At last, we have nearly reached the end of 2024, and its time once again for the year in review blog where I select some of the best and favorite paintings (yours and mine) of the year. You can find the previous years in review for 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 in the links. Since there were a lot more paintings this year, over 800, the blog will be a bit longer, in fact it was tough to narrow it down to just a dozen paintings to feature. Seen above, is one of the best paintings of the year because it truly captures a moment, and an artist, with a simple cloud over Trenholme park. It was proverbial lightning in a bottle.
The World Inspired Landscapes series continued this year, I just recently reached Q with the Qatar painting. In this series, I research countries in books and on the internet, then come up with an original design to represent the landscape. Above, is Malawi, a country in the middle of Africa known for its coffee beans. I have a colleague from Malawai and we often talked about his country. Part of the country was settled by protestants, and the locals took up the religion, even naming a city Blantyre after the famous religious figure. My blog has two pages summarizing countries starting with the letters A - L, and L - Z.
Most of the paintings this year involved me riding my bike around Montreal. This way I can cover a lot of ground, quickly stop, set up, and do a painting on the spot. Above, is a row of Majestic Condos, down near the Peel Basin where Griffintown ends and Old Port begins. A tram car went by as I painted. Lots of people saw me paint this one, and the blog actually got 99 views which is a high number for me. Other neat paintings of condos and tall buildings included Tall Trees Last Sun, the iconic Sunflowers in the City, and Foggy Buildings with Train Bridge.
We had an unusually long and mild autumn this year, which was good for painting even if it is a bad sign for the environment. This painting shows lemon and lime coloured trees along McGill Avenue downtown. A few other cool Autumn paintings were Bike Path Under Train Bridge, Orange Tree with Sunset, and the realistic Dark Green Tree on Campus.
Here is the surprise success painting of the year, a very dreary scene of a Plane over Power Station. Despite the challenging subject matter and high humidity, a tight composition and lemony colour scheme really pulled it together to capture a sombre moment out in the middle of nowhere in Montreal. If you follow my art, you know I like quirky, pedestrian scenes like this. Some other personal favorites of mine this year were Yellow Bins Discarded Fruit, Sunset with Fire Truck, and the summer Spirit Birds?
Without a doubt this scene of Water Cascading under the Bridge, at the Lachine canal was the most technically proficient piece of the year. A deep violet shadow hangs over the rippling water highlighted by the sun, along with my own shadow silhouette on the bottom right, and whimsical initials floating on the bottom left. This was one of 17 paintings I completed in just one day, a record for me. Also technically impressive were Lock with Reflections, Setting Sun Through Trees, and Partially Frozen Canal. Obviously the Lachine Canal was a good place to paint this year, its essentially an outdoor studio! I drafted a book summarizing the Canal paintings, hopefully it will be available soon.
If you had to guess which was the most viewed blog of the year, you may have picked this one. A scene of a Gull over Water North Rustico Beach PEI, had 141 reads... I am guessing someone from PEI spread the word that an artist was in town? Well, my ancestors are actually from the province and when Cilei and I visited this August, I ran into a few people who knew of the family lineage. Nice place to visit and paint. I also travelled to (or through) Toronto a few times, painted along the commuter corridor, and stayed up at a rental cottage on Lac de Coeur.
I made abstract paintings throughout the year, usually under the premise of cleaning my palette. Although, this one was done with my alternative palette that contains many paints including the incredible carbazol violet, a deep purple. The painting is called Strange Trip, after the hippy folk rock band called the Grateful Dead. It seems to be one of Cilei's favorite paintings of the year. I completed a few large doodleism paintings where I transcribe lab book doodles from work into large surrealistic paintings, such as Lab Book #25 Eclipse Flowers. There was a quirky painting called Emergency Donuts based on a true story.
Believe it or not, this painting was done on location in the exact moments that the total solar eclipse happened back in April. A more refined version was done shortly afterwards in my studio (aka kitchen table). It was a great year for painting the moon, for example Memory of Supermoon PEI, the Harvest Moon over Turcot Interchange, the cheeky Moon over Pizzeria, similarly the Full Moon over Pizza 88, the freezing Crescent Moon over Loyola Park, and the iconic Crescent Moon over Montreal.
Mostly for gifts to graduating students, I made a few still life paintings of the laboratory including this one which shows a western blot apparatus (it measures proteins very specifically and directly). Another one showed a polymerase chain reaction thermal cycler (it measures ribonucleic acids, which is a way to see genes being turned on or off in human cells). And more down to earth, I painted my painting gear at home. I did a neat portrait painting of Cilei reading a magazine at the cottage.
When selecting the best painting of the year there were many to pick from such as Cloud over Trenholme Park at the top of the blog, or the political painting of Encampments at McGill University, where students including from Concordia University were protesting the senseless violence in Gaza. There was a simple but effective painting of a train track outside of Boisé Steinberg, which is being fought over by developers and locals (as it turns out the city has bought and protected the small woodland). I also did a powerful scene of cold snow blowing through Coffee Park. But the painting I kept thinking about all year was one completed way back in January called Train Winter Blast. When I was painting it, shown above, I thought to myself, this is the kind of painting that 'Uncle Peter' would make... like if my nieces and nephews saw my paintings, they would expect something like this. It has technical accuracy, great brush work, and the watercolour is allowed to be spontaneous in the background. Luckily, the snow came down with just the right consistency which created the illusion of snowflakes on the painting. I thoroughly enjoyed painting so much this year, and hope to continue it into 2025 and beyond. Thanks for reading :)
Thank you, Peter! Your blog is great! Very interesting and lots of satisfying art! You are quite the artist, no doubt about that!! Keep painting!!! From an old neighbour who admires your work!!
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