Downtown London Dundas Street, Ontario, Canada

I began doing urban landscapes in London Ontario, the first of which was done in frigid temperatures sometime in 1996. This scene was done some years later, perhaps on the corner of Richmond and Dundas looking east. The city of London was built a hundred years ago or more, and the old fashioned architecture is still seen in the rectangular false-front brick buildings with cast iron exterior fire-escapes and deco trim on the angular rooflines. Building booms in the 60's-80's brought on the steel and concrete sky-scrapers, which are depicted in this work-towering over the old 3-story brick buildings. Where are the people and the cars? The glib answer is that nobody lives in London, or at least bothers to go downtown, but the real answer is that painting people and cars on location is hard! For one thing they move, and for another people and cars have tremendous detail that could take hours to capture. It may have been possible in this painting to put some people walking on the sidewalk by using thick, dark colours which would overlay on the heavy washes that are already there. For some good examples of that see the Montreal Jazz fest paintings posted this summer. 

Downtown London Dundas Street, watercolour 7 x 10" cold press, 2001 (No. 0436)