THREE - WARRIORS & NUNS

Artist: Tom Wilson & Mark Pflieger

Medium: Mixed media on steel

20" x 30"

Note: This artwork is too large/heavy to be shipped and if purchased, must be picked up at DVSA. 

Tom Wilson is the best-selling author of Beautiful Scars as well as a five-time Juno winning Canadian musician with multiple gold records. He has written for and recorded songs with Sarah McLachlan, City and Colour, Jason Isbell, Colin James, Lucinda Williams, Billy Ray Cyrus, Matt Andersen, Mavis Staples and The Rankin Family.  

His band Junkhouse scored eleven top-ten hits in the 90s, and his iconic, Americana-fuelled Blackie and the Rodeo Kings has performed on stages from The Grand Ole Opry to Massey Hall and was widely publicized for their presence on George Bush’s iPod.  

Tom’s most recent incarnation, Lee Harvey Osmond, has received extensive praise and airplay throughout the United States and Europe.  

His art has shown in galleries in New York City, Vancouver, Toronto and more recently his paintings hang among esteemed Indigenous works from Norval Morrisseau and Christi Belcourt. The author lives in Hamilton, Ontario and is currently working on his second book BLOOD MEMORY for Penguin Random House books.  

This sculpture THREE is included in an upcoming publication exploring Tom Wilson's creative journey. The sculpture is also to be included in an upcoming exhibit. Both the book and the exhibit are curated by David Liss (MOCA) 

Born in 1966, metal artist Mark Pflieger was raised on a small rural farm on the outskirts of Hamilton, Ontario. After his parents divorced while he was a teen, Mark moved to the city of Hamilton for ten years. Moving back to the rural parts in his late twenties, he works as owner and operator of Pflieger Eavestrough Company. His focus is on exterior restoration of historical buildings in Hamilton and surrounding area.  

Pflieger finds inspiration in the beauty of Hamilton and its architecture and is especially enamoured with the Skyway Bridge.  

Using methods such as welding, forging and oxy-acetylene free hand torch, he turns scrap and recycled metal into abstract sculptures and torches sketched images into the metal. Often he depicts the architecture and sceneries he finds beautiful in Hamilton and other Canadian places.  

Mark is presently working with known artists such as abstract artist Donna Lacka and Tom Wilson. 

NOTE: The artists would like to negotiate with the buyer an opportunity to loan THREE out to galleries for these upcoming exhibits.  

Tom Wilson's Artist Statement 
I am on a journey in search of my Mohawk identity. 

By combining my painting and my writing, I define myself as an indigenous man after having that fact hidden from me for more than 53 years of my life.  

My simple shapes and colours and the stories inside every piece of my work are honouring my ancestors as well as respecting the Kahnawake beadwork tradition. 

I’m lucky. I get to dream. 

I have unchained all the prisoners from my basement and freed the ghosts from my attic. 

I was the guy who ended up holding the keys to their freedom. 

It was me who let them out. 

It’s a job that no one else could do and one that comes with great consequence because these ghosts and prisoners are standing around me now all day, all night long. 

I told my truth the way I heard it and the way I remembered it and that’s all I have. Everything else is bullshit.  

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