Cilei and I just got back from our April Fool's vacation in Barbados! Walking down Somerled Avenue I made this painting of the insistent tree growing outside of the old Royal Bank building. It popped up as a sapling about 5 or 6 years ago when Royal Bank closed down the branch, and now it is a full tree with about a 20 cm wide trunk and plenty of foliage. I like what this tree symbolizes, a wild tree pushing up through the concrete to create life where there was once a forest. Of course NDG got turned into farms, and then urban sprawl a long time ago, there is very little evidence of what it once was. I suppose one day this tree will be cut down, but not before I make a few more paintings. To make the overlay of the tree, I used a heavy mix of yellow ochre (PY43) with burnt sienna (PR101/PBr7), which is very opaque the way I applied it. In watercolour painting this is a no-no, but so far no watercolour police have charged me yet for using opaque paints.
Insistent Tree end of Winter, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, April 2023 (No. 3423)
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