AUBREEVISION - Observations from the far side of the dial

The women's gym I work at owes much of its atmosphere to paintings by local artists, and my shift today was made immensely entertaining by the presence of one such creative force. His name is Roy MacGregor, and he specializes in sprawling, colourful, nature-inspired works. While "nature art" generally bores me silly, these aren't your typical realist landscape/vase-of-flowers paintings. Here's what I mean:







While blanketing the gym with Roy's paintings, we had the most interesting conversations about everything from art (no surprise there) to relationships. His approach to art is completely unpretentious -- his exact words, I believe, were "I make no apologies for painting pretty things." In this same vein, his paintings have names like "Attack of the Killer Sunflowers."

I wish I had a photo of my favourite among the "gym paintings" -- but since it's so fresh the paint was still wet when we hung it, it hasn't yet made it onto his website. It's a ginormous canvas taken hostage by a great golden tree...oh, never mind my poor poetic waxings -- it's one of those "you have to see it" things. It reminds me of an illustration in the Childcraft books of my youth, for a poem called "The Sugarplum Tree," that I always found particularly magical and riveting.

Long story short, the new artwork will be a pleasant, eye-candy-riffic distraction from particularly grueling workouts.

For your further viewing pleasure: Roy MacGregor online