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