At Rue Notre Dame and autoroute Décarie next to the adult education center, there is small, overgrown plot with one park bench in the middle, a twisty tree, and a ventilation pipe wound around a felled, sun-bleached tree. The tree had gnarled branches and looked half dead, but it was still pushing leaves out and making the most of it. To find such a scene smack in the middle of highways and industrial area was remarkable, the painting doesn't quite even do justice to the magnitude of the open space and prominent tree. In the background you see parts of the Turcot interchange with its distinctive red railings. Its the kind of scene that deserves a painting while it lasts, and I only found it because I was trying to take a shortcut back home. Hopefully the composition does enough to bring this tree to life and show its connections to the sky, sun, land, grass and even the highways. To create the darks I used the trusty combination of burnt sienna deep (PR101) with navy blue (PB60), and warmed it up here and there with a dab of raw sienna (PBr7). I started putting raw sienna back on the palette its one of my favorites. Its scenes like this that make me want to keep riding my bike around the next corner to see what comes next.
Twisty groove, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, May 2025
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