des légumes frais, St. Joseph St. Montreal

This painting was done on the same corner as an older painting I posted in 2008 called Biere et Vin Froid, St. Joseph St., if you put the two together it would be like a panorama. The corner store depicted is a family run business, amazing such a thing still exists in this day and age of big box stores. On the right is Parc Ave, just above the tree line you see the bookstore building, I featured it in another recent painting with all the orange traffic signs. Maybe I should do a larger panorama painting some time in the studio, it's a lot of work but I am starting to find my inspiration again for landscape painting. 

Landscape painting in the city has always been difficult, the sight lines are often blocked by buildings or cars (when you sit down parked cars or trucks can really get in the way), and the sun can easily be blocked by sky scrapers. I have found too that the subject matter can be a little hard to get excited about, painting the facade of a condo is more of an architectural challenge rather than a purely artistic one. In this painting, I was attracted to the primary colours, the yellow umbrella, and the sharp crayon-colours of the vegtables. It was also cool how this store had an apartment on top, so you kind of get this feeling of the plateau... a residential and commercial mosaic. 

 5x7" cold press. 2012

 

Sun Life, Downtown Montreal

This scene was done downtown at the corner of McGill College and Maisonneuve Boulevard looking south, the main building featured in the background is the Sun Life Building, and the foreground structure is Place Montreal Trust. Sandwiched in the middle is the Rogers building. I had to use google map and the streetview feature to figure out where I was exactly. I walked around for awhile to find this scene, most of the downtown is rather generic, this scene however seemed to have some distinctiveness... each layer is from a different generation of architecture: the Sun Life, from the old classic stone days (with a baroque theme), the Rogers building -ugly brown concrete from the 60's or 70's, and the Place Montreal Trust-all modern with a pre-fab look. I also liked the two flags on top of the Sun life building.

I don't often paint in the city because the sight lines are bad and the sun is often obscured by the buildings. In this case the sun was reflecting off another building windows, so I had some decent light to paint in. Also, the background building was lit up directly by the sun, which created the perfect focal point... the mid- and fore-ground structures were in shadow which gave a nice 'frame'. Usually the background is not the focal point, but in this case it works well. You really get the feeling of being downtown and seeing something spectacular hiding between the skyscrapers.

5x7.5" cold press 2012. 

Pont des Arts (Institut de France), Paris, France

Pont des Arts is a famous bridge in France, on one side you have the Institut de France (seen in the painting), and on the other side you have le Louvre. I guess it is silly to call this bridge famous, aren't they all famous in Paris? This one is noted for 'love locks' that's when people bring a pad lock, put their initials on it and a heart, and attach it to the bridge. If you really squint at the bridge in the painting you will see the locks... just kidding.

There is an old adage for artists, paint what you see, not what you think.... this is good advice for a landscape painter (but not so much for a surrealist abstract painter). In this painting, the Seine river is depicted as I SAW it... green, muddy, choppy, somewhat disgusting looking water. If I had painted what I THOUGHT, I may have made the river blue...  isn't water blue? So when I paint, I really try to shed any pre-conceived notions about what things should be, and I just paint what I see. It is interesting to compare the similarities between this painting (done in 1998) and a recent painting called "Scene on the Seine", the water looks remarkably similar.

I'll briefly explain how to paint the dome, it is a little technical though.... Start with a layer of pale yellow with a slight touch of warm red (rose madder, or a red lake, or frnch vermillion), make the layer into the shape of the dome. Wait for it to completely dry. Next you need to make the wedge shaped panels on the dome... on the top they are reflecting the blue from the sky, and on the bottom they are showing their natural colour, a rich velvety cool blue. To make this effect do a two-tone wash. Two-tone washes are extremely useful so I'll explain how....  mix a medium-heavy blue using cereulean, a touch of french ultramarine, a touch of rose madder, then paint the wedges on the dome, leaving gaps between them for the golden yellow to show. Now, go back to the paint you mixed on the pallette and make it darker, you do that by putting in a little bit of alzarian crimson (a dark red), and vermillion green (a dark green),  alternatively, daub in some paynes gray.... if you're on a budget mix french ultramarine and burnt sienna. Then load your brush and add a little of the darker version to the bottom of each wedge while it is still wet/moist. If the dark mix is too watery you get a backwash... the trick is feeling out the right amount of moisture on your brush which takes a lot of practice, and working fast because if the first wash dries it won't look smooth.

5x7" cold press. 1998

Toledo Cathedral, Spain

Another painting from the '98 Spain collection, this one was done in Toledo, no, not Toledo in Ohio, but the one about 70km South of Madrid. I had long since forgotten the name of the cathedral, but thanks to the internet I confirm that this is "Toledo Cathedral", funny but that is what I would have guessed in the first place. It was a truly spectacular cathedral... I considered not painting it due to the extreme detail, but in the end I figured what the heck. Never a bad idea to strech yourself.

It was obviously hot at the time (looking at the way the wash in the sky dried), and that is always good when you want to capture a lot of detail because the paint dries fast. If it is cool and humid, the paint dries slow and detailed brush strokes will bleed, thus becoming fuzzy. You can tell I'm writing grants as I feel compelled to use words like 'thus'. The strategy in this case was to 'represent' the detail rather than try to actually capture it all... the statues are just amorphous blobs, but in the end you get a similar visual effect as in real life. What I did get right-on was the colour of the brick, and the warmpth of the shadows. Look how the shadow under the front door is practically orange, this is due to the hot sun reflecting off the ground.

5x7" hot press. 1998

The Crushing Delicate

Inspired by a single, simple thought, yet presented in an abstract, obtuse manner. While you are thinking about what that means, I'll confess that I have been writing a lot of grants these days, those are the things scientists have to write to beg for what little $ the government (especially this one) has set aside for research. A grant is a little like an abstract painting in that sense, simple, yet obtuse...? The difference is that a grant is intended for money, and art is, well, ok, intended for money. Fortunately I've been able to pursue art without pressure for profits, probably how I was able to develop this off-the wall style of doodleism, a kind of surrealism-cubist hybrid style.

I want to talk about taking chances, with your art... in this painting I was convinced that I wanted the background to be a calm, blue sky with fluffy white clouds, but then I decided halfway through to go for a blazing orange sunset.... it looked awful, and I tried to cover it with this dark brown, meanwhile putting in the tangled octopus-like tendrils in the foreground... and it looked even worse. It was a mess... so I pulled out my hogs-hair... a big, thick round brush good for removing rust off a pipe... and proceeded to scrub the entire area... to my amazement it worked... the area I am talking about is the top right area just above the horizon, it ended up looking like a kind of misty twilight. The moral of the story is sometimes you just go for it and make damage control as you go.

The painting is about something very powerful that is never-the-less delicate. The theme reminds me of 'The Juggler', an old painting I did of a clown with a porcelain head juggling hammers (or was it 'The juggling act'?) I struggled with the name of this one, it was either going to be "Crushing Delicate" or "The Crushing Delicate", I decided midway that if it was spectacular enough then I would go with latter. In a lot of ways this painting is a turning point, it's a great combination of the variations of doodleism developed in the last few years, and it balances careful execution with wild- nearly uncontained technique.

22x30" cold press  2012

View from Mont Royal, St. Lawrence River, Montreal

Surely this painting was inspired by the Island of Paradise... Ile de la Reunion. Volatile and passionate, the island served up some of the best landscapes I've ever seen. But alas, this is a much different island, Montreal. I was sitting up at one of the tourist stop-offs up on Mont Royal. Indeed, buses of tourists were stopping to take pictures. In the distance you see St. Lawrence River, with trees and buildings of downtown Montreal filling the middle-ground.

The river was highly reflective on this day, with the sun very bright. To capture this effect, I started by laying down the sky, almost all the way down the painting. Because it was so hot, I was able to let this wash get completely dry (don't try to do this when it's cloudy because the wash will take like half an hour to dry and you can't put anything on top). When dry, I put in the distant mountains using a combination of purple and blue and light green. The rest of the painting is hard to describe... just tried not to force too much detail... and tried to channel the energy of the island..both of them.

6.5x9" cold press, 2012