Festival International de Jazz de Montreal 2011

'Jazz Fest' as it is usually referred to by the anglophones, happens once a year in Montreal, situated in the downtown core in the newly renovated entertainment district. In the painting you see the new light standards, twisting and curling around eachother like cats tails. In the background is Place de arts, decorated with banners and signs. The usual crush of people is depicted in the middle ground, and for the few lucky ones, they are sitting at tables in the foreground, no doubt enjoying some brand named beer that sponsors the event.

There are several signs in the painting, three large posters on top of the place de arts, and a long banner just over the windows of the same building. There is also text printed along the umbrellas in the foreground. When painting landscapes, it is rarely worthhile to try and make the writing that you see on signs and posters actually readable. You're painting a landscape afterall, not an advertisement. At any rate, it is exteremely difficult to try and copy the writing you see, I have tried, and failed many a times. So I just kind of represent the letters as blocks and curves and circles, so you get the sense that there is somehting written there. As a strange fact, I also find it very difficult to write words when I am in the middle of painting a picture...the brain has switched into an abstract mode of colour-shape-line-feeling, and so when I have tried to write something into a painting, it feels like being a child again almost, and I make many spelling errors. There are more than a few obvious spelling errors in the painting titles (which I often write immediately after finishing, or during the making of the work), and some obvious attempts to correct the error (which is really hard in watercolour) can be seen in the titles too.

5x7" cold press, 2011