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On Motivation: “Here’s to the underdogs”

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Here’s to the underdogs,

The ones who have learned from the mistakes of those before them.

The ones who have summoned their feisty inner Judith.

The ones who have embraced bloodthirsty David in the fight against their own Goliath.

Here’s to the underdogs,

The ones unfairly perceived to be one card short of a deck.

The ones with the stone-cold poker face undeterred by rebuttal.

The ones with the cards up their sleeves and the wind in their hair.

Here’s to the underdogs,

The ones who march to the front lines even when the cards are eagerly stacked against them.

The ones who steal those coveted crowns.

The ones who scream “no dice” at the top of their bloodied lungs and at edge of their fraying wits.

Here’s to the underdogs:

This game is yours.

word by Hannah Beach

colour by Andre Barnwell 

Andre Barnwell was born July 7th, 1984 and raised in Toronto but currently resides in Vancouver. Ever since moving out west in 2013, Andre has been inspired by the city’s art community and motivated by the accessibility to the tools he needs to pursue his artistic passion and desires. Graduated as an animator from Ontario’s Sheridan College he was exposed to various styles and media to create art even though he prefers to use digital as a means to an artistic end. Fascinated by the human face, most of work is portrait based ranging in different colour schemes, particularly his blue and red monochromatic digital studies.

Outside of portrait work and digital sketches, he enjoys music, film, travelling, and building his brand, Sex N Sandwiches. He looks forward to collaborating with artists such as sculptors, photographers and musicians for future projects. With the world getting smaller with the help of technology, he implores artists and art lovers to follow his growth via social networks and eventually to international stages.

Keep it growing!

Professional Contact: 
Email: andrebarnwell@gmail.com

Social Contact:
Twitter: @AndreBarnwell77
Instagram: AndreBarnwell77

The author’s words do not necessarily represent the views of the artist.

floating downstream

randeecrudo

There was a creek behind the house, and there she dropped the pillow and the blanket and the little stuffed tiger into the water and watched them wash downstream until the world closed in over them. She let go of the things that had happened and the ones that she’d hoped for that hadn’t. She left and grew up.

She ran down the sidewalk on all fours, roaring. She didn’t stop for anything. A beetle got in her way and was splashed onto the pavement. Bubblegum and tar stuck to her palms and knees. She roared past two of the neighbourhood boys and they laughed at her from the lawn. She felt shame burn in her but she did not stop.

She remembered excitement, excitement so deep that it kept her from sleeping. She remembered jealousy, so rabid that it made her wish harm on people who owed her nothing. She remembered fear, so terrible that it could only be forgotten for moments at a time. She could label all of these feelings and put pins through them like a catalogue of butterflies.

She used to cry at weddings, as a little girl. She saw the shining eyes under the lifted veil and thought that the bride was crying because she had lost everything: adventures and backyards and sleepovers and staying up all night to read and her mother’s arms whenever she needed them. That, she assumed, was why everyone was crying.

She tried to do things, to see if she could feel something again. She tried to have her heart broken. She tried to win a competition. She tried to go to school and become interested in politics. She tried self-righteousness. She toyed with the idea of religion.

Finally, she went back to the empty house and threw out her old things, the tools of childhood. She watched them float downstream and wondered what she’d lost.

word by Charlotte Joyce Kidd 

colour by Randee Crudo

“Randee Crudo is a Montreal based artist born in 1986. Randee has been developing a distinct style over the past six years in which she experiments with the fluidity of the paint and the interplay of colours.
While having always been a creative person, it was only in 2009, when Randee graduated in Art History from McGill University that she decided to embark on her own creative journey. With no formal training, Randee has taken a different route, using non-traditional methods and non-traditional tools to create her paintings.

Randee was drawn immediately to the abstract. The ability to express herself freely, without any limitations on her technique, style or choice of colour is what allows Randee to keep growing and creating as an artist.”

On Breakups: “Rome 2.0”

Adriana 1

Fucking Rome. We got to the hotel and she cried.

It was meant to be a four-poster bed, not a four-poled bed. It was meant to be a terrace not the top step an iron staircase. It was meant to my swansong, the trip to show her what she going to fucking miss out on: the thing to remember me by. I wanted her to feel soaked in guilt when the final blow was delivered.

“Hey, come on, it’s not so bad. Let’s go out and grab some food, start looking at the city”

The sobs went from a 6 to a 9. Wails grew and smashed into me, wave after wave.

 

“Come on. Let’s go. Now please”

 

My tone had lost it’s grace and just robotically pressed.

 

The scrunched face emerged, drained with deep black holes for eyes, and we traipsed into silence into the city. My mind flicked through the situation, questioning all reason.

 

Her birthday, I wanted to impress so I took her away – how could I possibly be in the wrong?

 

I knew I felt warped and knotted. I flicked off topic and watched the people passing in the street. They all seemed so beautifully ignorant to unhappiness. I tried to add context: where was he off to? What did she do for a living? What does he think when he wakes up in the morning?

 

“tell me what you’re thinking”

 

She looked up at me with watery pupils. For a split second I felt for her, then firmly shut that inkling out.

 

‘well we can’t go on like this’

 

We walked over a bridge – it was brimming with life. Food, flowers, painters, water. Beautiful when I removed myself from the presence.

There was a warming delicateness to the city’s atmosphere, an over-whelming sensation that right here and now was an immersion in history.

More silence filled space between us.

 

“do you want to go to the Colosseum?”

 

“sure”

 

It’s an odd sensation that the connection between two people who shared a decent chunk of their life together could be actively worse than that of strangers meeting in the street.

 

Upon entering the Colosseum we both administered the look to walk separate routes in opposite directions around. I felt like the abiding balls of a Newton’s cradle. We passed at the mid-way point.

 

Rome was the city where I knew for sure I had fallen out of love.

 

word by Sam Fresco

“Ok, hands up. This was actually not-so-loosely based on personal experiences. The art reminded me of a lot of *that* bridge mentioned in the story so it felt natural for a piece to reflect a snapshot of how I felt in that moment. I wanted to make the experience as visceral as possible, really convey the coldness entangled with the helpless dependency you feel in that moment.”

colour by Adriana Coluccio

“Adriana Coluccio is a visual artist based in Montreal. She earned her BFA in 2008 from Concordia University where she studied Studio Art and Film Animation.  In her early years as a multidisciplinary artist, Adriana was initially compelled by video art and experimental film.  After dabbling with these for a few years, she discovered a true affinity for painting.

Adriana’s painting practice is invested in her passion for traditional forms of oil painting, while drawing influence from her explorations in experimental film, video and digital media.  Her paintings are informed by her fascination with the instability of an image and the manner in which images are reproduced or transferred across media. She builds up her canvas with scenes that are potentially on the crux of formation or disintegration.

Adriana exhibits her work extensively in North America , notably in Montreal and New York. Her work can be found in private and public collections, notably in the office of the Deputy of Montreal-North.”

On Identity: “Caroline’s raindrops”

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Caroline knew the mirror was lying to her and she didn’t know to prove it. She’d tried telling people about it, this changing face of hers.

They all thought she was crazy; some had even told her so.

Nonsense, they said. Everybody has a face, and everybody knows what their face looks like.

You know who you are, they’d say.

She was different, she was them all. She used to think on it more, the horrors of having no self, no I, no face. She used to worry how it might affect her, like, emotionally. Spiritually, even. This sort of stuff used to really weigh on her. That was when she was younger though, when she was afraid of the mirror.

She wasn’t afraid anymore.

Like anything else, not knowing who you are becomes routine. Caroline had wrestled with it, and it kind of made sense. Maybe it’s not as simple as knowing who we are. Maybe some of us aren’t lucky enough to get something stable, a real identity (if there is such a thing). Maybe some of us are stitched together with what’s over from everyone else. And maybe that’s ok…I mean, it has to be, right? Caroline often thinks about all this in the first few moments after she’s woken, when the world feels too quiet and too loud all at once. It’s raining outside, and she wonders if raindrops worry about who they are inside while they hurtle, unsuspecting, towards the ground. She grimaces at the lack of subtlety in her metaphor, but it makes her feel better. It’s alright, little raindrop. It’s alright that you can’t look into the wild infinity of a mirror and be sure it’s you looking back

word by Josh Elyea
colour by Shalak Attack

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Join the rest in helping our art event come true by visiting http://www.kisskissbankbank.com/en/projects/word-and-colour-s-live-art-exhibit/ !

nous

Nous croyons dans les gens. Nous croyons que les mots et les couleurs peuvent inspirer de nouvelles manières de repenser le monde, ainsi qu’à élever la conscience populaire vis-à-vis l’injustice.

La formule est simple. Nous envoyons des pièces d’art aux écrivains qui, eux, nous renvoient une histoire inspirée par ce qu’ils ont vu.

Cette histoire est ensuite combinée à la pièce d’art dans le but de promouvoir des histoires qui mènent à penser autrement la société- divorcées des stéréotypes dominants- ou, même, des histoires qui s’attaquent directement à l’oppression vécue.

Nous sommes convaincus que les gens, une fois conscientisés, chercheront à réduire leur participation à la violence.

Nous aimons l’art et nous voulons que vous vous impliquiez.

Vous voulez écrire? Contactez notre éditeur à word@wordandcolour.com

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Ken

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Ken and Mavis lived at number 9 Flosstooth Avenue. Ken loved Mavis like a dog loves its favourite bone—he would chew on her every now and then to remind himself what true gristle could taste like, but then he would bury her, and all that she meant, and would wait for weeks or months until he dug her up to gnaw at her all over again. That way it was special, and that way Ken knew he would never get bored of his favourite bone. Mavis didn’t like being gnawed at every few months; she told him just before she asked him to leave that she expected constant gnawing. He hadn’t realised that, and offered to never bury her again, but by then it was far too late.

The summer before the end, the neighbours on the side with the dead rose bush that looked like a mutant spider moved out. A few weeks later a dual-cab UTE was parked in the driveway when Ken got home from work, and after some careful investigating from the kitchen window through Mavis’s homemade gauze curtains, Ken gathered that their new neighbour had moved in, and that he was a tall, broad-chested man, with the necessary bulges to wear only a singlet as he loped from his UTE to the door with boxes and bags. Ken saw that the man with the necessary bulges had two lean and hefty dogs. Ken was terrified of dogs, ever since he had been chased by a pack of gnashing greyhounds up and over the slide in the playground one afternoon when his father had forgotten to pick him up from school. He felt trapped in the house, and told Mavis about it when she came home weary from the salon, but she didn’t seem to be listening, and just stood and watched out the window until the sun went down and there was nothing to see anymore.

A couple of months later on a Friday Ken decided to leave work early. He arrived home to see that Mavis was already there, and though he called out for her in every room in the house but he couldn’t find her. Mavis didn’t like to walk anywhere; if her car was there, she had to be too. Ken poured the tap for the kettle and as he poured he looked through the gauze straight into the man with the bulges’ living room. There he saw Mavis, completely naked and dancing around the room with the man with the necessary bulges.

Ken hadn’t wanted to leave, even after watching Mavis and the man with the bulges in a variety of positions all over the living room that made him begin to sweat under his arms and in between his elbow creases. When she came home that night, crumpled and smelling of dog food, he had offered to stay in the spare bedroom. That she simply agreed, and didn’t seem to need to ask him why, told Ken that he would never unearth his favourite bone again.

word by Laura Mcphee-Browne

colour by Ilya Shipkin

From the author: “When I first saw this illustration by Ilya Shkipin, I saw the man and the dogs he was feeding as dangerous, as hostile. As I came back to look at the illustration again and again, I began to feel that there was a special relationship between the man and the dogs; that they knew each other well, and perhaps looked after each other.

My story, ‘Ken’ is about a man who does not feel comfortable in his own skin like the man in this illustration surely does. It is about the threat that confidence and mystery can be to a flailing relationship.”

Trending now: The conclusion

Indie184_TakeMeAway

Yellow. She had recognized him from the news, and so she went on, despite his boring answers about colour, this brother of the accused murderer, wondering if he had thrown out his forks.   

Do you come here often?

Here?

To galleries, do you go often, I mean?

No.

Where are you from?

Why?

I’m sorry if I’m-

Vegas.

She considered taking the next step, asking the question she wanted to ask, about the cutlery, if his sister had ever made any sudden movements during their dinners together, of which there must have been hundreds, thousands of meals that you share with a sibling during the course of your life.

Thousands, probably.

What?

What?

You just said, “thousands,”

Oh, no, you misheard me.

She had again messed up her words, she thought, wanting to ask if she’d ever stabbed him with a fork, or at least used the prongs to fling a pea, but she was insecure about her ability to convince people of things, or draw people closer to her, through the things that she said. She wasn’t as bad as she thought she was, as is always the case with too many mirrors in a house, but she considered that, well, maybe nobody is perfect, aside from Obama, and Sir. John A, but, the point was that everyone made mistakes, it made you human, right, but why did I think I needed to be perfect to start out with?

The news.

What?

What?

“The news.” You just said the news.

No, I said, blue. I like how she used blue, for the necklace.

You aren’t too good at this whole keeping discrete thing, you know.

What?

You heard about my sister.

Did she ever fling a pea at you?

You know, taking news about someone as representative of who they are is the same as believing a stranger who writes the story of your family from your front lawn.*

colour by Indie184

words by L. L. 

see the first scene here

The Death of Chivalry

Could(blog)

I remember the earth. I remember when oceans were blue, and you could buy a woman dinner without having to split the bill. I remember before water ran black, when you could roam the streets at night, gazing at stars. I remember the end of the world. You’ve been told it collapsed with the nuclear reactor, those companies, that kitten, but I remember that it died with chivalry. I remember objectively, and I understood the fall completely: What was the point of living if it wasn’t to protect something? The earth had protected us with oxygen, gravity, and water for thousands of years, just as we had protected our women, keeping them safe like delicate flowers. We understood that women were strong, and deserved our respect, these tough, delicate flow- hold on that’s contradictory let me try again: In a time of text messages and technology, we had strayed so far from what was natural: The wind and water the earth had given us; lessons our ancestors had shared with us, those morals that told us what was true, untainted, passed down by our fathers to us from a time when things made sense: A man did what a man did, came home to dinner, kept real problems to himself and the bartender, or shot himself in the face: Things were working: Women acted like women, and everything worked perfectly, in the past: “Dating” a woman meant what it really should: To protect and provide for them, these strong, delicate flowers, being delicate but really strong and intellige- Sorry okay confusing I know last try: Things made sense. People today: walking into newspaper stands because of texting, finding ‘love’ in the club: They’ve lost touch with purity, as our oceans did. I’m not sure how much to blame each person- the system is a big thing that trains everyone to act, sure- but we were the only generation who acted free of the system, with independent ideas. Everything was better when lines didn’t overlap, and you didn’t need to understand how it worked: Your wife looked up to you, and you didn’t ask why. You could knock some sense into a kid, because they needed discipline. You were there to protect your woman from the evils of the world, because they needed protection. Sometimes, for example, you bought her dinner. Ask me if she ever paid for dinner. The answer is no: Men were strong, rational protectors, and so we didn’t need someone to pay for us. The world was together, controlled and pure. You really got to know someone in dinner dates, where you paid, and brought the prepared version of yourself, saying things you had seen on TV or that people had told you, your father, mother, teachers, friends, things that you didn’t understand but it didn’t matter. You avoided awkward conversations on who you were, and how you felt, because the point of talking to people was to make them feel comfortable. You saved those times for when you were really intoxicated. And now- look at what we’ve done. I remember the earth. I remember a time before we tried to convince people that women were our equals- I mean how do you protect someone who is your equal- how do you show power, and buy them dinner? I remember a time before the death of chivalry, when we lived on planet motherfucking earth.* 

words by Liam Lachance

This is satirical. 

colour by Diego Panuela

Leaves & Branches

4fd725e02e93dda6a65e345b539a1c2dFlywheel, clutch disk, crankshaft. Breaking it down to understand why it worked the way that it did. No, not how. Fan belt, rocker arm, alternator. You will itemize the parts, yes, all of them, for the project, with a brief description of their function, yes, every one, and how they affect the engine when it is running- it’s the logical place for us to start the class. Wise words from Telford, AUTO 1102A. Breaking down a family photograph to figure how odd shapes fit. Black palms smudged a hand-drawn draft of the 2010 Camry 2.4 litre, fingerprints smearing a tin hood, near a dent from the past winter. Bent, imperfect. Her mother out for the weekend, the garage cold, a window might have been left open, or the furnace had stopped working, but she wasn’t sure, and who was to blame her.

Her friend left when the heavy work was finished. Alone, with cylinder separated, she considered how their tastes were so different, seeing that their brains were formed under similar variables, having grown up in the same neighbourhood- over two fences- with similar families- alcohol holidays, massive debt- leaned on the same desks- MPS, NGDHS, The Gonq- and dated the same guys- straight white drunks. Twice, they dated brothers.

She liked Buzzfeed, her friend: Reddit. Maybe that was it. Her friend liked Vine, her: Youtube. Her: Gmail, Dropbox, Wikipedia. Friend: Yahoo, iCloud, Google. Mac? PC. Samsung? iPhone. Identical wiring soaking up different images and words to influence different tastes. She dropped the box wrench. She played out the thesis, considering how it explained her friends’ preference for pubs (from watching Arcade Fire and Chvrches videos) while she preferred the club (Drizzy VEVO).

Separating fan belt from crankshaft pulley, she compiled a list of things she had learned from the internet in 2013:  

1. Haters own keyboards 

2. Miley Cyrus invented grinding

3. People are happy on Facebook

4. All Americans own pistols

5. All gay people are white

6. All black people can dance

7. All hipsters rock beards

8. “Québecois” means “Franco-Québecois”  

9. “Anglo-Québecois” means “quiet”

10. Traveling makes you intelligent

11. Lizard people are a legitimate concern

12. Over 6,000 Québecois-white-tailed-deer were hit last year

 

She put aside the blueprint and tore out a new page

 

Things Learned Independent of The Gonq Buzzfeed Wikipedia Facebook Youtube Friends & Parents

 

 

words by Liam Lachance

colour by Naran Jalidad