Black Ground

CHEAP PUN ON BLACK BACKGROUND

A common thread between these paintings: 1) they were painted on black, OR 2) they were done about the same time. Since, I am all over the place, I can't have one category for each theme!

MCGILL STREET

This is McGill Street around Christmas time. Montrealers will recognize the office towers in the background. Starting in late November, the district (Ville-Marie) puts bright Christmas lights that wrap the short trees/bushes found in the divider. They come in bright colours. You can see the bright colours for two reasons: 1) I wasn't able to paint them as bright as I wanted, and 2) the scanner again, lost some colours due to the weak contrast.

CHURCH ON TERREBONNE

This is a church in my neighbourhood. Nothing in particular, except crisp night lighting and simple surfaces, enabling me to paint it without much complications. In the actual painting, the green on the tree leaves are more visible.

BANC PUBLIC (PUBLIC BENCH)

Very little colour has survived, but I played with light halos, and with different shades of green on the leaves of the tree that is nearby. I can imagine this scene in New York's Central Park.

FULL MOON

During the winter breaks, we often rent a cottage in the Laurentians (hilly area north west of Montréal, about 1 hour away by car), and I like taking walks at night. Being far from the city, the sky is unpolluted by urban lights, and thus, you get beautiful sights when it is a full moon. So this is an imaginary rendition of that. I say imaginary, because it is not based on an actual picture, although not for lack of trying. First, it had to be full moon. Then you would have to find a deciduous tree (i.e. loses its leaves in winter), and such that there is nothing around it.

WINTER NIGHT SCENE

The reality of night winter scapes looks more like this one, with pine trees, or more generally, trees that do not lose their leaves during the winter (evergreen trees, opposite of deciduous trees :-)).

A CHALET ACROSS THE FROZEN LAKE

Well, this is what happens when you try to reproduce a picture--and when you are not very talented :-). Part of the reason this painting is not good is some mistakes I made in the reproduction. But more fundamentally, like a painting instructor told me once, "you have to lie to be faithful to the mood/emotions that the scene conveys". Literal reproduction will seldom recreate the "emotion of the moment", in part because pictures do not convey that mood, and they are not supposed to: a picture should be used as a reminder of what the scene felt like, as opposed to be reproduced literally.