T   O   N   Y       L   U   C   I   A   N   I

N e w s

Home

Tom Lapierre A.O.C.A., R.C.A.  (1930 - 2010)

A mentor and teacher, Tom Lapierre passed away on Sunday April 11, 2010. Tom was, without a doubt, my favourite instructor at the Ontario College of Art, 1975-77, and as luck would have it, he was also my teacher in Florence, Italy during my post-graduate studies in 1977-78. A visionary in the Canadian art world, his work was either adored or misunderstood. His compositions were masterful in every aspect of design, and this is what has stayed with me most.

A great historian, teacher, artist and friend...Tom, you will be missed and certainly not forgotten.

________________________________________________________

The Kingston Prize: Canada's National Juried Portrait Competition

click image for larger view

The painting ‘Wonder Woman’ began as an intense emotional response to my partner’s breast cancer diagnosis and her courageous voyage to find healing. I witnessed first-hand the many setbacks of the psychological and physical challenges that people in her position were being subjected to. Through all of it, however, our lives deepened in profundity.  In the portrait, I tried to capture the meaningful spirit of quiet strength, yet acknowledging the helplessness cancer brings.  ‘Wonder Woman’ is about humanity’s fragility and vulnerability, about life and the power to endure and overcome.  It is about our questions of who we are, where we are going and how to uncover a way to achieve our dreams, no matter what obstacles fall onto our paths. ‘Wonder Woman’ is my ultimate hero.

Tony Luciani  2009

___________________________________________________

The Kingston Prize 2009-2010

Press Release:
Kingston Ontario. 2 July 2009.  

A new chapter unfolds in the contemporary Canadian portrait scene as thirty exciting portraits are chosen as finalists in The Kingston Prize, Canada's National Portrait Competition. 
The finalists were selected from 471 entries by the jury consisting of Professor Robert Enright, art critic and writer, from the University of Guelph; Eliza Griffiths, painter and Assistant Professor at Concordia University in Montreal; and Dr Lilly Koltun, Director-General of the Portrait Gallery of Canada.

National Portrait Competition Tour Dates:

The Grand Theatre, Kingston, ON., Oct. 9 - 25, 2009.
Acadia University Art Gallery, Wolfville, N.S. , Nov. 6 - Dec.10, 2009.
Waddington's Auction Rooms, Toronto, ON., Jan. 7 - 19, 2010.
Art Gallery of Calgary, Calgary, AB., Jan. 29 - Apr. 17, 2010. 

See other finalists at:

www.kingstonprize.ca

_____________________________________________________

A poem by Jemeni Gairy

Sadie

Somehow I’ve ingested this disease,
(age, depression, guilt, sickness, anger)
And now it’s trying to swallow me,
Alive as I breathe. 
Before it takes my life, it’s trying to 
Erase me as a woman.
Smudge the lines
And blur my gender.
I am here where woman roar
The cancer ward.
The mirrors here are jails of androgynous offenders.

But I am a one breasted diva!
A no hair Rapunzel, 
Watch me, 
For I am she, the Cancer dancer,
Of Alvin Ailey like proportions.
I traded in my sex drive for a pocket of prescriptions.
These pills whisper tender lies as they spread themselves inside
And weave remission wives tales as they kill me.

Gave away my sex in the city shoes 
For Hospital boots,
Size panic.
Wonder if Jimmy Choo shoes
Come in
Desperation.

A pretty yellow cancer pair that goes just right,
With jaundice.

Come to bed why don’t you?
I’ll moisten your lips with a salt IV drip
As long you empty my bed pan. 
This is the true measure of a man.

Cuz see, if you can be my bed pan man,
Then I will always be

A woman.

H o m e