What's up with August? By my count there are over 90 paintings this month alone, owing mostly to the two vacations we took to the lake and to PEI, but there were plenty of paintings in between. When I set out my 'art agenda' this year I thought of doing less numbers of paintings with bigger sizes, but in fact I made more paintings than before including bigger sizes. Well, it just means a carton will be filled up a bit faster! This scene is another majestic building, the Greenshields building that was built on behalf of a wealthy 19th century Scottish-born industrialist of the same name. It is set up on a steep embankment and has an imposing three stories with arched windows, and a semi-circular protruding segment. Two other segments including an identical wing are all connected. It must have been an office building, but now it appears to be for low income housing if I were to guess. I am glad the painting carries all the feeling of the proportions and imposing architecture, its easy to get this kind of painting wrong. I've gotten better at scaling things by paying attention to how the roof line plays against the horizon line, and recording the perspective.
Greenshields Building, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, August 2024
Somewhere in the plateau, near the Sherbrooke metro station, there is an old auto shop completely painted beige. Usually the colours is what attracts my attention, but this time it was the complete absence of colours, nearly everything was beige. The building was the same colour as the ground and the piles of earth. It looks a lot like this is a demolition and condo development waiting to happen, I kind of doubt the plan is to open the auto shop again. A few locals talked to me, and I pointed out that these paintings are meant to capture the neighborhood, especially in areas that are fast gentrifying. They seemed to appreciate that fact.
Doomed autoshop, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, August 2024
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