Cultural Center, NDG, Montreal

I had a long day working from the home office/kitchen today trying to solve a lot of problems related to getting the research laboratory restarted, and potential new graduate students. With the sun setting, I found a spot to sit behind the NDG cultural center, it is almost the same scene as Spring Leaf Buds, or the more centered view of Cultural Center, but I'm sitting on the opposite side. The sun was coming in on a sharp angle, causing yellow light to reflect off the alternating white and red panels. On the shadow side colours were muted and more dark or bluish. The greens of the garden had golden green highlights.

When I looked at this scene before painting it, I was not confident that I could do it because the building is not a simple square, the sidewalk slopes downwards from the road, and the majority of the colours here were complex tones and tints. It was a challenging perspective. I had to paint more so with 'my mind' than 'my heart', that is, I thought a lot about what the colours were supposed to be, not what I though they were. It is hard to describe, but when lighting conditions are strange, your visual system plays tricks on you. I really wanted to get the sparkling highlight, a strong glare that you could hardly look at directly, which was located on the top right of the structure. The last thing I did was a yellow-orange glaze to give the sunset-feel on the side of the building and sidewalk.

7 x 10" rough press (last piece from the block), watercolour, June 2020