One of my bestest friends, the wonderful Jen storey, is my heroine and my wife. She graciously put up with me since our class together, painting 101 at Concordia University 11 years ago. God…
Her and I, back in the old days of Montreal loft parties used to go where she calls ‘The other side’, meaning that we would get so drunk that all inhibition was lost, then we would take over dance floors by holding hands and spinning around until we flew apart, with everyone around us hating our guts. Human Bowling! The Big Lebowski, or rather, the Dude, would have been proud.
This is also so Jen: I always distinctly remember once how she was solicited in the red light district when she came to visit me in Amsterdam. She caught up with us after some polite chitchat and she asked me innocently what the word ‘sexytime’ meant in Dutch? I look over and crack up at this scrawny old dude hustling her with the pitch, ‘Cocaine? Ecstasy? Sexytime?’
She is one of my biggest inspirations and she never gives herself enough credit. Her first oil painting was a naïve still life with a large knife sitting in a cup of water, pinks and peachy colours with rainy days wallpaper, all something around slightly sinister. Also, in her bathroom of her old apartment I remember she used to have next to the toilet a rectangular painting of a pack of birth control pills in acrylics. Aqua’s, peachys, our favourite colours are the mint blues greens, pastels from the 50s. Sooo feminist Pop Montreal baby!
She has also been a strong and true supporter of my work, like good friends are. This gal is like a sister to me, so it’s hard to find things to say without sounding like a boner. What I am trying to say is in general, she is the sweetest good-hearted person I know, a lovely artist, and the only person I know in the whole world who doesn’t act out of self-benefit. Ever. There was one time I visited her at her job at the Westmount diner, she was being so genuinely nice to all these grumpy assholes that it gave me a flash of Bjork in Dancer in the Dark (not Bjork the woman, I love her too but she’s clearly a hard bitch in real life).
Jen both talk about having to soup up ourselves on the internets, I hope she puts up those paintings I was talking about. We also talk about chips n hash, nirvana, nine inch nails, twin peaks, hockey. We have also been talking about a reunion period where I go back to Montreal and sublet a studio with her for a time. I know it’s gonna happen someday. Anyway here’s her site, buy her prints!
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