Little Italy (Henri Julien Avenue) Montreal, Quebec

Great views are hard to find in the city, most of the sight lines are blocked by buildings or inaccessible without trespassing. But there are always scenes of interest, scenes that capture the ethos of the neighborhood. This scene caught my eye, it is just off the bike path in little Italy on Henri Julien Avenue, looking West into a small industrial area. The deep brown and rust colour and rugged textures really stood out against the blue sky, and the occasional pops of red completed the scene. It was a difficult location, although there was a relatively comfortable place to sit on the edge of a plant box across the street, the sun was pounding down full force most of the time. That made the paint dry quickly which helped to get in all the detail, but it was tough to endure for 35 minutes. There was a fence in between but I omitted it for clarity. This reminds me of a painting I made in Glasgow of a factory with smoke stacks. The object seen in the bottom left is, strangely enough, a small motorboat covered in a white tarp.

7 x 10 " hot press (block) watercolour, August 2019

Snakes and Puzzles

Final post of the day, here is an abstract painting I made awhile ago on a hot-press block. I am unsure when this was done, in fact, it was missing a signature, title, and date so it is a real puzzle. I believe it was done some time around 2009 when I made 'Addictive Puzzle'. There is a curious use of lighting- all the objects are lit by a source in the upper right, but the painting shows a light source in the upper left. It was done quite deliberately, because the cube shape under the light bulb clearly has the shadow on the wrong side. The background is like a tapestry that has its own internal light source, unaffected by the external lights. There also seems to be a yellow light from bottom right, perhaps signifying a fire.

15 x 11" hot press (block) watercolour. 2009?

Sutton, Quebec

When I am landscape painting my goal is to capture the ethos of a scene, to record the spirit of what makes the landscape unique. The cliché is always tempting, when in Paris, paint the Eiffel tower, but there is always more to it than the obvious. We walked around the town of Sutton for awhile and then I spent about an hour on my own looking for a painting location. There was the obvious: the spectacular Mont Sutton looming in the distance, and the amazing store fronts on the main street, but when you got off the main street and looked around I saw an older, somewhat dilapidated (seedy) side of the town. Aluminum siding, paint peeling off, the smell of something rotten near the train tracks. For the painting, I found a spot to sit on a small bridge that spanned a creek that runs through town.The spot is very close to a local brew-pub so I could hear people chatting loudly and I could practically smell the hops and malted barley. I was uncomfortable, sitting on top of a guard rail and leaning down to get at the water sitting on the ground, and a hot sun was blazing on my back. The painting captures all the elements that make Sutton what it is, the neat, cottage-style storefront seen in the left hand side of the painting, the seedy shack in the middle made from a patchwork of building materials, and that deep emerald green Mont Sutton looming on the skyline. Cilei made a short video of me doing the painting too, I sure looked like a tourist!

5 x7 " cold press, Watercolour 2019

Horizon Hotel view from parking lot, Sutton, Quebec

I bet that the Horizon Hotel has one of the best views from any hotel parking lot in the world ...it was also the easiest painting location to find, just go out the lobby door and behold the vista. The sun was going down so I had to paint fast before the light changed too much. I liked this composition because it felt like the house was being crushed by the multiple layers of trees and hills going all the way up to the horizon. One thing I learned from studying Vincent (Van Gogh) was to give each element its own personality, the field, the tree, the sky etc. So here each tree or group of trees has its own colour scheme, lines, and general feel. By controlling the layering I created a sense of vast depth that takes your eyes from the warm reds and detail of the house, around the plethora of foliage, and off into the distance.

5 x 7" cold press Watercolour. Aug. 2019

Mont Sutton, (Abenakis rock, near Lake Mohawk), Quebec

Mont Sutton is a popular ski hill between Montreal and the border with Vermont, it is also criss-crossed with hiking paths. This view was from the Lake Mohawk trail at the Abernakis rock lookout point at about 730 meters. The rock, which you can see in the foreground of the painting is very large, about the size of the roof of a house. We sat there having lunch on top of the rock, the breeze was cool and the view was spectacular! There were trees growing just on the edge of the rock, which occupy the middle ground (and center focal point) of the painting, and there are rolling hills overlapping in the distance. Recently I had the idea that a painting has to be like a three course meal, appetizer, main course, and dessert. In other words, I try to emphasize three things, in this case, the rock with its great sweeping arc and mossy rough texture, the wind-swept pine tree in the middle, and the deep-blue vastness of the background hills. Bon appétit !

7 x 10" hot press (block) Watercolour Aug. 2019

PS, a 'block' is a type of paper where the sheets are initially in a stack and connected by an adhesive which you cut off when the painting is done. This obviates the need to stretch the paper and makes it a lot easier to transport on a landscape painting trip. I just bought two new ones.

Fate of the World

At times I really try to push the technique in a new, strange direction just to see what the results are. In this painting (along with Dream Tree, and a few others), the paint was applied in great, wet blobs and allowed to dry over night before applying another layering in the same manner. Wet-in-wet washes were then applied to fill in the empty spaces. As I write this blog I can't remember exactly what I was thinking at the time other than I probably had a few too many beers in me. The idea of contrasting the blue and orange like that was a challenge that I was working on for awhile and never felt that I really got it. It is supposed to be like ice cubes sitting on flowing-lava, or cold rain on a hot fire. The title may have something to do with climate change? I like how at the very top of the painting, roughly in the middle, it looks like clouds with sun poking through, then the rest of it is just a mess of hot cold, and splotches of green. Maybe I should try this one again on a larger format.

15 x 22" cold press Watercolour, 2006 (?)

La Cité de l'énergie, Saint-Maurice River, Quebec

Here is another painting from the Shawinigan trip done at La Cité de l'énergie park which is right next to the hydro electric dams on Saint-Maurice River. The water slows to a standstill and many water lilies were growing. In the background is an old aluminum plant, and of course, the ever-present power lines that crisscross the landscape heading off into the unknown. Usually I omit the hydro lines from my paintings but in this case they were integral to the ethos of the scene. Water, power, industry, the city of energy. And Jean Chrétien former prime minister of Canada, he is also from Shawinigan. In fact there is a museum dedicated to his achievements, and displaying the huge number of gifts he received from other countries over the years. Hydro electric dams have a big impact on the environment, but it was good to learn more and to see one first hand; we took the tour of an operational one and it was really neat inside.

7 x 10" hot press (block) Watercolour, 2019 August

Saint-Maurice River, Quebec

Driving about an hour north of Shawinigan brings you to the Hotel Marineau Mattawain which is in the hamlet of Rivière-Matawin. Try saying that five times fast in both official languages. The river is a huge, powerful force of nature that has been used for hydro electric power for over a century, and for a logging route. Sitting next to it you can hear the swoosh of the water and feel the cool mist in the air. This scene was a view from the back of the hotel, I was sitting on a large boulder surrounded by blueberries and deer droppings, when a light rain began to fall. I had to retreat to under a shrub in the most uncomfortable position to complete the painting. I tried to channel the spirit of Vincent (Van gogh), giving each element of the composition its own personality, and adding the decorative swirls in the river water to give that plunging perspective and sense of movement that he so often used in his oil paintings. I also made my signature look like it is floating away on top of the river!

water (for real) colour, 7 x 10 hot press (block) August 2019

Birds on pole watching sunset

Just one more blog and I'll stop for the night, this is number five. I am trying to keep on pace for 30 or more blogs this year, which is about the average I have made since 2008, the first year of the blog. This painting was another one of the practice paintings I made before the recent trip to Shawinigan. I cleaned my palette off, and there was an abundance of cadmium-free red and windsor yellow which I used for this painting. The actual painting is even brighter and  more outrageous than the digital scan you are looking at! I don't pretend to know what this means at all- no wait, as the artist I should pretend like it has a meaning and make you guess and never tell you what it means.By the way, I am using my new series 7 watercolour brushes and really liking them, they distribute the paint extremely well and have a great feel. Definitely worth the cost and issues about using sable fur which are on my mind.

5x 7 " cold press, Watercolour

NDG Monkland Village, Montreal

One more of the warm-up paintings I made before traveling, this one was done on location in Monkland Village, an area of NDG close to the west side of the mountain. I saw this scene on a walk, the three apartment buildings just lined up perfectly creating an inter-locking spiral shape. I know most people wouldn't notice things in this way, and they would expect to see the sidewalk, people, cars and the road, but I wanted this composition to invite the viewer to look up and see what I saw. The colours of the three buildings in the painting match the actual colours of the buildings almost exactly. It is hard for a viewer to verify this without being at the location, but I am the first one to know when the colour is off. It just seemed satisfying to look down at the painting, and up at the actual scene that day and see that the colours were spot on. As I wrote in a previous blog, it is very hard to get the digital image to exactly match the original painting, but here on my screen it seems to have come out pretty well. I am starting to think about putting together a collection to show somewhere. I think about that from time to time since this blog is currently the only place to see my work. Lucky you!

5 x 7 cold press, Watercolour

Faces Plant

Recently I went on a number of trips and brought my paints with me to do location work. I know that it takes almost two weeks to get the feel of a location and make amazing paintings; the first few days of a painting excursion can produce interesting, yet very tight paintings that are affected by the stress of the trip, and the sense of your original location. I really learned this fact when I went to Barbados many years ago, and the first couple of days worth of paintings seemed faded and lifeless. When a local fellow looked at my paintings and said 'where is the colour?' I had a revelation, and all of the subsequent paintings were lively indeed. So it takes a combination of time and insight to gain the proper mindset. When a trip only lasts two or three days it is not possible to get relaxed and warmed up, so I decided to paint a lot before the trips. I tried this last year before Amsterdam, for about a week I tried to go out and get used to location painting again, and by and large it worked I only took a few days to get into the swing of things. To make along story short, this was one of about a dozen strange abstract paintings I made in July and August to get warmed up for location painting. None of the locations were this weird though! Most of them have paintings on the back too.

5x7" Cold press, Watercolour 2019

NDG Harley Street, Montreal

Here is a cool scene down on Harley street in NDG south of the train tracks near the Reno Depot. The building is an auto mechanic, the object in the foreground, is a fire hydrant. With that cleared up, we can look at some of other more interesting details! There is mural-work on the building, and the name of the business above the garage in the shadowed side of the structure. The orange dashes on the front are the bricks showing through because the white paint is peeling off. Weeds grow from the cracks in the side walk. A thicket of trees make a halo which contrasts the striking red-orange trim.

Painting decent shadows is key to landscape painting, but it is hard to get the image to look right in digital format. The scanned version of this painting does not quite do justice to the painting as seen in real life. When I scan a painting I have to make sure that the digital version matches the original. This is easier said than done. First I make the scan on a flat-bed scanner, or for larger paintings I use a digital camera. Then I make due the computer monitor settings are about neutral, not too bright, and not yellowed out. The original painting has to be illuminated well, this time I used two additional desk lamps to get as much light on it as possible. Now I can adjust the colour balance, and contrast to try and get the digital version looking like the original. It is never exactly right, but I try to get as close as possible to provide the right feel to the painting.

5 x 7" cold press, Watercolour, 2019

Lac Du Coeur, Quebec, Canada

We went to visit our friends up at their cottage in Lac Du Coeur near Morin Heights which is about an hour north of Montreal without traffic, two and a half hours with traffic! The lake is a beautiful, motor boat-free, deep lake with crystal clear water. I swam out about half way down the lake and tread water for awhile, luckily I have been training at the pool. The lake was better than the public pool because nobody else was there swimming and the water temperature is great. When googling the name of the lake it turns out there is a similarly named lake in France where Claude Monet used to visit, so maybe this was like a coincidence, or something more? It was our second trip out there.

Capturing the trees and the water of the Canadian shield is surprisingly difficult. As an artist you think 'it's just a bunch of trees and water what can be so difficult?' but I have always found it to be very challenging. On this trip I struggled to get the power of the landscape to speak in the artwork, so on the final attempt, I distracted the viewer with a dock and the items that were there after a day of having fun on the lake. It tells a nice story- we are all up in the cottage preparing dinner and relaxing- I am sitting in the grass painting and swatting mosquitoes off my body.

5 x 7 " cold press Watercolour, 2019