More abstract paintings from the archive

Throughout the 2000 and 2010's I was not landscape painting as much and instead focusing on abstract painting in the doodleism style or free style. Prior to that, I was painting a lot of landscapes in London Ontario, on the Spain trip and other trips. One reason for the shift in emphasis was that Montreal was not the most inspiring place to paint at the time; I was living in the dense neighborhood of Plateau and had not quite worked out how to paint standing up or to use my bike as a mobile studio. Those developments would not come until 2020. In 2020 the Lachine canal bike path opened up which was a major reason for my renewed interest in Montreal as a subject. I can pinpoint the turning point to one painting, I was sitting on the ledge of the canal doing a fall canal scene while the construction crew was prepping the canal path across the way. Once it opened, I gained easy bicycle access to all of downtown and the aqueduct. Of course, the pandemic was the other driving force, I went from 50 paintings a year to 500 paintings a year and covered virtually every accessible portion of the island since then.

Some Old Painting, watercolour cold press 7 x 22", 2016 (No. 1811a)

Just before the pandemic, I had a renewed interest in art owing to a trip to Amsterdam with Cilei where we visited the van Gogh Museum and I discovered Hiroshige in a book about van Gogh. In 2018 I was mostly working on abstract paintings like the one shown above, and towards the end of the year doing paintings in the neighborhood. In the early part of 2020 I was copying Hiroshige paintings and starting to explore new paints like prussian blue.

Lost and Found Internal Connections, watercolour cold press 3.5 x 15", 2018 (No. 1817b)