The Plan (Suburban Escape)

Keeping up with my mission of filling out the links for the 'stretching rack blog post' which lists all of the major 22 x30" works, here is the blog for the third painting I did in 2011. By now I had abandoned the idea of planned designs and gone back to the doodleism style where I copied drawing from my work (laboratory) notes and assembled them into a somewhat coherent design as I went. The scene is supposed to represent the side of a building with many different porches and people. At the time I was living in a dense row of triplexes with the stereotypical Quebec balconies everywhere. In the previous year I had completed the Three Ring Flying Circus series, and used a few similar elements like the large face in profile on the right seen in the Tight Rope Walker. I also sense a lot of pain, sorrow, and a growing divide in this painting.

Recently I read an article on Handprint.com (MacEvoy) on colour temperature where the author completely dismantled the theory of colour temperature in art. For instance, if red is hot, what about frozen strawberries huh? Or blue flames. What about white hot, versus white ice. Not to mention putting the stereotypical warm colours (yellow, orange, red) looks terrible together, as do the cold colours (green, blue, purple). To add to the confusion the 'hottest' colour of all, red, can be a cold red, as there can be a warm blue. Blue represents distance, but what about during a sunset? It must be about the feelings of colour... warm colours remind you of a cozy wood fire cuddled up under a blanket sipping orange pekoe, but the same warm colours could represent the house burning down. Red for love? How about red for blood. Blue for sadness, what about blue for weddings? Basically there is no sense, no use, and no science behind the colour temperature idea. If you are still a doubter... ask yourself what temperature is lime green?

22 x 30" cold press, watercolour, 2011