The Sketch Artist

436 Alfred St

If you live in downtown Kingston and have the bone-deep sense, as I do, that you’ve ended up in a good place, a place that gives you inordinate pleasure whenever you walk its streets, particularly North of Princess, you’d be doing yourself a favour, I think, and adding further texture to things, if you checked out the sketches of John Wright. To make it easy for you, he has an Instagram account: drawn_along_the_way. 

I’ll wait right here.

You see what I mean? Aren’t they lovely? You were gone a while and I don’t blame you.

I stumbled onto John’s sketches not very long ago. I’d been scrolling through all sorts of bad news (again) and yet there I was, all of a sudden, in a much brighter place. I don’t know how I got there, what random set of keystrokes opened this particular door. The sensation, though, was akin to finding an apple tree in full bloom at the bottom of a grey, bombed-out garden. 

It’s a tricky sort of introduction I’m attempting here, all this talk of bombs and bad news, when what John’s work does for me is conjure the exact opposite. There is a clear-headedness to his work, and it’s an entirely lucid and pleasingly optimistic gaze that he casts. These are not fussy drawings, and they are not judgmental in any way. They are just very, very good.

My writing can be florid sometimes. A bit over the top. I’m proving that right now. I bought a drone recently so I can send it high above whatever house we’re listing next. And I like that. I like the extra context that altitude can give to a property, all the detail you miss just walking around the place picking up leaves. But that said, there is an awful lot to recommend just standing in front of a house for a bit and having a really piercing sort of look at the place.  That’s John Wright’s thing. He clearly sees the good in us and where we live.

I showed his work to Cheri, who felt the same way but without all the shiny paper I’ve wrapped it in. And it turned out she’d sold John and his partner a house not long before. And so we reached out for a chat, and posed a question for him: would he be interested in a collaboration? We’d be really interested in his take on our  neighbourhood listings, we said. We’d like to include his work as a vital part of the package we put together. How did that sound?

We’re really pleased to tell you that John is into it. And he’s begun by taking a look at 436 Alfred St. It’s up above. It’s a bit different from the images he creates on The Elm coffee cups he unrolls. I like it every bit as much, but I like it differently too. Which is exciting, and is also one way in which perhaps this joint effort will work out really well - we’ll all learn to see our own work in new ways.

The hope is that you’ll like them as much as we do (I have little doubt you will), and that John has the time to create these for most of our new listings in the neighbourhood. They add exciting, fresh perspective to the picture.