Gas station Little Italy, looking back

Looking back on some of my old paintings, this one was from an interesting time, 2019 leading up to 2020 when the global pandemic hit. Some back story on why I did this painting, it was an idea I got from Hiroshige's series called 'The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō'. Hiroshige was a Japanese illustrator and print designer who was active throughout the middle of the 19th century. During this time, Japan had opened up to tourism, which resulted in Japanese culture reaching Europe in a big way, that was called Japanification. The idea was that Japanese art, music, theater, crafts, poetry and ideas flowed into Europe and even into North America. The Dutch painter Van Gogh came across a collection of Japanese prints which were popular among impressionist painters, Monet had quite a collection too. Van Gogh's plan was to sell them at a profit but he was a lousy business man and ended up copying them and including them in his art. So to make a long and winding story short, I discovered Hiroshige's prints via a book on Van Gogh acquired at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam where Cilei and I visited in 2018. And back to the painting, my initial thought was to paint 57 gas stations in Montreal, but it turns out gas stations are pretty boring to paint although I got a few good paintings. Instead, I ended up doing the 68 stations of the Montreal Metro system, a series completed over 2020 to 2021 or so. In fact, I keep painting scenes of the Montreal metro when I get the chance. 

Gas station Little Italy, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, 2019