World Inspired Landscapes, Bangladesh

Windy wavy lines and colourful contrasts define this world-inspired landscape. I am working through the countries of the world in batches starting with the letter A, and now moving to the letter B countries. The source materials are a combination of library books and internet searches, combined with a healthy dose of imagination to create the final original design. For Bangladesh I borrowed a book called A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam which was a dramatic story of life in tubulent political times. In the early 1970's the country of Bangladesh was formed from a country called East Pakistan. The story talked of the impact of civil unrest, the struggle for independence and the effect of devastating cyclones. There were no pictures in the book, but I knew that the country was a lush tropical environment and dense housing. The idea was to create a lyrical, textile-printed design featuring fertile trees and a background of turbulent clouds blowing in the sky. The colour scheme was inspired by the cover of the book. I recreated the bold red-green with contrasting cream throughout the painting. 

World Inspired Landscapes: Bangladesh, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, 2020

Roots and All

 

This morning I knocked over a spider plant and saw the roots were all bound up in a shape resembling the pot. Luckily I got it back into the pot no trouble and added some soil. Before work started I took the chance to make a quick abstract painting inspired by the root bound plant. The weather was actually perfect for outdoor painting today but I was tied to the computer all day for Thursday's pharmacology class. Most of the painting relies on yellow orange and earth colours, with a thin wash of phthalo blue with the yellow to create green. You could say that I was also feeling root bound stuck in a pot!

Root Bound, 4 x 6" hot press 300lbs, watercolour, November 2020

With the new catalogue spreadsheet I can easily word search for themes. The word root was included in a few titles for example Rooted Up, which I already blogged about. In the painting shown above, I sat on the edge of a river embankment looking at a massive tree stump eroding, and the river down below. It was a very technical painting that took longer than usual. The details of the river and reflection on the right create an exaggerated since of height. Looking back on this one, it is amazing that I got the full range of earth tones when all I had was burnt sienna and a limited palette. If I could send a tube of 'Umber' back in time I think it would have been very useful!

London Tree Roots, Cliff, River, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, 2004, (No. 0779) 

And an abstract from not too long ago, done around the time of our last trip to Brazil. It was a metaphor for Cilei, who flies to Brazil to revisit her home, to reconnect with her family roots. It is very sunny and tropical there, although at the moment she is there visiting it is raining a lot. 

Flying Home, (Roots and All),  10.5 x 15", watercolour paper, watercolour, 2017 (No. 1825)

Palette Cleanser #39

 

 David Hockney's landscape painting Nichols Canyon made the news recently, it is valued at $35 million at auction. His painting began with a single squiggly line, around which he built up a quilt-work of varied textures and elements resembling the landscape. I looked at his painting for some time, it was remarkable that all of those secondary and tertiary colours worked together so well- a hodgepodge of purples, oranges, greens built around primaries and complementary colour combinations. It almost defies logic that it looked so good! For today's palette cleanser painting, I started with the squiggly line, and then build up a patchwork of organic shapes coloured with secondaries and tertiaries. I estimate the value of my painting to be at least $35 million at auction *. 

9 x 12" watercolour paper, watercolour, November 2020

* monopoly money

2000: The Abstract (and everything else) Painter

 Leading up to the year 2000 I had been traveling and painting a lot, including a trip to California, France and Spain, Carolina, rural Ontario, and of course in hometown Bolton and London Ontario where I was completing undergraduate and beginning a graduate degrees at Western University. Until that point I had made a few abstract efforts for example  Sun, Earth, Moon. As Y2K came and went without any technical calamity, I turned my attention to abstract painting. The abstracts were focused on my own thoughts and feelings, and were original designs that sometimes brought in source material like a Stratford festival play bill. One example is Birdman, which was sold that year out of Artisan's Alley London Ontario. Here is another painting done using similar methods, albeit without the Chinese black ink. 

 

Theatrical Collage, 12 x 16" hot press, watercolour, 2000 (No. 0100)

On trips home I took time to make some paintings in the neighborhood, or in this example, in our own back yard! I had painted geraniums in a pot in 93, even selling one version, and more recently in 2020 I painted geraniums out back of my apartment. Geraniums are actually really hard to paint correctly, their leaves and flow shapes are are very irregular and heavily textured. Notice the dandelions in the yard back there, must have missed a few!   

Geraniums, Parents' House, Bolton, 5 x7 cold press, watercolour, 2000 (No. 0247)

Other than painting, my favorite past time was ultimate frisbee (a competitive hippy sport). I made paintings at the various tournaments such as the tournament in Kanata. Also on my busy travel itinerary for 2000 were trips to Ottawa, Toronto, St Mary's, North Carolina, and Keystone Colorado. But most of my painting would be done in London Ontario that year, inside and outside. A personal favorite was Where go the Fish?, but I sold that one too. Here is an innovative abstract done around that time: 

Connection Centipede, 5 x 7" cold press, watercolour, 2000 (No.1708)

And another ambitious abstract effort...

 

Snakes and Patterns, 11 x 15" cold press, watercolour, 2000 (No. 1424)

But what about my other other favorite past time besides watercolour and ultimate frisbee? Here is a hint...

The Beer Store, London Ontario, 5 x 8" cold press, watercolour, 2000 (No. 0556)

First Snow, Somerled Avenue, NDG

 It had to happen eventually, the first snowfall arrived this morning to everyone's surprise. It didn't stick around very long, in fact, the weather is supposed to get up to +14 later in the week. To capture the moment I made a painting from the vantage point of my apartment, literally sitting inside of it looking out the front doors at the familiar gas station. Other than the cold weather it was quite a nice day, mostly blue sky and bright sun, which gave the whole scene a warm aura. 

First Snow, Somerled Avenue, NDG, 5 3/4 x 7 3/4", cold press, watercolour, 2020

 

That reminded me a lot of an old painting I did while in conference in Banff, sitting inside of the Fairmont hotel I did a few paintings of the mountains. It is one of the paintings is in my Parents' collection, here is a picture of it in the frame:

Banff Mountain Side View, 5 x 8" cold press 2007 (No. 0277)

 Just to prove that I had the courage to paint in the winter outdoors, here is one of many outdoor winter paintings done in London Ontario, at night none the less. I remember like it was yesterday, sitting there very cold, and pleasantly surprised that the paint was not freezing up, and the parking lot lights were illuminating both my paper, and the subject matter. I love the colour of the sky, a deep rick turquoise, which contrasts the metallic blue paint of the car:  

London Bayfield Hall Parking Lot Winter, 5 x 7", cold press, watercolour, 2002 (No. 0479)

Anatomy of a Doodleism Painting

 Over the past 20 years I have pioneered an unusual style of painting I called doodleism. The term has been used by others, at least when I google it now I can find dooleism links. Try it, google the doodle, you may find a poodle or a noodle. Yes, I found an old rhyme book that my Mom had me and my sister make when were very young living in Montreal. It was in a box full of old notes, sketch books, and small lab notebooks I carried around with my while at work. In 2005 I moved to Montreal (well, back to Montreal) where I still live, to begin a post doctoral fellowship at Montreal Neurological Institute. Throughout the day I would make little notes and doodles in pocket books, which eventually got turned into scientific manuscripts, and original doodleism paintings. The first painting using these particular 2005 notes was done a few years later in 2008 it was called Lab Book #8, Stubborn Nature Revealing Herself. There was always a lag time between the date of the doodles and the date of the paintings because I doodled faster than I painted. Here are some scans from the original notebook showing a few of the characters that appear in the painting. 

Sometimes the doodles were already complete designs, even with the title written down. When that happened I would simply paint an enlarged version of it and colour it in. Here is an example, 2008's Bubble Catchers. You can click the links on the names of the paintings to see it.

As I near completion of my painting catalogue (which is now over 2000 paintings), I wondered what is my favorite painting? Like, if I had to run out of the apartment in an emergency and could only save one painting, which one would it be? The smart answer would be the one closest to me. But it is hypothetical. My favorite painting for many reasons is a quirky doodleism painting called The 20/10 Solution. It was a turning point stylistically, and it just seemed to capture many of the elements that define my various painting styles. It is not even the best painting necessarily, just my personal favorite. Here are some of the doodles that I used to create the painting, from August of 2008. In the painting I may have embellished a little, there was no cigarette or cocktail bar in the sketches!

Saturation Costs Study #1

 During the COVID-19 pandemic I refrained from drawing and painting things related to the situation, partly because painting is an escape for me, and partly because this blog is an escape for the people who enjoy reading it. The first such commentary painting was 'Ultramarine Sickness', although that was a double entendre for a problem with ultramarine blue pigment. The second was a location painting depicting a line up at the grocery store way back in March, which was part of the pandemic blues series, which is apparently still going on. In my laboratory notebook, April 9^th 2020, I made a doodle showing a man kissing a large virus particle under a tree, while behind him a horde of viruses were attacking a castle made of rolls of toilette paper being defended by humans in hospital garb. The tree had apples that resembled viruses. I have been contemplating doing a large painting on the theme and have most of the composition worked out. The title is inspired by MacEvoy (Handprint.com) who talked of saturation costs, that is where you loose colour intensity with certain mixes. Most of the painting is neutral grey green brown, but there are pops of really bright colour. Saturation costs also refer to the density of people and how viruses can spread.

 Saturation Costs Study #1, 6 x 8" cold press, November 2020 

Here is a scan of the notebook page with the main doodle of the character, not to mention some science notes! By the way, the science is talking about a set of molecules (cAMP) that may alter the immune system in such a way that it would make autoimmune diseases worse off. Since then we found that another molecule (cGMP) works in an opposite manner, meaning it may be good for autoimmunity. Maybe I need another blog just for science!