Bottle Sunset

Here is the first painting I did in the new apartment down in the south Plateau Montreal, of course it was not a location painting but something from my imagination. Maybe it is a depiction of what the Plateau was 200 years ago, a stark desert populated by yellow-green bottle/lamps. The concept behind this painting was to keep it simple, to concentrate on one object only making the composition on colour scheme as powerful as possible.

The outline as usual is done with the watercolour paint, this time I used a fairly potent yellow (windsor or the like). The potent yellow paints have a lot of "attitude", they are quite pushy. What I mean by that, is that the yellow pigements are so powerful that they will repel other paints and push their way into other colour washes. I use this to my advantage when creating luminous effects, for example in the sky I surrounded the sun by a pale yellow wash that kind of ran into the darker portion of the sky. Also, the yellow outline of the bottle 'repelled' the sandy brown of the background creating a nice textured effect that looks like reflecting sunslight (examine the left side of the bottle). Each type of pigment has it's own personality that you will learn after time, and use to your advantage.

5x7" cold press , 2009

Orb Vines

The Sequel to Orb Vine, this painting Orb Vines picks up on the same style and theme but presents a few refinements over the initial painting. I softened the lines and the colours to create a more peaceful atmosphere, and improved on the compostion by creating 3 orbs arranged in a triangle, and a pile of rocks on the right to break the symmetry. I like this painting because it looks like it came out of a 1960's TV set design for Star Trek.

Creating the shiny sphere effect (the orbs) is a little tricky but can be done well with a little practice. You start by painting the entire shape of the orb with the lighteset colour (the highlight on the top right of the orb), then let it dry just a little, so it is just damp. You will know how wet your paint is by checking the reflection, when it is really wet it is glistening, when it dries a little it looks darker, like a wet towel. Now, on the palette, add a bit of a darker colour to your mix (but no more water) and then paint the next layer of shadow, leaving some of the original wash where you want the highlight to be. Keep making your palette mix darker and layering on shadow until you are satisfied. When it dries the colours should hopefully be blended together smoothly, if not, take a moist brush and try to gently smooth out any parts to look chunky. You can also lift some paint off in the highlight area to give an even shinier effect.

16x12" hot press, between 2002-2006?

Covenant Garden Market, London, Ontario

London Ontario is a small sized town with a big heart. In the downtown they built a large covered market to sell fresh produce and interesting items including artwork and crafts. For a time I worked part time at a gallery there, where some of my work was offered for sale, and during the day I would sit and paint. This scene was from the top level, looking through the fence down into the busy ground floor. I tried to put in every detail I could, the final result is kind of abstract, but if you concentrate you can see the maze of booths, stairs and a few shoppers.

Usually when painting on location, you want to keep the amount of detail to a minimum in order to save time, and to prevent the viewer from getting overwhelmed. I usually try to decide what is the main center of interest and start with that, then fill in the surroundings last. In this work I did the opposite, there is no real center of interest and the detail is totally overwhelming...the viewer's eyes can not settle on any one detail....but in that sense the painting is more successful...you get the feeling of a busy, colourful market with a million things to do. As they say, rules are meant to be broken...

12x16", hot press paper, 2004

Surf's Up, Barbados

On the north shore of Barbados the water is a deep blue and the waves roll in 1 meter high. More rugged than the touristic south shore, this beach was the backdrop for an international surfing competition which I had the chance to see. A surfer hangs ten while spectators watch on.

Painting waves is not easy to do, especially with watercolour. You would thing that the transparency of watercolour paint would make the job easier, but in fact the job of painting waves becomes harder without white paint like you would have in an oil or acrylic set. With white paint, you could paint the waves last, on top of the water, wheras with watercolour you have to leave the white waves blank, i.e. with the paper itself providing the white. On the other hand, the watercolour is easier to blend, so you can create some nice effects....for example if you look at the transition from the deep blue sea to the white crest of the wave, there is a yellow-green fade...this is done by mixing the deep blue and heyellow-green while it is still wet, creating a smooth blend.

7.5x9" cold press, 2002

Trident

This abstract painting was done awhile ago, I did not use lab doodles or preliminary sketches of any sort, instead producing the design on the paper in watercolour. The foreground shapes flow together into the background and off into the distance. In some ways it looks like a hand reaching out, with some pretty funky fingernails.

I never use pencil to make outlines on the watercolour works. I was told not to do this by an excellent painter by the name of Jon Joy, who pointed out that watercolour is transparent, and pencil will show through. Instead of pencil I use paint, usually a thin gre, which tends to dissapear. In the case of Trident, I used a dark blue green to establish the shape, which can be clearly seen in the final work. I think the strong green outline helps define the shapes and pull together the composision.

10x11 cold press paper, sometime between 1997-2001

Calling Dali

I don't know if I was ever directly inspired by Dali, but I certainly gravitated towards the surrealism style, as exemplified here in a work entitled Calling Dali. I was impressed by his lobster telephones one of which I saw at the Dali museum in St. Petersburg Florida, and thought that this painting kind of looked like a lobster telephone. At any rate, it had some Dali like characteristics, the extended branches across a stark blue sky, the melting organic structures, and the stark primary colours and complementary contrasts. Some of the motifs though are more 'Darlington' like the green tree line and the ocean , and that partiular shade of green I use on the grass that seems to come up again and again. I wonder if it is ok for an artist to talk about themselves in the third person, or is it a sign of egomania?

5x7 cold press paper, done between 2002-2004

Statue at Musée d'Orsay, France

Last I was there I could not find the statue, but in 1998 they had this and a few other similar statues outside the entrance of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Maybe the horse ran away? Unlikely as it was covered in bronze.... Painting statues always creates the compositional problem of symmetry...basically a drawing that is too symmetrical will not look very good. To help break the symmetry I chose an angle where the horses head was clearly pointing to the side, and the curve of the spine created an interesting S curve. In addition, I emphasized the larger tree on the right, and made the tree on the left much smaller (originally is was about the same size). So to break the symmetry you can use the background as well. 5x7" cold press paper, 1998

Feeling Whole

Feeling Whole was painted some time in the early days of my stay in Bayfield hall the student residence building where I was a tenant from 1999-2004. Perhaps the basement apartment influenced the dark feeling of this painting, which features a lot of blue and dark brown (not black), punctuated by brown and oranges. The two girls off to the side were drawn from an old photo from high school graduation, while the fellow in the front is not meant to be anyone in particular. I will leave the interpretation of this one up to the viewer.

To create the splattered paint effect on the painting depicted in the background, I used a complicated technique of splattering the paint. Just kidding, it is not complicated at all, the only trick is to use a brush with relatively long bristles (a brush type called 'rigger' works great), and to load the brush with a lot of paint that is not too concentrated. You may also want to watch the desk and wall around your painting when you flick paint, it tends to get messy. In this case, I overlaid the splatters on a wet-in-wet mixture of blues and brown to create a layered-texture effect.

11x14" hot press, 2000