Best trip to that roach infested hotel yet last night!

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Classy place, I know.. they almost always take at least my name and date of birth a the front desk when I go to visit. Know why? Just in case I overdose and go comatose or die then they know who I am to report to paramedics/coroners. It's that kind of place.

But truly, my visit last night was the best yet. I've been going every night or two to check in with Ken Foster the artist to see if he's painting pictures for me. He's pretty terrible at phoning, so mostly I just go there. For this batch I have 2 of 6 paintings and he's making progress on the other 4.

The exciting part was seeing the progress on the other 4 since I last saw them a couple days ago. The first 2 I'm happy with.. the remaining 4, one I could see coming together pretty good.. another I Thought was coming along well, and a couple I was kinda left with the impression of "Are you sure you're the same artists painting these? They don't look up to your level."

But then last night the progress/evolution on them all was total WOW! I dunno if other artists styles involve "painting 4 paintings in one," sort of layering like Ken does to achieve his final results, but the process is really neat. He'll have a vision for some improvement and then just paint right over, leaving only certain elements, or lighting/shading etc showing through from the iteration underneath.. layering over and over, even with some seriously dramatic theme and colour changes, until things come out how they do.

At first I was kinda thinking "f**k me, I gotta drive here late at night every night or two to babysit this process so he keeps working on these commissions and hopefully doesn't sell any of them to anyone else.." but after the stoke of seeing changes last night I feel kinda spoiled getting to see them stage by stage under development in his crazy process vs. everyone else who just sees the end result when he delivers it or offers it for sale. He said he's thought of doing time lapse photos to showcase the creation of his paintings on a website - and tbh; that would be hella cool and an amazing marketing tool IF he can keep it together enough to do any of those things. (He's a talented artist, many peoples' local favourite by a country mile, but he needs assistance of others to keep on various things that are simply not in his wheelhouse.)

One of the paintings in particular changed so dramatically I thought he made a mistake.. when he first tilted the canvas away from another large street sign painting he was working on I instantly thought it was ruined by transferring wet paint from the street sign.. my face must have said it all lol as Ken says "Oh no, it's not transferred from he other one.." and I looked closely to see it wasn't mirrored.. then he starts explaining the shapes I'm seeing and what the painting is evolving into and then once I saw it I just felt.. kind of in awe, I guess, of Ken's artistic genius - his process, his vision. (which can only possibly come from just the right combination of mental illness, traumas, and copious amounts of drug use + formal training and decades of practice.)

Also saw Smokey Devil walk by when I was hanging outside - about the most well know graffiti artist in the city (The City of Vancouver officially declared his most recent birthday "Smokey D Day") & said a quick hello.

Blah blah blah, I dunno if anyone's even gonna read this thread, and if they do they're probably like "Ok, whatever dude.. so you go to some ghetto ass building where some guy is sitting on his floor painting pictures surrounded by piles of clothing as coackroaches run around and a bunch of other drug addicts come and go and do their drug things.. cool story, bro," but what you don't likely fully grasp is that this is the local equivalent to hanging out with <insert famous street artist name> someone like Banksy while they work their magic and create their art. It's kind of a big deal, IMO. MOST people wouldn't be as adventurous as to go spend any amount of time in a place like that - they just like his paintings and will buy the ones they like the end result of.. but there's Something just sort of Special about the whole experience and I do not regret for one moment driving down there over and over, bringing food/drink/$/clothing etc as the conversations and progress updates "layer by layer," are just super f*****g cool and something I'll never forget.

One last neat thing: He told me he painted a picture for someone who was colour blind once.. that he figured out what the guy saw each colour as, and then painted the picture specifically so that guy could see it as it was meant to be viewed - looked weird to everyone else, but was perfect for the guy who saw colours differently. I thought that was pretty cool.

Anyways, sometimes he blasts out 3-6 paintings a night.. I'm not even mad it's taking weeks lol there's magic in the process. Plus I think it's good positive feedback for Ken, too, tbh - which he can use to fuel his next ideas. Well, not like he hasn't painted other things.. he has - and showed me a few he was working on because there's a film crew around the corner and he Knows he can wander by, people know who he is and he can make a few sales.. come back the next day/night with paintings and turn each one into a hundred dollar bill or so. Other people Probably mistake him for a homeless person tbh, but if they look closely at the paint spattered all over his clothes/shoes/hands they might get a clue. Maybe not, though.. ironically there's a contemporary art gallery right next door that showcases international artists.. meanwhile Ken is upstairs 100 feet away producing iconic Vancouver art that thousands of locals and tourists own/want to own IF they can get it -> he's notoriously unreliable and people know they have to catch him in the moment with a finished piece for sale. OR they've gotta be crazy enough like me to bring beers and hangout in the middle of the night lol

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