Courage to Grow

Courage is part of every artist's palette, it helps to get over the fear of a blank piece of paper and the thoughts of what other people may think about the work. It also means the artist is not afraid to expand stylistically and try new themes. In this painting, an abstract tree clings for life on the edge of a rocky crag, it reminded me of an old line of poetry 'he clasps the crag with crooked hands.' which upon further googling I see is from a poem by

Tennyson: "HE clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls."

Just change azure to pink and it was like I made this painting to illustrate the poem!

5 x 7 " (12 x 18cm) cold press, watercolour, 2016

Caledon Tree (Vanishing Landscapes)

One more for old times sake, this was done from a photo of a tree on one of the back roads where I used to ride my bike and where my Dad still does ride his bike, and my Mom too. I was painting the rural scenes in the area because they were picturesque, but also because they were slowly vanishing at the hands of building developers. I'm not sure if this tree is still there or not, it was not looking very healthy last time I saw it.

Painting from photo is tricky because the camera flattens out everything including the colours. Shadows that are normally filled with life become dark and neutral. Here, the shadows are clearly very dark which brings out more contrast but then looses a bit of the reflected light that would have come of the road and from the sky. The sky also takes on some strange tones in a photo and it is often really quite turquoise the farther up it is. Anyhow, this painting does capture the feel of the scene, I can almost feel the legs burning getting up that hill!

5 x 7 " (12 x 18 cm) Watercolour, cold press, 1996

Olympic Park, São Paulo, Brazil

This is a painting from São Paulo done two years ago it predates the upcoming Olympics and has nothing to do with it in fact. The locals call it that because the park is filled with sports equipment and has a sports complex there too. Surprisingly there was many pine trees there and pine cones on the ground the same as you would see here in Canada. São Paulo used to have a very temperate climate with lots of rain and cool weather in the winter. Now a days it is quite hot and arid the year I was there it had a drought. This one was done at Christmas time (the seasons are opposite there, in the Canadian summer it is winter there).

Painting outdoors is different every time, the humidity is one of the biggest factors that will affect the way the paint behaved. When humid, the colours dry slowly making layering difficult and details fleeting. When the air is dry the paint dries quickly making layering easier and details feasible, but then the edges get really firm. On this day it was dry but pleasantly coolish with a breeze, although the air temperature was over 30 Celsius and the sun was punishing. I had to sit in the direct sun for this one because there was not shade in the area, so the clock was ticking so to speak. Sitting in the open sun like that is not so good for the Peter, he is made for a cold climate! Anyways, that reminds me of Gibraltar 1998, I sat on top of the Rock in full sun painting this crazy scene looking down the mountain, I'll have to post that some time.

5 x 7" (13 x 18 cm), cold press watercolour, December 2015

Constant Scribble

Recently I have been working on doodles done back in 2013 three years ago. There was a stretch of doodles where I was depicting letters and words in the drawings, but not so that you could understand the meanings, just a kind of artistic gibberish. Here the sky has a few symbols and scribbles hence the name, the rest of it is an imaginary landscape.

The water effect was similar to the recent painting made on lac de deux Montagnes in Quebec, it is a good example of how some knowledge gained from location painting can be re-purposed for use in abstract painting.

7 x 11 " (18 x 28 cm) cold press Watercolour, June 2016

Broken Associations

Broken associations was a painting that almost did not get a name because I forgot to add it and also forgot to sign it. Just before scanning it today I completed the title and signing after taking a quick look at the original doodles from which the design came from. This title was written in the doodle book so it was easy; sometimes there is no title or words with the drawings and so I make something up based on the imagery.

As an artist it helps to travel in your life because it gives you ideas and impressions to draw upon when creating art. All of the doodleism paintings are done in doors from imagination and the source doodles (which are also done in doors) so you are relying on experience to create the natural looking scenery. In this case I was thinking about Donostia, a small city in the north of Spain also called San Sebastien. There you will find towering tree covered mountains around a beautiful white sand beach. I made those paintings on location there many years ago, and in this effort, completed yesterday, I tried to channel the energy and lighting of the scene.  Maybe I will post some of the old Spain paintings in the future, there are over 200 to pick from.

11 x8 " (33 x 20 cm) cold press, Watercolour, June 2016

Birth and Death (One Afternoon I Contemplated the Universe)

The world is full of contradictions, you say goodbye and I say hello according to the Beatles. Red and green, white and black, hot and cold, winter and summer, day and night, tomato and tomaaaaato. Okay most of those were actually contradictions. Life and death are the ultimate contradictions but then life brings death and in some belief systems death brings life. I represented a common theme in First Nations People's art, the connection between life and the land, which is depicted in the lines connecting the animal representations and the landscape and the elements.

In the traditional English method one does not use white paint or black paint, instead the white is from the paper itself and black is created from mixing complements, in this case red and green as seen in the middle central area where the red and green overlap. In this example it is optical mixing, because the two layers (red and green) are completely pure, dry, and the light passing through these two layers mixes to create the near-black tone. In contrast one can mix the two colours on the palette, but with watercolour this usually produces a faded and flat look. Optically mixed paint layers are shinier and have a lot more 'bite'.

22 x 15 " cold press watercolour. (56 x 40 cm) 2003

Apartments, São Paulo Brazil

Gone are the trees, replaced with the concrete elephants that have a hundred eyes and ears, hungry to eat everything around them. This is a scene just down the street where Cilei's parents and brothers live. I sat on the corner under a tree making this painting on a very hot day, some locals came by and they though that I was also a local person who knew Portuguese. I had to finish this one quick due to the heat. In the front you see the Brazilian flag on a building, in the middle there is a soccer field and some tennis courts.

When you are trying to finish a painting quickly the timing is crucial, I started with the sky in the background knowing it would need more time to dry so that the buildings would not bleed into it. Then the foreground washes, let them dry, first layer for the buildings, let it dry. By then it all looked thin, so second layer on everything the heat is drying the paint real fast. Last is the greens and the filler in the middle and details like bricks and light stands and highlights. Over all a painting like this can be finished in about 35 minutes.

6 x 8 " (15 x 20 cm) cold press, watercolour, 2015

Flower Painting No. 26

Back when I started painting watercolours the main subject matter was floral, which was a great way to learn about colour and technique without worrying too much about the exact form. Not to mention it was quite successful from a commercial standpoint as I ended up selling many of them including the second one I ever painted. Anyways, this subject was not as interesting as a became a University student, that is when I switched more to landscapes, and then abstract surrealism. Flowers have still shown up in a lot of paintings such as the last one I posted Rose and Wing. This one is in my parents collection.

14 x 11", (35 x2 8 cm) hot press watercolour, 1996

Rose and Wing

Here is an abstract painting I did, in this one, a rose is dangling from a winged claw-like limb or structure. In the distance on a grass plain is a small house and tree on the horizon. This painting is a tribute to Salvador Dali, inspired by his use of wide open spaces and surrealistic subject matter. I had visited the Dali museum in St. Petersburg Florida shortly before this one. I also had obtained the material to paint on at Artisan's Alley a gallery on London Ontario that used to carry some of my work around the same time.

Directional brushstrokes are useful when trying to draw the viewers eye into the focal point, in this case, it is the place where the orange shape meets the grass. To break the symmetry the orange shape is curved, and the two other centers of interest are in the upper right and lower left corners. Painting on the mat board was unusual in that the paint was absorbed almost instantly, it did not easily blend together so some of the three toned washes are choppy, but it helped with the detail on the rose and feather.

22 x 13 " (56 x 33 cm), Watercolour, white mat board. 2002

University of Western Ontario, campus view

An example of an old painting I did back in the day when attending UWO, probably completed in the summer of '96. That sounds like it should be the title of a rock song or something. Anyhow, the painting is rather rough in quality but I like the energy, it really conveys an energetic summer day with hot sun and a blue sky. There is a painting on the back of this one too, a recent doodleism effort, the one that is all in reds with a tree in the front, the name escapes me for now.

There is no signature on this painting which probably means I didn't personally like it or think that it was complete, probably due to the lack of windows on the building. I practiced painting windows that summer just to get better, but did not get back to the painting at hand.

22 x 15" (56 x 37 cm), watercolour 140lb cold press, 1996

Flamingo Heaven

Where do flamingos go when they die? A front lawn in Florida apparently. They have some garden gnomes and smurfs to keep them company. This painting was inspired by a  trip I took to Florida a long time ago, the car in the parking spot complete with faux skull in the back window (flamingo hell?) was an actual vehicle I saw in Pelican Cove St. Petersburg Fla. There were also these reflective balls on pedestals all over the place, so I put a few in here too.

Depicting bright colours when painting is all about the contrast, you want to put the bright colour up against some neutrals and contrasting colours, in the case the earthy green of the front lawn and the cool blue of the sky present the perfect backdrop for the candy-pink flamingos. I also faded the pink in birds near the house, and kept the pink at maximum saturation for the birds in the foreground. I wish one day I can paint flamingos in person, that is sitting in front of them. I wonder what they smell like, bubble gum?

14" x 11" (35 x 28 cm) Cold press Watercolour 2002

Bolton Farmhouse, North Hill (Vanishing Landscapes)

A while ago there was a farm near the suburb where my parents live, near the road was the farmhouse and some other small barns. I wanted to capture these scenes before they were demolished, in fact the bulldozer was already there ready to go. It would not be long before the house was razed, and the nearby barn actually burnt down. This is part of the 'Vanishing Landscapes' series of paintings done in the late 1990's around Caledon.

The signature I use on the paintings was developed a little before the time of this painting. When I started in the late 80's I used a PD initials with the year in a circle. Apparently putting the year on the painting was bad for business according to a friend of the family, so I started using the scrawl, without a date. Inspired by Monet and others, I wanted a signature that was impossible to read, it could be Paul Daton or anything with a PD and small t ! Just around the year 2000 I briefly used a new signature, which was my name in upper case printed neatly using blue paint. In 99.9% of my paintings the signature is in some shade of blue, usually meant to complement the sky or highlights.

5x 8 1/4 " (12.5 x 20.5cm) cold press. 1997 or 1998

Rooted Up

Here is a doodelism painting done with a slightly different technique, using a dark, almost black paint for the underpainting which includes the outline of the drawing. The colour is called "neutral shade" and it is kind of a warm transparent ink-like hue. It lifts off the paper easily which allowed me to create some light areas after the paint was dried by using a moist brush with clean water. I was inspired to buy some nearly black paint after the recent visit to the National Gallery and then to the Old Port in Montreal where there was a lot of large oil paintings. One common factor, whether it was from a classical painting from antiquity, a renaissance painting, an impressionist, or a contemporary, was that they  used a lot of bright colours and contrasting black and whites. In watercolour this is more difficult to achieve since the paint is thin and transparent, but I think the near-black paint here makes the drawing pop out a bit more. Normally I use the traditional English method for watercolour which states no black and no white paints are allowed to be used. I think this has a place, I'll try to use the black outline in the future but more for metallic or solid shapes.

6 x 8" (15 x 20 cm) cold press (B side) watercolour, June 2016