It's 12 below in the studio this morning!

It's minus 12 this morning in the studio, my canoes are put away for the season and the summer seems like a long way away! The paint is a bit stiffer then usual today(due to the cold night), but I started 3 new large paintings.  While it is cold, the light is bright and clear and painting is a pleasure. A couple of sweaters, long johns and a small electric heater keep away the cold.

I have been working on a lot of winter and snow but I also wanted to do a couple of summer pictures as well just to change things up a bit. Here is a taste of what will be going off to the gallery in the next week.

Ontario Society of Artists - A New Member!

Last weekend I participated in the new member selection show for the OSA. And I was accepted into the society.  This was a 2 step process - First submit a written proposal and a number of images online. Then present 5 original works for evaluation to the membership. The venue was the historic Ashbridges House in downtown Toronto. All in all a great experience and a chance to take a step back to reiterate my goals and renew my art spirit!

Founded in 1872, the Ontario Society of Artists is Canada's longest continuing art society.

We are a province-wide professional association for visual artists living and working across the Province. Our mandate is to foster and promote the visual arts through exhibitions, special projects,and arts advocacy.  Our membership roster includes many of Canada's best-known painters, sculptors, printmakers, and photographers. We currently have an active membership of over two hundred artists, working in a wide range of media and from diverse backgrounds and cultures. We are a non-profit, charitable organization, which is administered by a volunteer executive council of artists.

Each year we present exhibitions of works by members, and a juried art exhibition open to all artists working in two and three dimensional media.  We encourage emerging artists, established artists and artists from diverse backgrounds to apply to our organization for membership.

I look forward to meeting all of the members, participating in the shows and providing my assistance were needed to promote the society and the art community.

 

Can't wait till it snows!

We have had a few flurries here but nothing that has remained on the ground yet. I have been painting snowy landscapes for the past couple of weeks and it is always good to have a walk around in the snow again to see how it looks first hand. I dropped off a small number of sketches  and a couple of larger paintings to the gallery this week. Here is a sample:

Artist's Talk - Revealing the Landscape

 

Next week I will be doing a talk to kick off my new show at Artworld of Sherway and I though I would provide an outline of what I wanted to get into the talk.

Landscape  - a classic Canadian motif.

Great Canadian landscapes – my influences.

How I find the right landscapes – ideas, trips, photos, sketches.

How does it become a painting – composition, sizes, colour, technique.

My hope is that this talk is of interest to you, and let me know if there is anything else you would like to talk about. See you there Sept 20 at 7PM.

Here is a sneak preview to a few new images that will be in the show. All from a recent trip to the North Channel, Manitoulin and Killarney.

Snow, water and light.

This morning my wife and I were drinking coffee looking out back at the new snow and the subject turned to colour. Specifically blue. This morning the snow is mostly blue with a touch of peach where the early sunlight filters through the trees. When we are asked what colour is snow, we invariably say snow is white. But on observation snow is never white. And that is why it is challenging to paint. Snow is every colour – in a way it is like water - always changing always a different look – sometimes blue, or pink, or yellow or green, and sometimes a strange combination of all colours. 

I have been working on 2 series of sketches that works through some of these ideas. One series is about water – light effects on a shoreline at various times of the day and various weather effects. The second series is about snow and the play of light across this “white canvas”. A close look reveals that there is very little true white in any of these sketches. 

But what is realized is that snow and water share many of the same qualities – a shadow of one colour, a reflection of another, and highlight of a third. It is the quality and balance of these three that becomes important to the outcome of the light effect.

Snow, water and the effect of light – it is a simple combination that has held the artist’s interest for centuries.  To capture their quality, you need to look at the subject with new eyes each time - for it is always changing.

 

Always chasing the light.

Winter is here, although we have had little snow to this point. This has not slowed down the enthusiasm for winter images. I have just finished a couple of 30 x 40 canvases where I have tried to depict the feeling of light on snow in 2 different ways.

The first is at evening, just as the light is fading - an image of a woodcutters wagon coming along a road. This image is tip of the hat to some great Quebec painters who capture this motif with amazing results.
The other image is of an old maple at the edge of a field. Here the morning light filters through the trees from behind. This provides a great opportunity to explore the dappled effect of the sunshine on the snow and the suggestion of the shadows of the branches.

Many of you are curious to see a painting in progress so I have included some photos for the prelim sketches as well as the canvases at various stages.

To all, enjoy a great holiday season and thank you again for your support.

Painting in Gaspe

I spent a few days earlier in the summer on a tour through Quebec City and then on to Tadoussac. Tadoussac is the place where the Saguenay River joins the St. Lawrence River. It is a paradise for a painter - every direction is a painting to be done. Deep blue water, rocky cliffs and big, big skies. The town itself has it's charm - specifically the white clapboards and red roofs of the hotels and churches perched up above the cove.

The surrounding bluish green hills, and sparkling water created many opportunities to work on  landscapes full of light and atmosphere. Of particular interest to me on this trip was the rendering of distance - far shoreline, distant mountains, clouds. With these paintings I hoped to work on the effects of light and colour seen across a distance. Using similar motifs but changing the tone I was able to practice these effects. Here are some of the results.