Oka Beach, and Cap St. Jean Park, Quebec

 Recently we took a vacation week and visited some local places, such as Oka Beach on the north shore of Lac Des Deux Montagnes. It was a surprisingly long beach with brilliant golden brown sand, seemingly endless we walked on it for an hour. There were lots of people there, kids and adults and families swimming and having fun in the sun. We settled on the quieter parts of the beach where I made these two paintings.

   
The other painting here is from Cap St. Jean Park, there are really cool walking trails and picnic areas, as well as a historic house to look at. In the top of the Cap is an organic farm, and a sugar shack. The painting is looking east, towards Pierrefonds. The colour of the water was much different, around the Cap it was deep fast flowing, while near Oka Beach it was shallow and not moving as much. As a result the colour of the water was much different, in Oka Beach it was a purple-orange hue tinted by the sandy bottom, while at Cap it was a cooler lilac colour. It had been awhile since I painted watercolours on location. 5 x 7" Watercolour Aug 2017

Sympa Para Lympha Hema

Science and art combined into one creation! This painting was meant to provoke thought on how the body integrates various systems including the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, the lymphatic system, and the cardiovascular system. Can stress alter an immune response? This work was done in several steps, beginning with the purple fibers (sympa) and then the red-orange fibers (para), followed by the blue-green (lymph), and finally the pinkish tracts (hema). Lastly I put in the background which is a three layer glaze. The background is a soft fleshy colour. I wanted the work to have an anatomical feel, like you were inside an organ of the body. At the same time channeling Jackson Pollock the great American abstract painter. It is also similar in some ways to "Love and Fear", an old painting I did in 1998 which depicted a being inside of a lymph node. 

22 x 15" cold press, watercolour, June 2017

The 20/10 solution in frame with LED lighting

This is a new frame that we got, it was Cilei's idea to hang some of my paintings in the hallway of our condo. Every month or so I have been changing the painting to keep it fresh. The painting here is  "The 2010 Solution" a turning point work that I did in 2010 after being dissatisfied with the recent doodleisim results. In this work there is more use of 3 dimensional space and free-flowing watercolour technique. The name is also a nod to the Seven Percent Solution a Sherlock Holmes book by Nicholas Meyer, the solution in that book referring to the heroin which Sherlock Holmes was addicted to. In my painting the drug of choice is alcohol as you can see in the well stocked bar sitting in the midst of a dream-like landscape. The lighting is a simple music-stand light that I got off Amazon, it has two strengths and uses led lights. Only problem is that I painted most all of these paintings under the old fashioned incandescence light bulbs that had a soft amber glow. Led light is a ghostly pale blue which puts off the intended colour. I hope in the future should people wish to hang my works they can find soft amber lighting to preserve the yellow that was intended to be there. On my blog every photo in the last few years I have yellow-enhanced to represent on the computer screen what it really looks like when viewed live, under proper lighting. Since real painting lights run in the hundreds of dollars, I will just stick with this for now!

20/10 solution, 22x 30" cold press, watercolour 2010