Bolton as some of you know well is a large suburban community north of Toronto that is protected more or less by a sort of green belt. As such, the outskirts of town are composed of vast expanses of farm land or low density housing. Some houses sit on acres of land. This painting shows one of the few functional farms on Mount Hope road, it looked to be in good repair and was probably related to the Kolb hill farms. It was surrounded by a vast corn field. I composed the scene in an abstract manner by compressing the structures into a vertical format.
Barns and Silo, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, July 2024
This is the same farm from a different angle and without the red house. The painting was mostly meant to feature the corn field, with the farm set off center to show off some of the distant tree elements. It looks little greenish in the photo that I took, the original has a crisper look to it. We framed that one and hung it on the wall in Bolton.
Barns silo and corn field, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, July 2024
A long and wide hay field led up to an equally proportioned barn. The hay had been cut and was dried out, which created a raw sienna colour that I made with yellow ochre and red ochre (PY43 + PR101). Raw sienna is a great pigment but I stopped carrying it on my location palette since its a bit redundant with the mixture I just mentioned. All of these farm and rural countryside paintings were made using my Dad's bike he leant to me, it has a similar backpack on it that I used to set up the paints like I do when in Montreal. The riding was tougher in Bolton, massive rolling hills made for a constant challenge, although there were not many stop signs or red lights to deal with!
Barn and hay field, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, July 2024
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