Green

A small lake deep in Mount Carlton Park calms to a mirror reflection. 
Distant mountains catch sunlight in their folds. 
Clouds float by.


 Being there is only half the fun as I reflect the view using paint on board. 
Plywood boards are easily portable at a short distance with paints and brushes. 
The cooler doubled as an easel that day but stumps or rocks work just as well.


Gardening



Day and night our garden provides food for the body and mind. A love of gardens extends far back into my childhood. Both vegetables and flowers fill early memories. Digging dirt and planting seeds recording visions of a world. Half the family still farming and the other half putting down roots in the city of Toronto.
Certainly, subjects for painting are easily accessed through the garden. Patterns abound, colours change, metaphors seap. Time stops within a painting, moments are captured within decisions about form and colour.

The Lake


The lake outside our door and across the road is called Springfield. It is spring fed and shallow with the deepest areas under six meters or twenty feet. My interest seems to be reflected in the obvious. The surface of the lake is where the light plays with clouds, earth and sky meet, touch, talk. The painted view is from a window. From inside the house weather does not limit the time of working.

The first series of small 3x5 inch panels was conceived to fill a steel file box found at a used equipment store. The title on the file box was Renewal. Renewal allowed play to enter the work. Colour, edges and forms flowed through and around the meeting of sky and water and land. Changing day after day, moment to moment.

Artists Spring






















View at Cranberry Lake, Halifax County,N.S.

Spring creeps back onto the land as the warm southern air brings relief from the frozen winter. Ice and snow begin to melt and there is heat in the air. Sometimes, if the sun is out and the wind is down acrylic paint is once again useable outdoors.

Working outdoors is an aspect of art making that draws me back over and over again. I am not sure what it is about the process but as an artist I become strangely attached to the site, the materials and the record.



artwalk





























































I would like to share a journey and some images I have created along the way. I will jump around as memory and images allow.

For the past few years my art focus has been on creating quick insitu sketches using acrylic paint on boards. I also use canvas on wooden stretchers on occasion but the boards are easily transported in a pack and will take a beating along the way.

The process continues from day to day in a way that seems to stem from early drawing experience, possibly early childhood drawing experience, adding a dynamic element to the work for me. Sketches can stand alone as finished work or in some cases get reworked and incorporated into other works.