Neon Trail

So I took a year off from the blogging, mostly yo build up some new paintings to talk about (see the last post for one of the Mayan Riviera paintings). I did lot of the doodleism style in the last year, I am still trying to catch up on my lab note books which are full of doodles but I continue to make the doodles faster than I can convert them into finished pieces. To take a break from it though, I tried an original design for this one, it is not based on pre-existing drawings but done fresh from imagination as I sat at the paper. This strategy is more risky, you never know what comes out, but I kind of had this idea in mind of a caravan of abstract looking characters walking down a trail.

The other inspiration was the movie Avatar which we had just seen. In Avatar, there was this incredible scene where the characters were running through this neon forest, the objects were all luminous and their light was reflecting off other objects creating this eerie green glow. In the foreground I tried to capture that effect, each object has it's own neon light source that impacts on the surrounding ground. The rest of the characters are light from the sun-set sky, although they are mostly in shadow. I usually like to include multiple light sources in my paintings. There is no doubt that as an artist, you should think carefully about where the light is coming from and how it impacts the objects in your scene.

14x11" hot press paper. 2010.

Missing Us, Mexico

What is missing in this painting? Us. The beach is there, the umbrella, the water... actually we were there just sitting a little bit behind the scene. The location is Mexico, on the Mayan Riviera... which sounds pretty exotic but in reality you have a highway, lots of construction that looks like it will never be finished, and an endless succession of resorts that have impressive looking facades. One thing they also all have in common, amazing beaches and all you can eat buffet, not to mention less mosquitos than Dominican Republic.

There are a lot of subtilties to capture when you paint on the beach. In your mind, the sand should be yellow and the water should be blue, but in most places the sand is more white, and the water can be anything from deep purple to brown, green, and even brilliant turqoises. To make it more complicated (and as you see in this example) there many different colours at the same time, near the horizon you have the deep blue (french ultramarine to capture it), then the emerald/sap type green and sky blue teals. The variations in colour are caused by the underwater sandbars which add yellows and browns, and the sky tones reflecting in the waves, and the white foam of the crashers. The best way to master painting the sea, is to physically go to the sea as often as possible. The only other thing missing from this scene is you!

5x7" Mayan Riveria 2010.

Winter Palace, Bolton, Ontario, Canada

Old but good, this painting must have been done somewhere between 1991 and 1992, from a photograph of an outhouse in the woods of Bolton. The area is somewhere near the town line, close to an old camp ground, the outhouse is part of the camp infrastructure. My Dad and I used to ski up there, the trail you see in the painting is part of the ski trail we carved out.

It is interesting sometimes to look back on the older work. There are some key differences in style, the brushstrokes are a little more tentative and there are clearly areas where I have gone over the old brush strokes a few times...typically that will lead to bit of a muddy 'overworked' appearance. But overall this work has a fresh clean feel to it. Most of the paint is applies in a very transparent way (not as heavy and thick as I do more recently), and I have made a lot of 'glazing' effects, where thin layers of paint are applied over top of each other for a shimmering effect, the best example being the trail itself, which was created by putting darker layers beside it. I had also added the two trees from imagination, they were not in the photo as I remember, this was done to break the monotony of the horizontal tree line and keep the viewers eye from following the ski trail off the picture.

cold press (watercolour block) 11x14" , 1991 or 1992

Concrete Nature

Concrete Nature was based on a doodle in one of my work books, the subject probably reflects the way I feel sometimes when sitting in a meeting, that one one hand you may want to fly away, but on the other hand you are grounded and focused on the topic. Maybe I was one of those kids who stared out the window during class. There is a definite native theme to the design, with the bird and the fish both connected physically to the earth. Not sure what the walking teddy bear means.

Important to any composition are the lines that define the major shapes. In this work there is one continuous line that defines the wings and face of the bird and the entire shape of the fish, starting at the top of the picture and ending in a ripple at the bottom right. This defining line provides a smooth pathway for the viewers eye to slide up and down the composition. In this painting the central line is easier to see, in some of the other doodleisms works the line is not so easy, and can often be made up of several different elements. It is none the less important to have a nice line in your work regardless of whether it is abstract, portrait or landscape.

10x11" cold press, 2008

Calypso

Calypso is a painting based on scientific ideas but meant to be purely abstract. The concept was two cells (small independent units of life in your body) contacting eachother in a meaningful way. The green cell on the top and the purple cell on the bottom meet in the middle, with small red highlights indicating the action in the middle. The blue dots represent nucleus of the cell, the epicenter of control.

Technically this painting looks simple but is in fact very difficult. I used the 'paint blob' technique where you drop on a large amount of fluid paint, and then let it dry overnight. The tricky part was ensuring that the purple and green blob did not mix too much, although a little mixing was inevitable and desired, as it provided a bit of harmony at the center. In addition, the blobs needed to dry in a somewhat circular pattern. Somehow I managed to get it right, and once it all dried I put on the pale orange background, the blue centers, and the red and green highlights, which are just barely visible at the interface.

10x11" cold press, 2006

Addictive Puzzle

The idea for addictive puzzle came from an old doodle, in the doodle there were also groups of people on each level, trying to assemble the pieces, however the drawing was complex enough without having to depict a hundred people! The original concept had to do with the process of scientific discovery... you have a bunch of pieces that are all over the place, and many groups of people try to put them together. Without the people in the final work the message is lost a little, however you still get the feeling that a puzzle is sitting there, waiting to be assembled.

The method for this painting was rather straight forward. I started with a quick outline of where the different levels would be and then overlaid an heavy wash of pink and yellow and beige. Then I drew the outline of each puzzle piece, and filled in the colours as I went. Making the puzzle pieces was quite a chore, in fact I see now looking at the photo that a few are not filled in. The major challenge was maintaining the different sizes of the pieces, each level down the pieces get smaller. I called it addictive puzzle because when I started to look at the final work I couldn't take my eyes off it.

22x30" cold press, 2009

Waffle House, North Carolina, USA

Waffle House, for the uninitiated, is a chain of breakfast restaurants in the southern US, rivaled only by IHOP. On a walk around Greensville North Carolina I came upon this scene, which I felt reflected the American culture. Inside the restaurant I recreated Edward Hopper's original 'Night Owls' painting, the idea was to provide a more modern urban context for the classic painting. Of course 'night owls' was depicted at night, and this painting is during the day, but who eats pancakes at night. I smell an idea for a new painting here.... This version of Waffle House was painted from two sources, a photograph, and a location painting. I remember well the location paitning experience, lots of cars going by and little red ants biting my butt. Painting from photo is always a challenge because the colours are off, and there is too much detail. I used the location painting to get the colours right, and the photo to nail down some of the details. In the end the work looks a little stiff as compared to the location painting (which I should dig up some time and photograph). The thing that is missing in your studio is the 'environment', the noise, the smell, the air...when on location these elements will channel through the artist and onto the work. Other examples of this concept are my paintings Japan Busy Street, View from Mount Royale, and in general look to Monet and Tom Thompson (and the entire group of seven/Emily Carr) for examples of artists who channeled external energy into their work for great effect. 14x11" hot press, 2002