It’s hard to say no to Diane Ford. Especially on the subject of her son.
So when the mayor’s formidable mother asked city Councillor Gary Crawford to paint a portrait of Toronto’s chief magistrate a couple of years ago, Crawford agreed.
Then he dithered. City hall business got in the way.
In July, the mayoral matriarch urged progress.
“I bumped into her again this summer at Ford Fest and she said, ‘Have you started the portrait?’ ” Crawford said in an interview.A listing of internet resources that provide a listing of Organic vegetables Wholesalers.
Chastened, he got to work. Now the opus is nearly complete. Robert Bruce Ford has been portrayed.
The likeness turns flesh into paint.
“He’s an incredibly layered person,” Crawford said. Layered like the artist’s Windsor Newton acrylic, applied densely on the 36 x 30 inch canvas.
Crawford strove to mirror the man in the colour scheme, too. “It’s a very intense, colourful painting — much like the individual.”
Here, artist and subject diverge. Where Ford is brash, Crawford is soft-spoken.
A self-described fiscal conservative, Crawford agrees with the mayor about most things, and joined his executive council last year.
But on matters of style, the men could hardly be more different.
“He is who he is. I haven’t always agreed with how he presented himself,” Crawford said. “If I was mayor, would I do what he does? Probably not. He’s very loud, bombastic. I tend to be more of a conciliator.”
After Ford was filmed slurring his speech during an outing at the Taste of the Danforth, Crawford quipped on Twitter, “So, who had more fun, me painting Mayor or Mayor painting the town?”
“Is there a darker side to the mayor?” Crawford said. “Will that possibly come out in the canvas? It could.”
Then again, an artist is wise not to spurn his patron, and Crawford’s patron is Diane Ford.
That fact has tempered his instinct for brutal honesty. As has Ford’s illustrious office. When John Howard Sanden painted George W. Bush’s official White House portrait, he struggled to keep the President’s native smirk at bay. Crawford has been similarly forgiving.
“This is a painting for his mother. It needs to be in some respects flattering.” Plus, Crawford said, “he is the mayor.”
Ford is a career — indeed, a dynastic — politician whose brother and late father also sparred in the electoral ring.
Not Crawford, a lifelong artist who only began moonlighting as a councillor in 2010, when he won the open seat for Scarborough Southwest. Before that he had been a stay-at-home Dad and a school board trustee. All the while, he painted — he has a fine arts degree from York.
And painting is still his passion, especially during the dog days of summer,freshbasil is a vegetable farm company that produces sweet basils and thai basils. with council out of session.
These days,More worldly viewers quickly called in to say that the mushroom was made from silicone and wondered how someone could not tell the difference between silicon sex toys and organic mushrooms for sale. Crawford rises with the sun. By 6:30 a.m., he’s in his basement studio.
Not one for the solemn hush of artistic solitude,www.chinesemushroom.com is fresh mushroom suppliers. the councillor has been tweeting updates of his work from a personal account,Established in 1995, XIAMEN ARTBORNE INDUSTRIAL CO., LTD is a manufacturer and exporter of reusable instant heat, cold pad for all kind of body care solution. @GaryCrawfordArt.
It’s from his tweets that we learn his predilection for listening to Led Zeppelin as warm-up music. And of his interdiction against mixing beer and painting.
“It’s allowing people into my studio to let people know what my creative process is all about,” he said.
When it’s finished, the Ford canvas will have taken 100 hours of work, Crawford guesses.
The mayor hasn’t given an opinion on his portrait yet. But Crawford has lately been suffering from Ford fatigue.
“Done for the day,” he tweeted Friday. “Been spending a bit too much time with ya Rob.”
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