canada… Canada.

The immigration official said, “You won’t get work here in Montreal. You go to Kingston…” He didn’t know where it was exactly …he said, ‘Look on the map, its on Lake Ontario … around there I think.”

I found it.

On A Starting Artist...

I wanted to live the lumberjack fantasy. Just like in the Jack London stories. …this was in 1956 …I’d been in Kingston working in construction for a couple of years. They said, go to Kirkland Lake – they need lumberjacks there. Kirkland Lake didn’t need lumberjacks but they did need miners in the Addison Gold Mine. So I went underground.

I drew…as a kid…I loved to draw. My dad encouraged me a lot. In Kirkland Lake I went to the library and borrowed books on how to paint in oil. It was there that I learned about the Kirkland Art Group which I immediately I joined. We had shows around Kirkland Lake and the little towns up there. That is where I really started.

I began with landscapes then some interiors. Later on I did some surreal painting like Dali. By that time I was back in Kingston and started the local scene. I did abstracts. I couldn’t paint the same way forever, so abstracts, semi-abstracts, still life. To this day every so often I switch. Picasso did it … lots of people do it. It helps your perception, interpretation…

On Canada's Jewel...

I always thought of Kingston as the jewel that was unknown to the rest of Canada. It had that kind of character that builds over time…

I love Kingston…I resonate with it, I feel a rapport with it all…the old town… the buildings, the alleyways, the old churches… it’s the textures of the red brick and the limestone. Kingston has always had a quality that really appealed to me… not in a pretty sense. Like landscape…its beauty comes from its ruggedness, its power to face time, its colours and of course the water and the light…

On Light...

Yes, yes, the light is different in Italy and Greece. That is very true. But I see the light here – the long shadows of early morning, the evenings’ shifting shades, the effect of that lake on the sky…I never had a desire to paint the light in Italy or Greece. To me it is all here. Canadian light.

That is the light in my paintings…of my painting.

On Commissions...

Commissions…I usually know the people…though, I loved doing the Massey Farm…I met the people there for the first time. The land meant so much to them …you could feel their love of the place, the land, its history… such an old Canadian family, so important to this country…listening to them and watching their passion for the place in their eyes…in their every move as they showed me around … I knew I needed to get that into their painting… into the line and light…

Recent Commissions

The Honourable Peter Milliken, Ottawa
Dr. & Mrs. D. Howse, Howe Island
Dr.& Mrs.T. Nguyen Khanh, Toronto
The Massey Family, Ontario
Cancer Centre Of Southeastern Ontario