Little Italy (Henri Julien Avenue) Montreal, Quebec

Great views are hard to find in the city, most of the sight lines are blocked by buildings or inaccessible without trespassing. But there are always scenes of interest, scenes that capture the ethos of the neighborhood. This scene caught my eye, it is just off the bike path in little Italy on Henri Julien Avenue, looking West into a small industrial area. The deep brown and rust colour and rugged textures really stood out against the blue sky, and the occasional pops of red completed the scene. It was a difficult location, although there was a relatively comfortable place to sit on the edge of a plant box across the street, the sun was pounding down full force most of the time. That made the paint dry quickly which helped to get in all the detail, but it was tough to endure for 35 minutes. There was a fence in between but I omitted it for clarity. This reminds me of a painting I made in Glasgow of a factory with smoke stacks. The object seen in the bottom left is, strangely enough, a small motorboat covered in a white tarp.

7 x 10 " hot press (block) watercolour, August 2019

Snakes and Puzzles

Final post of the day, here is an abstract painting I made awhile ago on a hot-press block. I am unsure when this was done, in fact, it was missing a signature, title, and date so it is a real puzzle. I believe it was done some time around 2009 when I made 'Addictive Puzzle'. There is a curious use of lighting- all the objects are lit by a source in the upper right, but the painting shows a light source in the upper left. It was done quite deliberately, because the cube shape under the light bulb clearly has the shadow on the wrong side. The background is like a tapestry that has its own internal light source, unaffected by the external lights. There also seems to be a yellow light from bottom right, perhaps signifying a fire.

15 x 11" hot press (block) watercolour. 2009?

Sutton, Quebec

When I am landscape painting my goal is to capture the ethos of a scene, to record the spirit of what makes the landscape unique. The cliché is always tempting, when in Paris, paint the Eiffel tower, but there is always more to it than the obvious. We walked around the town of Sutton for awhile and then I spent about an hour on my own looking for a painting location. There was the obvious: the spectacular Mont Sutton looming in the distance, and the amazing store fronts on the main street, but when you got off the main street and looked around I saw an older, somewhat dilapidated (seedy) side of the town. Aluminum siding, paint peeling off, the smell of something rotten near the train tracks. For the painting, I found a spot to sit on a small bridge that spanned a creek that runs through town.The spot is very close to a local brew-pub so I could hear people chatting loudly and I could practically smell the hops and malted barley. I was uncomfortable, sitting on top of a guard rail and leaning down to get at the water sitting on the ground, and a hot sun was blazing on my back. The painting captures all the elements that make Sutton what it is, the neat, cottage-style storefront seen in the left hand side of the painting, the seedy shack in the middle made from a patchwork of building materials, and that deep emerald green Mont Sutton looming on the skyline. Cilei made a short video of me doing the painting too, I sure looked like a tourist!

5 x7 " cold press, Watercolour 2019

Horizon Hotel view from parking lot, Sutton, Quebec

I bet that the Horizon Hotel has one of the best views from any hotel parking lot in the world ...it was also the easiest painting location to find, just go out the lobby door and behold the vista. The sun was going down so I had to paint fast before the light changed too much. I liked this composition because it felt like the house was being crushed by the multiple layers of trees and hills going all the way up to the horizon. One thing I learned from studying Vincent (Van Gogh) was to give each element its own personality, the field, the tree, the sky etc. So here each tree or group of trees has its own colour scheme, lines, and general feel. By controlling the layering I created a sense of vast depth that takes your eyes from the warm reds and detail of the house, around the plethora of foliage, and off into the distance.

5 x 7" cold press Watercolour. Aug. 2019

Mont Sutton, (Abenakis rock, near Lake Mohawk), Quebec

Mont Sutton is a popular ski hill between Montreal and the border with Vermont, it is also criss-crossed with hiking paths. This view was from the Lake Mohawk trail at the Abernakis rock lookout point at about 730 meters. The rock, which you can see in the foreground of the painting is very large, about the size of the roof of a house. We sat there having lunch on top of the rock, the breeze was cool and the view was spectacular! There were trees growing just on the edge of the rock, which occupy the middle ground (and center focal point) of the painting, and there are rolling hills overlapping in the distance. Recently I had the idea that a painting has to be like a three course meal, appetizer, main course, and dessert. In other words, I try to emphasize three things, in this case, the rock with its great sweeping arc and mossy rough texture, the wind-swept pine tree in the middle, and the deep-blue vastness of the background hills. Bon appétit !

7 x 10" hot press (block) Watercolour Aug. 2019

PS, a 'block' is a type of paper where the sheets are initially in a stack and connected by an adhesive which you cut off when the painting is done. This obviates the need to stretch the paper and makes it a lot easier to transport on a landscape painting trip. I just bought two new ones.

Fate of the World

At times I really try to push the technique in a new, strange direction just to see what the results are. In this painting (along with Dream Tree, and a few others), the paint was applied in great, wet blobs and allowed to dry over night before applying another layering in the same manner. Wet-in-wet washes were then applied to fill in the empty spaces. As I write this blog I can't remember exactly what I was thinking at the time other than I probably had a few too many beers in me. The idea of contrasting the blue and orange like that was a challenge that I was working on for awhile and never felt that I really got it. It is supposed to be like ice cubes sitting on flowing-lava, or cold rain on a hot fire. The title may have something to do with climate change? I like how at the very top of the painting, roughly in the middle, it looks like clouds with sun poking through, then the rest of it is just a mess of hot cold, and splotches of green. Maybe I should try this one again on a larger format.

15 x 22" cold press Watercolour, 2006 (?)

La Cité de l'énergie, Saint-Maurice River, Quebec

Here is another painting from the Shawinigan trip done at La Cité de l'énergie park which is right next to the hydro electric dams on Saint-Maurice River. The water slows to a standstill and many water lilies were growing. In the background is an old aluminum plant, and of course, the ever-present power lines that crisscross the landscape heading off into the unknown. Usually I omit the hydro lines from my paintings but in this case they were integral to the ethos of the scene. Water, power, industry, the city of energy. And Jean Chrétien former prime minister of Canada, he is also from Shawinigan. In fact there is a museum dedicated to his achievements, and displaying the huge number of gifts he received from other countries over the years. Hydro electric dams have a big impact on the environment, but it was good to learn more and to see one first hand; we took the tour of an operational one and it was really neat inside.

7 x 10" hot press (block) Watercolour, 2019 August