Robert Lemay

Things of Our Longing

2012-01-15T07:13:00.000-08:00

Candy Fruit Slices

14" x 10"

2012

"A painter in order to have a picture really feel the fullness of life needs to use glowing light, glinting light, glaring light, light which is very effusive, out-of-focus, in focus."

~ Wayne Thiebaud from the book, Wayne Thiebaud at Museo Morandi

I received the above book for Christmas this year and it's an interesting comparison - Thiebaud and Morandi. Thiebaud's best known paintings depict things like lollipops, cake, ice cream cones. An image of a Thiebaud cake was used by Google on September 27, 2010 to celebrate their 12th birthday. Morandi is best known for his arrangements of monochrome bottles and anonymous rectangles.

In the same book, Thiebaud is quoted as saying,

"What I may be putting down in my paintings is, in some way, tattletale evidence of what we are as people. Introducing things of our longing or when we have a sense of intimacy."

detail of Candy Fruit Slices

Still life is constantly interesting to me because of its intimacy, because of the challenge of translating paint into the illusion of light, and because of what the objects say about us as human beings.

Below are pictures of the palette I used when painting the above picture.

The more I paint the more I realize colour gives the object its weight and it's through our experience and interaction with colour that we become sensitive to the mood of the image.

A Pleasing Unbalance - View of the Palazzo Morosini Sagredo in Venice

2012-01-01T13:08:00.000-08:00

Palazzo Morosini Sagredo

30” x 40”

I chose thisimage to paint over the holidays because I wanted to depict a full frontalportrait of a Venetian building, and then contrast it with the diagonals of theboats. The irregular verticals of the mooring posts create a pleasingunbalance as the viewer is invited into the frame via a somewhat shaky lookingwooden foot bridge over the water.

Like Canaletto,I am interested in the activity on the water. Although the buildings from

the 15th century remain unchanged, the boats and vaporetto stop are ofcourse contemporary.

The softshadows on the building facades may be compared to the shadows in the foreground - which are much deeper and darker andheavier. My palette for this painting consisted of burnt sienna,yellow ochre, cadmium orange and burnt umber for the facades. Burntumber, lamp black and cobalt blue for the windows. For the blues of theboats I used cobalt blue and cerulean blue. The sky, on this sunnyVenetian day, was composed of cerulean and a little cobalt blue andtitanium white. The mossy green and turquoise of the water wascomprised of cobalt blue and black and also burnt umber, yellow ochre.

While painting this view of Venice, I read an interesting passage in a book called Venetian Palaces by Raffaella Russo about this palazzo:

"Like many Venetian families, the Sagredos were descendants of an ancient Roman clan from the imperial period, and their name, Sagredo, is explained by the fact that their forbears were often entrusted with special state secrets."

detail of Palazzo Morosini Sagredo

You may view price and availability on my website, as well as a few more of my recent works. With thanks,

Rob

Colour, A Raw Material

2011-11-27T05:42:00.001-08:00

Jelly Beans

14" x 10"

2011

"Colour is a basichuman need…like fire and water, a raw material, indispensable to life."

~ Fernand Léger, {painter,1881-1955}

It's interesting to move from a palette of pale colours as I used in my Venetian painting, to one of bright yellow, orange, green, pink. In this painting I used almost all the primaries and secondary colours - orange was mixed with cadmium red light and cadmium yellow light. The green is a mix of permanent green and cadmium yellow light. The dark purple was achieved by mixing dioxane purple and cobalt blue. The black is a mix of lamp black and a little dioxane purple. The pink is cadmium red medium and white. So there are a lot of straight forward strong colours which are then highlighted with white to indicate gloss. The contrast of the dark tones is what gives the contents of the jar their form. There isn't much toning down within the shading of the jelly beans.

The challenge of depicting the shiny surface of the candy through the glass is what draws me to this series of paintings. We are familiar with the shape of the candy, we know what it feels like in our mouths, as we view the image, and perhaps there is a moment when the flavor is remembered.

Joseph Decker is a relatively little known artist who painted candy as well as fruit still lifes. The way he abstracts some of the candy shapes intrigues me.

Several years ago I was in New York and dropped into the Bernarducci Meisel Gallery and saw Roberto Bernardi's candy paintings. He's a hyper-realist (I would consider myself more of a perceptual realist - which is how Jack Chambers described his art) and the painting was extremely smooth - you couldn't see any brush strokes at all and there is no built up areas of paint. The work had great sparkle and clarity and was an inspiration for me to start my own series.

The painting of sweets comes from the Baroque tradition and was popular among both Spanish and Dutch artists. I'm working in the modern day continuation of the subject which has many different streams and modes.

Painting Venice

2011-11-14T08:38:00.001-08:00

The Grand Canal

16" x 24"

2011
{click on the image for a larger view}

I've always wanted to paint Venice having long been interested in the work of Canaletto. I've been to Venice twice, the first time was in 1989, a few years after I graduated from University. The second visit was in 1993 on our honeymoon. Maybe it's because I'm turning 50 next month, that I've decided to explore things that have held my interest even if they seem out of my usual subject range. At the same time, my paintings have always been about reflection, light and texture, and I can't think of a better subject than Venice to continue to learn about these phenomena.

(Detail of Above)

An Inflection of Light

2011-10-30T07:43:00.000-07:00

Lucky Lager

10" x 8"

Part of the process of working in series is that you can pursue multiple permutations of a motif. The colors and design of the Lucky Lager were remarkably different than the other crushed cans I've painted. The near total obliteration of the text, "Lucky," in this rendition calls into question the meaning of that word.

Detail of: Lucky Lager

I've painted the Classic Coke can numerous times by now, but this one is on a slightly larger scale, which changes things marginally. The forms and the lines that arise as a result of the crushing and manipulation of the structure of the can take on a presence when the scale is increased.

Coke Classic III

14" x 10"

Detail of Coke Classic III

I've painted the typewriter before as well - though only once before in its entirety. In this one I wanted the silver keys to loom out of the darkness of the machine and background. The previous whole typewriter had a light background and shadows playing over the keys. This one has an emphasis on the silveriness of the keys and other parts of the machine that are silver and thus subtly reflect other colours.

Remington Cadet

24" x 24"

Detail of Remington Cadet

The money jar has both silver and pennies in it, but no bills this time. I used a mirrored surface in this instance rather than the wood table of my previous depictions because I wanted to attempt the cooler colours and more neutral feeling of the dark grey and black glass. I also wanted to show different textures - the brushed steel of the jar's lid, the glass of the jar, the various textures and surfaces of the coins, and then the mirrored glass as a base - and see how they would play off of each other. Perhaps another interesting thing to note is that there is a button in the jar which only shows up in this rendition of the object so far.

Coin Jar

18" x 12"

Detail of Coin Jar

I mention all this to show that painting a series of objects is not just a case of dull repetition - repeating a theme or motif can be a vehicle for experimentation with all the many permutations that evolve from looking at a thing over a period of time. For an artist, this repeating of a theme can be full of discovery, inspiration and include a deepening understanding of the harmony possible concerning light, colour, surfaces.

There's a poem by the American poet Denise Levertov in which she talks about Cezanne painting the same image over and over, which says quite a lot, I think. It is the seeking for that previously unseen "inflection of light" that causes one to repeat and repeat a theme. To turn the object a degree or two, and paint it from another side, or to crush a can in a different, maybe more tortured manner. Or to wait for the light from another time of day, or from another season even, when it's lower and softer and weaker.

For Those Whom the Gods Love Less
(Denise Levertov)

When you discover
your new work travels the ground you had traversed
decades ago, you wonder, panicked,
'Have I outlived my vocation? Said already
all that was mine to say?'

There's a remedy -
only one - for the paralysis seizing your throat to mute you,
numbing your hands: Remember the great ones, remember Cezanne
doggedly sur le motif, his mountain
a tireless noonday angel he grappled like Jacob,
demanding reluctant blessing. Remember James rehearsing
over and over his theme, the loss
of innocence and the attainment
(note by separate note sounding its tone
until by accretion a chord resounds) of somber
understanding. Each life in art
goes forth to meet dragons that rise from their bloody scales
in cyclic rhythm: Know and forget, know and forget.
It's not only
the passion for getting it right (thought it's that, too)
it's the way
radiant epiphanies recur, recur,
consuming, pristine, unrecognized-
until remembrance dismays you. And then, look,
some inflection of light, some wing of shadow
is other, unvoiced. You can, you must
proceed.

from Sands of the Well

~ Please see my website for price and availability.

Show Me the Glint of Light

2011-10-08T08:14:00.000-07:00

Mock Orange Blossoms in a Crystal Glass

12" x 9"

2011

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

~Anton Chekhov

Though this is a small painting of a simple subject - flowers in a glass - it was still beautifully challenging to paint. To differentiate the planes of the flower petals and to articulate their structure was difficult because white must be subtly shaded.

Detail of

Mock Orange Blossoms in a Crystal Glass

12" x 9"

2011

I learn something new every time I paint glass. Every single time the light is reflected through it in a unique way. The facets of the crystal in this particular glass break the light up into little prisms of colour - so that there is the rather magical appearance of orange and blue and green. The subject of this painting, for me, is the contrast - between the light reflections on the nearly opaque surfaces of the flower petals, and the high gloss transparency of the crystal glass and the glass table. The contrast between glint and gloss, you could say.

Coloured Mud

2011-09-25T07:40:00.000-07:00

Three Stacks of Books

36” x 48”

The two books with the raised spines and gold details on the top of columns one and two are from a friend originally from England. One is a Matthew Arnold book of poems and one is Shakespeare. The books really are exquisite works of art unto themselves. Some of the other books with the canvas spines are old university textbooks that belonged to my parents. The really water damaged and wrinkled book on the top of the third column is a book of Tennyson poems with a publication date of 1891 and inscribed with my grandmother's name. She only achieved a grade nine education and this would have been a school book.

I mention all this because I think of the intersections of people in time, those people in our lives, and the knowledge and experiences we share. We loan books to each other, recommend them, and sometimes they are left to us by loved ones who have passed on. The stacks of books literally represent this type of collective memory.

I was partially inspired to do this book series by the book objects of the German artist Anselm Kiefer. The 'books' are about the material, about history - they contain no words, only masses of muck and deterioration. He is quoted as saying, "I create history, I do history, history is my mud."

Oil paint is itself a coloured mud applied with a stick to canvas - in the process of painting the many textures of these books I can't help but feel connected to history and all the other artists who used the same materials centuries ago and since.

Anselm Kiefer

Three Stacks of Books (Detail)

36” x 48”

This painting will be in the "Larger than Life" group show at the Wallace Galleries in Calgary from October 1-13, 2011.

Detail of: Three Stacks of Books

36” x 48”

Creative Effort - Recent Nest Paintings

2011-09-05T08:33:00.000-07:00

Five Nests, 24" x 36"

Detail of Five Nests

Nest, Books and Table, 24" x 16"

In an essay by Petra Ten-Doesschate Chu titled "Emblems for a Modern Age: Vincent van Gogh's Still Lifes and the Nineteenth-Century Vignette Tradition," the idea of the nest as a symbol of the artist's creative effort is examined. She overlays the thinking of Michelet onto the work of Van Gogh, in particular his paintings of bird's nests. She quotes, the nests "signify works of art and the artist himself, his creative effort and the total involvement and supreme suffering that creativity necessitates." Not that I think my suffering is in any way 'supreme,' but I like the interpretation of the nests as creativity itself rather than as sentimental or quaint objects. This is what I like about realism - how what appears as straightforward transcription can have multiple meanings and nuances to different viewers.

- note: this essay can be found in The Object as Subject: Studies in the Interpretation of Still Life edited by Anne W. Lowenthal

Still Life with Three Birds' Nests, 1885, Vincent van Gogh

Another artist I have been looking at a lot lately is Antonio Lopez Garcia. You can actually see him painting in some clips on YouTube (including the one below) and I daresay our approach is somewhat similar in that he uses the act of painting to try to understand what he sees and to articulate the space around him. Honesty and clarity are the byproducts of this, rather than 'effect.'

~ for more information on price and availability please view the 'paintings' page on my website.

Portrait of a Typewriter

2011-08-21T08:14:00.000-07:00

Remington, 2011

14" x 10"

I'm interested in paintings that appear to be black and white, or tonally uniform, but that are actually made with colours. This is something that I notice in Andrew Wyeth's work. I'm looking at his "Wind from the Sea" (1948) right now, where everything is grey and white and cream. The grass is in dull ochre colours and the pine trees are almost black, with no touch of green.

In my small typewriter painting, I mixed the black using cobalt blue and burnt umber - this gives a warm black which you can darken by adding more blue. The reflection of light off of the silvery metal produces little prism-like effects with shots of orange reflecting on the edges of the keys. The black of the ribbon and roller has magenta purple and yellow ochre mixed with lamp black and titanium white to give the illusion of the matte finish. I wanted to create a feeling of intimacy in the painting by concentrating on the shadows playing on the keys.

I completely admired the scale of the Royal typewriter that Warhol did and that I saw at the AGA here in Edmonton this summer. Of course, it has a more graphic and iconic quality than my smaller more intimate 'portrait.'

Detail of Remington

Three Campbell's Soup Cans

2011-07-03T10:42:00.000-07:00

Three Campbell's Soup Cans

12" x 18"

This is the first painting I completed after the work for my show was done. Obviously inspired by Warhol. I've painted soup cans before but after working with the crumpled beer and coke cans, I wanted to see what would happen when the soup cans were also distressed and distorted and the labels peeled away.

Detail of: Three Campbell's Soup Cans

We went to the Warhol exhibit at the AGA yesterday and I was inspired all over again by his looser and more splashy areas. The first time I would have seen Warhol paintings in person was in 1982. I went to New York and visited MOMA. I was 20 years old and this was the first time I'd even been on a plane. Since then I've seen them in many places and have always been interested in his domestic subject matter and his treatment of objects and products. You wouldn't think that someone whose goal is to master a certain type of realism would be as attracted to Warhol as I have been, but he's always been there off to the side for me, even when I've mainly devoted myself to a study of baroque paintings and modern realism.

Detail of: Three Campbell's Soup Cans

Today in the Edmonton Journal

2011-06-17T05:40:00.000-07:00

(detail)

There's an interview with me by Janice Ryan in today's Edmonton Journal. Show opens tomorrow at the Douglas Udell Gallery.

The Surface of Things

2011-06-12T07:32:00.000-07:00

The soft white and greys of the crushed Molson Canadian can reminded me of painting the drapery that I often included in earlier work. The surface of the can, the wrinkles and folds, might also remind the viewer of Claudio Bravo's wrapped package paintings.

I've tried to leave the strokes more unblended, to give a flickering quality to the surface that mimics the shine and reflections in the actual can. Even though the "I am Canadian" advertising campaign is long over, it still resonates when viewing the label. I'm interested in saying something about the surfaces of things, the way that an object may be twisted and distorted, folded and creased, and in this case rented, to convey more than just a flat surface might. I want to complicate how we see an object, even one so common as a Molson Canadian beer can.

It's satisfying to paint these smaller images in the lead up to my show on the 18th of June. I'm presently working on another - a Labatt's Blue can.

Claudio Bravo Has Died

2011-06-07T08:46:00.000-07:00

Shawna told me early this morning that Claudio Bravo had died. I still remember the day she brought home the Rizzoli book on Bravo from a local bookstore - I was over the moon. It's hard to describe what exactly this meant pre-internet time when it was hard to get information on a particular contemporary artist. Occasionally Bravo would show up in an art magazine but my only other access at that time was the University of Alberta library. In their holdings they had a catalogue of his first show at Marlborough Gallery in 1981.

At the time realism was not 'in' and the stuff Bravo was doing was high focus and his subject matter must have seemed odd. He really was an example of an artist who followed his own path. He was guided by art of the past rather than the fashion of the time and was a huge inspiration for me. I was lucky enough to finally see some of his work in person when I went to Marlborough Gallery in 2008. The paintings were subtle and quietly evocative, just as the reproductions I'd been so thrilled to find nearly thirty years before.

To view more of Bravo's images, this is a treasure trove. Claudio Bravo's site, here.

Two New Works for my Exhibition in Edmonton on June 18

2011-06-04T09:20:00.000-07:00

Three Pears

12" x 18"

Jewel Jar with Candies

16" x 12"

These are two more images of painting that will be in my show in two weeks. The next few days will be spent framing and taking the work to the gallery. I'm hoping to paint two more small works for the show and will update you when I do.

I've written an artist statement for the show and thought I'd share it here:

Artist Statement

Robert Lemay

2011

The history of still life painting is, among other things, a history of the object and a record of how we consume, what we desire, and what we hold dear. The current global financial crisis and the recession have left many feeling that the old patterns of spending and consumption are no longer viable. There is much to embrace in the new austerity.

Still life has been my subject for 25 years and I’ve never tired of it because of the boundless permutations and because of all the things that objects silently speak.

When I was walking our dog a couple of years ago I came across a crumpled coke can – suburban detritus. It’s surprising actually, how many you see when you’re out walking and are attuned to looking for what is discarded. As an object of consumer culture it’s endlessly interesting. As a commodity, it’s accessible to most, and people from all walks of life drink it. When the can is crushed, the viewer fills in with the eyes the parts of the image that become illegible. It’s still recognizable, however changed. There’s a sort of carelessness, represented by the crushed can, anger, even. The early branding of Coca-Cola was ‘the pause that refreshes.’ It offered the idea that even in rough times, one could be uplifted by this product, bolstered to carry on.

When I first saw a crushed Coke can in the grass beside the walking path, it seemed to me to speak to a disillusionment with this sort of message, even though clearly, the product had still been consumed. There is an understanding that the world is a much more complicated place than it ever has been, and that the ways in which we consume are also more fraught.

The book series I’m working on explores the structural and poetic qualities of worn and tattered old books. So much of our experience has become a data stream – we move from iPhone to computer to television to video games. And while these are all valuable modes of communication and entertainment, they are all very intangible. It seem to me that the more we turn to digital forms, the more we will crave things that we can touch and smell, and experience through the senses. The weight and texture of objects will only become more important to us. The practice of painting itself – this process of smearing pigment on a canvas – is also very sensory. People have predicted for some time that painting is dead, that books are becoming outmoded – but in fact I think that they will in some ways become more important – more loved and better scrutinized.

Exhibition - June 18 - Edmonton - You're Invited

2011-06-04T09:11:00.000-07:00

D O U G L A S U D E L L G A L L E R Y

Robert Lemay - New Work

EDMONTON

Please Join us June 18th, for an exhibition of New

Work by Robert Lemay

Opening Reception - 11am – 2pm

Join us for Brunch

Artist will be in Attendance

Douglas Udell Gallery

For more information or to preview the paintings, please contact the Gallery.

10332 – 124 Street 780.448.4445

Work for Upcoming Exhibition at Douglas Udell Gallery in Edmonton

2011-05-29T10:19:00.000-07:00

Nest and Four Books

24" x 16"

These are images of some of my recent paintings. I've been working hard toward my exhibition - opening at Douglas Udell Gallery in Edmonton on Saturday, June 18, 2011.

Detail of Nest and Four Books

Pomegranates, Late Afternoon Light

28" x 30"

Detail of Pomegranates, Late Afternoon Light

Lilacs in Mason Jar

20" x 30"

Detail of Lilacs in Mason Jar

Revisiting the Remington Cadet

2011-05-14T09:40:00.000-07:00

Typewriter II, 18" x 18"

It's interesting to revisit an object that I've painted before - this is my second time painting our Remington Cadet typewriter. Even though it's the same object, my approach was quite different. And the lighting is completely different - the angle of the sun was higher and instead of my usual side-lit orientation the light is coming from above. Part of each key is shaded by the one above it, and the softer, filtered light gives the metal a more faded look. When I photographed it, the light bounced off the metal producing prism effects, so there are actually some bright orange and blue colours produced from the white light. The table the typewriter is sitting on is a seafoam blue, and this also seems to reflect off the metal and changes how the machine is seen.

Detail of Typewriter II

There's been a lot of attention to typewriters in the news lately and I thought it would be useful to provide some links below to some of the stories and various other cool typewriter stuff.

Last Words on the Typewriter (The Guardian)

There's a Lot to Love About Typewriters (The Telegraph)

Most Definitely My Type

World's Last Manual Typewriter Factory Closes

Boston Typewriter Orchestra

The Virtual Typewriter Museum

The USB Typewriter

And meanwhile, did you know that the word 'typewriter' is the longest word you can spell from the QWERTY row of your keyboard?

Check out some typing trivia here.

Book Paintings - Video

2011-05-08T12:57:00.000-07:00

Or, watch on quietube.

Featured Arts Interview in Canadian Interviews

2011-05-04T05:36:00.000-07:00

"My own painting relies on, and has as its main subject, the response of different textures to light and their interaction with light. In one sense, I’m not painting objects, I’m painting light reflections."

Here is the link to an interview I did over email with Canadian Interviews. Thanks for taking a look.

Particle by Particle

2011-04-22T12:32:00.000-07:00

I've been reading Man with a Blue Scarf by Martin Gayford where he describes the experience of sitting for a portrait by Lucian Freud. Freud works from the live model so he sees the person differently every time he paints. I work from photographs, usually a bunch of photos - some showing details, some showing the whole composition with various light exposures. This is necessary to get the level of information I want in each object or surface. Lighter parts of the photograph tend to be overexposed, so I'll shoot specific photos of that part of the composition, adjusting the light until I have the information I want. I want more information in my paintings than any one photograph could hold.

I don't think I could paint from life because I use direct sunlight, which changes rapidly. But in thinking about Freud's process, the way that the element of time becomes embedded in his paintings because of the duration of his process, and comparing this to my own process, made me think of what time means to my work. What has meant a lot to me, is this thing that Jack Chambers said, and I can't find the exact quotation, but it was something like: Viewing a good painting is like stepping off the conveyor belt of time and making yourself aware of the moment in which you're living.

Chambers also said a painting is created particle by particle. This is the kind of build up of forms that interests me. The scrutiny involved is similar to the repeated looking and placing of marks which Lucian Freud is described as doing.

In the painting above, I took pains to develop the textures. The perception of texture comes from the experience of light in the 'real' world. I attempt to structure my two dimensional marks on canvas so they correspond to a reading of space and volume in 3-dimensions. The smoothness or hardness or colour of an object reflects light differently and so tells the viewer about itself. This kind of looking and experiencing becomes the subject of the painting.

How would I situate this painting in the history of still life? The art world is so fragmented now, all you can do is hope to inhabit a little section of it. This particular painting was actually inspired by an Andrew Wyeth painting, Wolf Rivers.

I've thought about Wyeth a lot in the couple of years since his death. I like his bright shots of colour surrounded by the strong neutrals of the wood in the above painting. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I'm also seeing the famous Zurbaran, which I already painted my own version of in my History of Still Life Show in 2008. (Still available at the Douglas Udell Gallery). I saw the Zurbaran when it was on loan to the Frick a couple of years ago in New York and it still resonates for me.

Typewriter Painting

2011-03-26T15:49:00.000-07:00

Or, watch on Quietube.

The Art in Amsterdam, a few notes

2011-03-06T08:22:00.000-08:00

Amsterdam was the first place I went to in Europe, April of 1984, one day after graduating from my bachelor of fine arts at the University of Alberta. While the school wasn't strong in teaching drawing at the time, I did learn a lot from Norman Yates and David Cantine. So, on my first trip to Europe, visiting the museums, the first thing that struck me about all the art that I saw, was that the drawing was not detailed and picky but that the forms were articulated in space. I still remember coming around the first corner in the Rijksmuseum and seeing Willem Claesz Heda's Still Life with Gilt Goblet. I was riveted by the little silver highlights on the filigree objects, and mesmerized by the details. Come to think of it, the painting is a sort of encyclopedia of still life textures. It would be many years before I could understand much of what I was seeing, but it confirmed my direction in realism.

I was fortunate enough to revisit Amsterdam last week. I was still drawn to the works by Claesz Heda. And of course I'm always drawn to Vermeer.

This time, the paint textures in Rembrandt surprised me. He appears to glaze over impasto layers to create atmosphere which is unique in art. Even Velasquez seems straight forward when his technique is compared to Rembrandt's. The Members of the Cloth Merchants Syndicate is particularly complex. Every hand, every face, seems in motion because of the layering technique. The Portrait of the Old Man in the Mauritshaus in Den Haag (where we went for the day) is different from this again. Instead of a golden light, the man is painted with strong flesh tones, contrasted with shades of black and white in his clothes and collar. The face is a mass of pinkish white blobs of paint, where you can see where Rembrandt scribbled with his brush end in the paint for texture. The eyes are sunken black smudges surrounded by islands of built-up texture. Again, the way the collar and cuffs of the man exist simultaneously as sheets of white paint and objects in space is extraordinary. I could go on and probably will as these trips filled with art viewing overload one, and resonate long after.

Walking along the Spiegelwartier, north of the Rijksmuseum, we were able to see some contemporary art galleries with some good work. The display below spoke to me for obvious reasons.

The work at the Lieve Hemel Gallery was also of particular interest. The show on display was of contemporary Dutch realists who were updating the traditions in interesting ways.

The Real Thing: 6 Portraits

2011-02-13T13:38:00.000-08:00

The 6 portraits - to be sold as a set. These paintings will be in the upcoming show at Douglas Udell Gallery in Vancouver.

The palette used to paint the cans, with the actual coke cans in the background.

The palette again....

The crushed cans.

Saskatchewan Champagne

2011-01-23T07:18:00.000-08:00

Old Style Pilsner

10" x 8"

I might have subliminally chosen the Lethbridge Pilsner, or Old Style Pilsner, as the first in a series of beer can paintings, because I spent a large part of my childhood visiting my grandparents in Lethbridge. Rather than the universally recognized Coke logo, the beer cans I plan on painting will be more idiosyncratic. I started with a very unusual, tricky to paint label, unique because it hasn't been overly redesigned through the years.

The brewery was one of the first things you saw on the way into Lethbridge and they had a garden in front which spelled out the logo and used the colours of the label, all done in flowers. It really was beautiful. On the label, the black outline of the brewery is in the upper lefthand corner.

The other elements of the label: train, stagecoach, car, tee-pee, bi-plane etc - all evoke a certain nostalgia. The crumpling distorts the image, fracturing those elements well-known to Old Style enthusiasts. Searching for the crows or bunnies in the image, (a sort of sobriety test) becomes impossible in the crushed, painted version. Uniquely Canadian, the beer has accumulated nicknames, including Vitamin P and "Saskatchewan Champagne."

So, while it's not iconic in the universal way that a Coca-Cola label is, this label has a history and the beer, a legion of devotees.

A Preoccupation with Contemplation

2011-01-08T09:45:00.000-08:00

I was recently asked by my Calgary gallery to consider painting something with fruit and drapery as they have a client who is potentially interested. The image I painted of pomegranates and drapery is from a photograph I took five years ago, when I used a film camera. I remember the anxiety I always felt during a shoot - hoping I'd captured usable material. I had to bracket and shoot a whole roll of film to get a couple of images that I'd be satisfied with, and then sometimes, I'd never even use them because my painting process is considerably slower than this other part of the process.

I had to expose the pomegranates and the drapery separately, in the photo for the above image, to get the detail I wanted in both. I referenced both photographs when painting. So, although I'm not a photorealist, it's interesting to compare exposures that couldn't actually exist in a single photograph, and have them work together in a painting. It reminds me of how baroque painters would incorporate flowers from different seasons into a single bouquet, when they wouldn't have occurred naturally together. They would sketch and paint details of the flowers to use as references.

When I took the photo, I had been very interested in exploring the sculptural possibilities of drapery and had been reading a book called, Fabric of Vision: Dress and Drapery in Painting by Anne Hollander. She says, "Painters might use drapery to infuse their canvases with extra vitality and raw beauty, whether to suggest human power or true divinity, to enhance the tailored clothing they were scrupulously recording, or to improve the look of fruit on a plate." Of course I was interested in improving the look of the fruit, in using the drapery but also, as Hollander says, in infusing the image with holiness, and in exploring the still life as a sort of 'residual altar.' I had painted a show in 2003, called "A Trace of Offerings," in which I was exploring the silence, serenity, and contemplative potential of the still life. I was also looking at the still life as a kind of offering, particularly in the case of flowers.

I learned a lot in revisiting this particular image, and it also reconfirmed my present path, my preoccupation with the stacks of books, for I find them also to be a site of contemplation, silence and meditation.

Architectural Moments

2010-12-28T06:30:00.000-08:00

Three Pears and Books

30" x 48"

With the painting "Three Pears and Books," I was interested in contrasting the perishable fruit with the 100 to 200 year old books. I wanted to emphasize the earthy colours of the books and table and then bring in the primary reds of the pears to see what sort of music would occur. The warm, natural sunlight striking the facades of the books created deep and satisfying shadows. I began to think of the stacks of books as architectural moments - each book a building block that reminded me of the crumbling facades of old buildings. The pears seem to me like protagonists in a silent drama.

In the age of the Kindle, Kobo, Sony E-Reader, Ipad, and etc., I want to closely examine the book as a physical object or artifact that needs to be commemorated and I want to study it as a sculptural object, but also as one that lasts. Their persistence as objects is what intrigues me.

I had known the work of Manolo Valdes, but had not seen his book sculptures until recently. I think we approach the book as object in a similar way. The monumental, slightly comical, rickety quality of his sculpture is appealing. There is a humility and warmth created in the way he uses his material that I admire.

Following are three details of the above painting:

All the Cokes are Good

2010-12-04T15:41:00.000-08:00

These three paintings (pictured here side by side and separately below) will be on view at the Douglas Udell Gallery in Edmonton at their Christmas show on Saturday, December 11. Each of the paintings will sell for $1100.00. I first got the idea to paint Coke cans after I had researched Warhol's Campbell's soup cans for my "history of still life" series in 2008.

The image to the left is one that I painted in my own style in 2008 - a re-interpretation or reconfiguration of the iconic image. Warhol's version with the torn label is an image that has stuck with me since then. Maybe Warhol is more remembered for the soup cans, but the coke bottles are also worth revisiting. This Coke bottle recently went for $35 million U.S. Warhol's well-known quotation regarding Coke:

"What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it."

I listen to CBC while I paint. I begin working at about 5 or 5:30 am and at that time the BBC is on. I heard a show recently about how Coke is the most widely distributed product in the world. In the remotest parts of Bangladesh and Zambia, Coke is sold. Many places without electricity use gas generators to run cooling units for the beverages. So - Coke and World Health officials have started putting small health packages inside crates of Coke which are transported on bicycles and by pack animals. The packets include anti-malerial and anti-dehydration medicine and other basic medicines which help mostly children fight diseases and sickness in the developing world. It's strange to think that a beverage which is basically sugar water can be so powerful.

I've painted three versions of Coke cans to date, though of course there are more. The crumpled cans are interesting because they create, visually, a kind of resistance to reading them. You have to fight a little to recognize them. In my mind, the crumpling also turns them into artifacts, rather than just pristine objects. They've been consumed and discarded. The wear and tear and violence performed on them reflect, to me, part of their journey around the globe. Of course, it's our North American culture that focuses on the zero calories, and the zero caffeine.

The Coke Zero is the can I was least familiar with. The highly reflective black ended up being very interesting to paint with all the different tones.

The red unifies all three cans. "Coke" red is a combination of cadmium red light and cadmium red medium with my Winsor & Newton colours, with burnt umber and lamp black in the shadows. All paint manufacturers have a different cadmium red medium, I have found, ranging from almost orange, to a brick red, so it would depend what brand you use.

Warhol said, a Coke is a Coke. True. But what I'm trying to get at through my realist depictions of this mass produced beverage that so many people drink worldwide, is something unique. The crumpling and treatment of each can is subtly different. The letters in the logo are twisted and distorted in particular ways. The cans are all made of aluminum, but the point at which they collapse or crumple, are distressed and give in to the force applied - each of these is unique to the can, and in the painting.

The kind of realist painting that I'm trying to achieve is interested in this kind of seeing. I'm not interested in painting the potential uniformity in things, but rather in bringing those subtle differences into view, so that we may look again at those objects we see every day.

Organization of a Painting

2010-11-23T18:24:00.000-08:00

Twenty Books, 30" x 48"

This is the largest painting I've done in some time. The scale of the books is approximately the same, but I wanted to work with the space around the table to see how it would affect the viewer's perception of 3-dimensionality. I wanted to play with the textures and the soft earth colours of the books and the side-lighting enabled me to show how different each of the books is with regards to the textures.

When setting up the composition book by book, I turned the middle stack to create what I think is an interesting dynamic. I hoped that this would present a sculptural and somewhat monumental quality.

I've been lately looking again at Avigdor Arikha, the Romanian-born Israeli painter, friend of Samuel Beckett, who just passed on this year, (and it was Andrew Wyeth the year before). I'm drawn to the simple, unpretentious quality of his work. He's not a hyper-realist, but has a nice light and brushy quality to his description of objects. I like his domestic observations and unusual compositions. He uses a lot of earth tones with the shots of stronger colour, and this is something that I've been conscious of doing, though maybe in a more subtle or muted mode.

Back in the 1980's, one of my professors, Dave Cantine, introduced me to the work of Arikha, and I've now, 30 years later, realized what a big influence his work is to me. What is most powerful to me is the way that he conveys, through the medium of paint, the texture of an object, with surprisingly little detail.

When I was in art school, Dave Cantine brought me back a catalogue of Arikha's from the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. I'm pretty sure I didn't seem grateful enough at the time, but have poured over this particular volume for many years.

From, the catalogue, a quotation by Arikha:

"And I notice with time, that as I get closer and closer to what I truly see, the truer the painting becomes, the more logically it organizes itself. The relationships on the painted surface unfold in an absolutely unpredictable way, and in a logic that I grasp in the course of painting, increasing my state of intensity. That the painting then organizes itself organically depends entirely on this state of intensity I may be in. The lack of such a state of intensity will inevitably bring about failure. Hence the small number of my works."

Tutorial on Mixing Paint, Creating Textures and Blending Tones

2010-11-13T10:40:00.000-08:00

Featured

2010-11-01T18:54:00.000-07:00

I'm really proud to be listed on the Winsor & Newton site as a featured artist. I've been using their paints for years and love the quality of them.

As well, I've been mentioned on Nathalie Foy's blog which is about books on books. I'm a fan of books about books, for example, Club Dumas by Arturo Perez Reverte and The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, so this was a big thrill for me.

Visual Parallels

2010-10-20T19:07:00.000-07:00

Books with Playing Cards, Money and Postcard

24" x 36"

I wanted to create interesting counterpoints to the solid structure of the two stacks of books. I interspersed playing cards, money (an old Canadian one dollar bill), sheet music and a postcard of the boulevards of Paris. The coins are left over from a trip to England and the 1000 lira bill depicting Galileo is from our honeymoon to Italy in 1993.

I was thinking of historical paintings like this one by de Heem. Or, this one. As well, a contemporary artist who has done some excellent book paintings is Guillermo Munoz Vera.

My painting also references the tromp l'oiel tradition of still life. I've attempted to make the torn and crumpled cards appear to protrude from the surface. I've always admired the letter rack paintings popular in the 17th century such as those by Edward Collier.

Each of the red books is a slightly different colour and it was interesting to define those. The softer or more rust coloured ones were painted with burnt siena, cadmium red medium and burnt umber. The brightest red book on the left side was painted with cadmium red light, yellow ochre and a little bit of white. I like how the diamond on the ace rhymed with the bright spot on the red book. These kind of visual parallels are what keeps me interested in a composition. The queen of hearts juxtaposed with the queen on the old one dollar bill is also something that was interesting to paint. It was a challenge to capture both the graphic quality on the playing card, and then also the quality of the engraving on a bill.

Detail

I felt very strongly when I was painting this image that there were layers of memory embedded in the stacks of books as I looked closely at the postcard, sheet music, the old money and playing cards. The shadows that the objects created were meaningful because of what they hid, and also illuminated. The shadows almost become objects themselves, part of the sediment.

The titles of most of the books are obscured because I've chosen to make the books more important as objects rather than emphasize their exact contents. However, it might be interesting to know that some of the books are by Victor Hugo, Henry Fielding and Zane Grey. One of the books is a Norwegian - English dictionary. (My grandmother was Norwegian). And yet another is a book of poems by Robert Southey.

In the Studio - Short Video of a Work in Progress, Part 2

2010-10-16T07:32:00.000-07:00

If you loved part one, you don't want to miss part two. This is the same painting, but at a much later stage. Nearly finished.

In the Studio - Short Video of a Work in Progress

2010-10-07T12:30:00.000-07:00

I took a short video of Rob painting this afternoon with our little Olympus point and shoot and thought it might be of interest. ~ Shawna

In the Studio - Photos of a Work in Progress

2010-09-30T09:06:00.000-07:00

Knowledge or Luck

2010-09-25T07:59:00.000-07:00

Books, Cards and Coins, 20" x 30"

Inspired by themes and imagery in Georges de La Tour's The Fortune Teller, this is something I've wanted to paint for some time. De La Tour was mostly forgotten from the time of his death (1652) until the 1950s. The Fortune Teller was rediscovered in a French chateau in the 50s and now hangs in The Met. It's universally acknowledged as a masterpiece.

In de La Tour's paintings of cardsharps and fortune tellers (a theme popularized by Caravaggio), the idea of luck and gambling overturning slow, steady labour is a prevalent idea - that a fortune could be won or lost at cards.

In my painting, the books can represent knowledge but the battered playing cards on top of them represent chance or fortune. So, by which means - knowledge or luck, does one acquire money? Cards, money and books are also common themes in the vanitas still lifes I'm always going on about. Examples are, Antonio de Pereda, The Dream of the Knight; Juan de Valdes Leal, Allegory of Vanity.

Formally, the vertical rectangles of the cards are balanced by the horizontal rectangles of the books. I wanted to give the Ace of Spades its own podium. (Is it a coincidence that our black lab is also named, Ace?) The playing cards accidentally went through the laundry and so the wear on them is from this. The effect is a sort of random mangling. I also wanted to achieve a visual tension that hopefully is conveyed by the balancing of the cards and the precariously perched coins.

detail, Books, Cards and Coins

looking at De La Tour, February 2009

A Difficult Colour

2010-09-11T09:18:00.000-07:00

Gum Balls 18" x 12"

The jar of gum balls seems to me to be a world unto itself. In the top half of the jar there are reflections of the windows and colours of the room in which it resides, and then all of these are reflected in the glass on which the jar sits.

The lid of the new Bernardin jar is much shinier than the old Mason jars I've painted which I think worked with the luster or sheen of the candy. The reflections were enjoyable to paint, exploring all their effects. This is what I like about realism - it allows you to observe all these possibilities through the medium of paint. When you have to create these images from scratch it really makes you see how objects and the space they inhabit are perceived.

I'd never used such saturated greens and yellows before and it was challenging to then shade the shapes so they looked three dimensional. The more muted colours of the gum balls in the table reflection were painted by mixing burnt umber and lamp black with the brighter colours. Then I added a little more lead white in the lighter areas. The following day, I scumbled some grey, made of lamp black and lead white, over the area to tone it down further without losing the colour.

For me, pink is a difficult colour to get right. You need the proper red to start with or you'll never get the shade you want. I tried an alizarin crimson, which was much too cold. So then I used a Winsor and Newton cadmium red medium, with a little yellow ochre to warm it up. This seemed to work when mixed with the lead white.

Signs of Wear

2010-09-09T05:40:00.000-07:00

Crushed Coke Can, 10" x 8"

Painting a coke can was interesting to me for a number of reasons. It's so ubiquitous - I wanted to know if I could see it differently, if I could really look at it and make it worth looking at. Crushing it allowed me to explore a structural problem - how to model the facets of light and the interference of the surface distortion and still maintain coherence.

For artists (as for so many others) the economy has been particularly challenging this past year. Art sales in New York City have been reported as being depressed by 80 percent. In still life, when a once pristine object shows signs of wear, use, or is broken, a comment is being made on the ways in which society produces objects, and how they are consumed. Painting the coke can in its mangled state represented for me in part, the stress and chaos of our current time.

A compelling example of a contemporary artist who works the imagery of broken glass is Todd Ford whose images can be seen here.

Lollipops, 16" x12"

In "Lollipops," the liquid quality of the light and the candy appealed to me. The sticks are compositionally an excellent counterpoint to the swirls. The abstract geometry of the swirling colours evoke for me the non-representational paintings of the 60s, such as Bridget Riley. The distorted, melting feeling of the glass jar, and the watery reflection in the glass table top are meant to challenge the viewer's perceptions of solidity.

It seems to me that the flecks, scratches, and imperfections of the candy, jar and table all add to the slightly melancholy feeling of this painting.

Candy Sticks

2010-08-19T18:23:00.000-07:00

When we were in New York in February of 2009 with our daughter who was then 11 years old, we visited museums and art galleries all day, and then finished up with a visit to a candy store. Two of her favorites were Dylan's Candy Bar, and Economy Candy on the Lower East Side.

I've always admired the Spanish 17th century paintings of sweets. Others stand out for me - a painting by Jospeh Decker titled "Hard Candy." Charles Bell's gumball paintings are extraordinary.

I've wanted to paint candy in some permutation for some time. The above painting came out of working with the mason jar filled with pennies and then thinking about the current economy and themes of poverty and thrift. The old-fashioned peppermint sticks potentially evoke a less affluent time. Candy sales have been used as an economic indicator - sales go up because it's a small indulgence.

Glass is always an intriguing subject to me - and I loved painting this glass in particular because of the wording on the mason jar which says: Mid West Canadian Made. The pattern of stripes distorted through the glass was interesting in its complexity - the different layers of the reflections in the glass, the candy seen through the glass, and all the light bouncing off the inside of the glass.

It's interesting, too, to think about the humble still life paintings of the 17th century - the Dutch paintings of bread and sardines, for example, with their monochrome colours, and then to compare them in your mind to the pronkstilleven or ostentatious still lifes of the past. The candy sticks painting then relates to the bodegones or humble still lifes, but the colours used are contemporary and the palette is bright and vibrant.

Some contemporary hyper-realists, such as Roberto Bernardi and Pedro Campos, have also painted candy. It's a popular and fun subject matter, given the colour, texture and shapes as well as the general appeal. Their work is really impressive and I have a great deal of appreciation for it. But instead of the photographic interpretation that they achieve, I'm after a slightly more abstracted or painterly version of the motif.

So many people ask me, don't you ever get bored of painting still life? The thing is that the permutations are endless - the possible arrangements of things that you can put on a table or slab or piece of glass. The wide variety of subject matter is endlessly intriguing. I've never painted candy before, though I've painted still life for 25 years. It's very exciting to me that I can continually find new subject matter and learn more about the process of painting through it.

Penny Jar and Book

2010-08-08T07:58:00.000-07:00

The subject I painted this last couple of weeks is titled, Penny Jar and Book. I was interested in exploring the textures and tonal ranges of the pennies, glass and leather books in combination - the browns and black and copper and tan. While painting, I mulled over the connections between the acquisition of money and the acquisition of knowledge and how they're also intertwined. I am currently reading a book called Painting for Profit: The Economic Lives of Seventeenth-Century Italian Painters by Richard Spear and Philip Sohm. In it, the authors examine how artists actually made a living in the 17th century - what they charged, how they sought commissions, and the economic hierarchy and competition among artists - remarkably similar to what happens today in many aspects.

I'm often asked about my process, and thought I would attempt to illustrate this in today's post.

I begin by gridding my photograph with thread, which corresponds to the grid I draw on the canvas. Drawing is my first step into the work. I've never been tempted to trace from a projection, because for me, this renders the line lifeless.

I usually start painting a focal point, trying for accuracy of tone. If I can get the tone right in that first area, then I know that the values will be right in the rest of the painting.

The mud of paint - it has both a solid and fluid quality. It took me years to learn to mix the colours I want -the tone, the colour and intensity that corresponds with my vision of nature.

I work area by area. After 25 years of practice, I can be accurate with the relative lights and darks which give the rich chiaroscuro that I wish to achieve.

I'm still interested and surprised by the look of objects, and the way light informs shapes.

It gets exciting when the elements start coming together - this is when the illusion of space starts to happen.

I'm trying to reproduce the tone and shape of things without too much detail - to paint light on objects, not the objects themselves.

The dark background - not pure black, but grey, purple and brown, with lots of brushy variety - unites the range of tones and completes the illusion of space on a two dimensional surface.

A Late Substitution

2010-07-25T07:35:00.000-07:00

I was reminded of the long shadows of de Chirico's piazzas with the angled light on the books while painting. To me it feels architectural in its structure.

The mango was originally a red rose, but I didn't think it matched the three-dimensionality of the books so I painted it out and let the area dry for a couple of days. I scoured the fridge, and came up with this slightly over-ripe mango, with its pitted and mottled surface. I like the way it accentuates the deep red of the spines. I photographed the mango on top of a single book so I would get the scale and the shadow and perspective right. Usually, I try out different possible compositions, replacing one object with another, in my photo shoots. Rarely do I paint an object and substitute another at this later stage of painting.

Compositionally, I wanted to contrast the leather spines with the worn and tattered paper of the books, with the vertical pile balanced against the horizontal mass of books. The paper had colours ranging from black, dark brown, to all sorts of mushroom colours, with whites for highlights. They reminded me of the crinkled drapery of some of my earlier paintings.

Describing Light

2010-07-18T07:54:00.000-07:00

I use strong direct summer light in most of my work. In the painting of the pears on the books, I'm reminded of a night scene, with the objects in moonlight, even though the scene took place at mid-day.

I use objects to describe light, rather than using light to describe objects. I'm not interested in hyper-realism - excessive detail doesn't interest me. I like the way the two anjou pears have quite different colouration. The one on the right is starting to age and has brown spots, which for me, echoed what's happening with the books. The books make a plinth with the pears as the sculptures on the top. It looks like a monument against the night sky, and at first viewing, I imagine that there is some visual confusion/uncertainty regarding what the books might be resting on.

I'm continuing to use ragged, impasto brushstrokes to describe the books. I'm also using more unblended marks, and just leaving them. Even the background is not even, but varied in tone and with visible scumbling, though this might be difficult to see in a photograph.

It was important that I was able to experience Velazquez in New York the last couple of years. His work has influenced me, encouraged me to use a more active overall brushstroke. I was struck by how Velazquez uses a feathery, almost sketchy brushstroke in his work. This gives it a flickering quality which represents light and the optical effect on surfaces that I seek.

The nest represents a place of refuge at "the top of the pile." The books echo a tree shape - and of course are literally composed of or are the product of trees. Again, I love the earth colours which pick up the colours of the leather. I tried to represent the filigree of the bindings with light brushstrokes in yellow ochre and flake white.

In both paintings, the books represent the weight of knowledge and history, while the light, delicate nest with its fragile eggs suggest a different rhythm or scale of time. The pears, a cultivated fruit, represent another scale of time as they begin to deteriorate quickly next to the books which pre-date them by 200 years, and will probably outlast me.

The Texture of Books

2010-07-11T07:18:00.000-07:00

Books are common objects in still life paintings, traditionally signifying learning, or the futility of mastering a vast amount of knowledge. Rather than placing the books as incidentals in the composition, I used them like building blocks to form an architectural whole that fills the canvas in an abstract, geometric formulation.

Most of the books I've depicted in the paintings above and below are 200 years old - a series titled "History of London." The leather bindings look like tree bark, to me. The browns and blacks and tans remind me of painters like Rembrandt, and while I was painting, I took books off my shelf on Andrew Wyeth whose work I began looking at again more closely last year when he passed away. MOMA put "Christina's World" on display when we were in New York more than a year ago, to mark his death, so I felt fortunate to have seen it in person.

In the still life with twelve books, I used the "History of London" books, but also some from the early 20th century. Most of these have canvas bindings rather than leather, and the rubbed texture of the canvas is an interesting counterpoint to the rough, bark-like leather binding. The newer books stand out and are almost startling. I used cerulean blue with a touch of phthalo blue and lamp black for the shadows, with lead white for the highlights. The dull brick red on the bindings was achieved using cadmium red deep with lamp black for the shadows. I've put a touch of burnt umber or yellow ochre in the colour to warm it up and to blend tonally with the other colours.

I'm finding I layer the paint more to depict the cracked leather whereas my usual technique is 'alla prima' - one layer of paint. I find that adding highlights or scumbling thin glazes over areas is necessary to get the subtle tonal transitions that I'm after in the leather bindings. Glazing a bit of cadmium yellow medium over dark brown gives that worn leather look.

To paint the shadows I used burnt umber and lamp black. This gives a solid dark shadow, but with a warm undertone. I like the fact that lamp black is made simply from carbon, collected from burning animal bones, usually fish bones, and mixed with linseed oil, to make a new substance. Similarly, burnt umber is exactly that - literally soil that has been roasted to darken it. To paint the highlights I used yellow ochre, flake white, and cadmium yellow light and then touches of a muddied white.

While I painted these two images, the texture of the books reminded me of a topographical map hung on a wall near a window, with the raking light revealing the texture in the late afternoon.

Penny Jar

2010-07-04T06:32:00.000-07:00

The Penny Jar originally belonged to my grandmother and at first I thought it was a Mason jar, but in Canada the Gem jar seems more prevalent. This one says, "Improved" and "made in Canada" on it as well. I thought I knew what the penny jar looked like, but while painting it found the colours and forms to be a surprise. I was interested in describing the light as it entered the jar, the way the direct sunlight beamed through the glass to intermingle with the coins, and I wanted a calligraphic brushstroke when describing textures. I was amazed at the array of colours - from deep purple, to copper, to a tawny hue.

The colours I used to paint the penny jar ranged from burnt umber, lamp black with a lot of magenta and dioxine purple for the shadows, to cadmium red light and yellow for the copper colour, to yellow ochre and flake white for the tawny pennies. The glass jar had a blue cast, so I used cerulean and ultramarine for the highlights, with lamp black for the shadows.

I've rediscovered flake or lead white - interestingly, the tube is twice as heavy as other paint tubes. I mix it with linseed oil to get the right consistency and I'm finding it has a certain creamy texture that adds a fluid quality to the paint. I'm also using the soft cerulean and ultramarine for my blues. They grey down quickly when mixed with other colours, so I still use phthalo blue when I need a strong blue.

I like Winsor and Newton paints - they're the right consistency for me. I also use LeFranc for certain more exotic reds which you can't mix yourself.