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hiatus right now. Steve MacDonald left the
group when he moved to Indonesia and has
since become a colouring book author and
sold a million copies worldwide. Dave Marshak
and Chris Roberts both have children and that
really put a damper on summer travel. Paul
Mantrop has a six- and an eight-year-old, I have
kids; we used to disappear for six weeks at a
time in our school bus and come back and the
girlfriends were usually still there. Nowwe’re all
married with children and the responsibilities
are a little different.”
Saley’s well-lit studio in the Pretty River Valley
is full of old bones and insane clowns and is a
testament to his work ethic; there are a lot of
paintings in it. And while he’s beenmaking a
living as a fine artist since 1994, he’s not cocky
about it. “There are still moments when I think
it won’t work,” he says. “If I thought I was the
bee’s knees, then I probably wouldn’t push
myself. I think that’s an affliction that happens
tomost artists; the questioning what you’re
doing and why you’re doing it. But I think that
also pushes you on to developing and exploring
and expanding.”
That expansion is where the bird series comes
from.
“I’ve got my birdfeeder six inches away from
the window so they fly right up and pose for
me. Awhole series of birds in flight, and I’m
trying to abstract the background to create a
sense of motion. I never thought I could do
abstract, I see everything realistically, so putting
a bird into an abstract composition I canmake
sense of it. It’s a way of doing something that
I didn’t think I could do and open frontiers.
And if I just painted landscapes all the time I
think I’d get bored, so by working in a bunch of
different styles, whether it’s cartoon-style, or
“Weused todisappear for six
weeksat a time inour school
busand comebackand the
girlfriendswereusuallystill
there.Nowwe’reallmarried
with children…”
