Tuesday, February 27, 2007


My Argentine painter friend Juan Manuel Sanchez approaches everything he does as a problem with a solution. The moment he marks a sheet of paper or a canvas he initiates that problem. Then he must "resolver" it. I have learned much from him by just thinking this way. As evidence I have two recent photographs that I took to illustrate articles in the Georgia Straight. One, because it is in colour, only appeared as seen here on the web version.

Marcus Youssef adapted Naguib Mahfouz's novel Drifting On The Nile to a play. In a first version both he and friend Camyar Chai acted in it. In the recent Vancouver version, Chai directed the play. I wanted to convey the professional intimacy between these two men.

For the Banana Boys a play about the travails of being Asian in Canada I simply scanned a couple of bananas and with Photoshop I aranged them around my photograph.



Alas! Juan Manuel Sanchez is not coming back from Buenos Aires and I will miss his conversation and his instruction on art. I wanted him to teach Rebecca to draw or paint. Perhaps Juan is old fashioned or perhaps he is not, but he flatly refused to teach her anything until she was 11. It would seem that the second best solution will be for me to pass on to her some of what Juan taught me. I am sure that Rebecca will "resolver" it.