Contact Gordon Reid at 1 (250) 505-4142, or by e-mail at reidgord@telus.net
Many artists of my generation came to creative consciousness during the 1940's influenced by ground breaking work of the Walt Disney Studio. The animated fairy tale with a powerful moral message became a beacon for our future adult ambitions. I still have my submission to the Studio and their response inviting me to apply to the Disney Animation School - when I was a little older. I never did. Yet I never lost the idea of creating a character who would carry a moral and ethical message. Numerous concepts hit my garbage can until the environmental movement began to gain moral currency in the past decade. The character would be an environmental activist and in keeping with the times - female. Her environment sensitivities would have been instilled by being raised in the forest by those natural conservationists the wild life. Shades of Kipling's Jungle Book here, but instead of wolves, the moose would play the co-star role. Originally Moose Girl was a normal woman, but being raised in the wild gave her insights that combined with her humanity made her an environmental oracle. The first Moose Girl painting shows her as a normal woman. The second painting show her with trumpet like horns. (See Kootenay Commix below.) ( See second Moosegirl painting below. ) The horns arrived as part of a mutant process and a process of natural selection creating a parallel race with the strength of beasts and the human ability to reason. (See Experimental Species below.) This painting portrays a broad range of mutants with more realistic horn structures. Moose Girl was laterally defined with a simple halo of horns replicating the ancient sun sign of holiness. Furthermore she was dispatched from the future to warn us of our environmental damage to the planet. Moose Girl is accompanied by star bursts that represent the unborn spirits who will occupy the land long after we have gone - they are called Furebodings. A series of panels from the Nelson Daily News comic strip KOOTENAY-FIED explain this progression.
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Second Moosegirl Painting |
Experimenting with Parallel Species |
Comic Strip Panels
The task at hand with Moose Girl is to give her a consistent appearance. She is different in every Illustration. I'm indebted to the women in Al Capp's L'll Abner comic strip for the Moose Girl basic model. The Wolf Gal and Daisy Mae were my first serious crushes.
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| Artist Statement/Current Inventory | Maps of Canada | Works in Progress | Mythology |
"Gord" is "God" with an "r".