Freighter Four

Another in the ongoing series of little-guy 14 X 18 inchers. This one is amongst my best recent paintings--I'm very happy with the crunchy sky, the dramatic effect of the light, and the total control of tonalities. the clouds really do seem to be lifting off the mountains (a departure from the photo). Best of all, it just fell off the brush.

Priming Day

In the tradition of the craft of painting, I mix and apply my own primer (gesso) to canvas I buy in rolls and stretch myself. I use a mixture of calcium carbonate (chalk) and polyvinyl acetate (PVA) glue, thinned to the right consistency with water and coloured with a little pigment for a pale cream ground.

Reasons? (Besides keeping the tradition alive and a certain DIY coolness):

• It is fun to be involved in the painting process right from the get-go. I create the total object.
• It is a bit cheaper.
• It allows me total control of the substrate; the colour, tooth, and absorbency of the ground all are huge factors in the final outcome for me.
• I find commercially-primed canvas too sterile white and smooth, and stifle creativity, since how I paint is sometimes more important than what I paint.

Some day I'll get unlazy and post some pix of the step-by-step. To me, using ready-primed canvas would be a bit like using some sort of MS template to "design" a website. After awhile, the world looks the same. It's part of what sets me apart from all the hacks and wannabes--that, the fact that I can actually draw. Painting should not be a lifestyle choice, but a total commitment.

Its part of my whole philosophy towards life, I guess. I am a cyclist, and not only can I fix my own flats, but I build my own wheels. You can either accept the spoon feeding society offers--which requires a lot less effort, but makes you dependent--or you can do your own thing. That takes observation, research and elbow-grease.

Go forth and do thou likewise.

Arbutus, the Strawberry Tree

Well, in retrospect, maybe this one is not 100% finished, but I'm posting it here because this blog has fallen off the map (and needs to get back on), and I have some more stuff coming. I'm painting again, and feeling a general surge in motivation, which is very refreshing.

I'm a bit concerned that my style is staying too realistic, too tight. But a closer look at the above will indicate that I can let things get beautifully fuzzy and sideways at a moments notice. I am particularly gratified by the out-of-focus foreground (a favourite and often unconscious device of mine) and the way the top parts of the tree are chunky and unfinished. I also totally spaced on carrying that one branch through into the canopy. I am beginning to understand why Cezanne's pictures look the way they do; his focus was so complete, he often didn't see what he was missing.

I find that the 22 X 28" format is perfect for big trees. I have a few more up my sleeve, still.

Loving the colour-matching capabilities of my new MacBook. Every painter should have one. Yeah, that's a shameless plug for Steve and the gang at A-Company.

Like Archeology

Here's another painting done over a spoilt canvas. I'm learning not to throw anything away, especially anything with good impasto! In this image it seems to be both sunning and raining, and that is at odds with the extremely non-atmosphereic handling of the landscape itself. Diagonals seem to create depth, but the colour and uniform tones force the planes back into two-dimensional alignment. The tops of the poles (conveniently aligned with the underlying impasto) travel across depth and into the ditch shadow at far left, but the shadow on the road shoots the eye back into the center of the painting, up the road sign and back up into the sky. the whole thing would start to shudder apart like an unbalanced motor were it not for the very strong structure of parallel lines. But the square formed by the two closest poles, the road shadow and the incline of the road grade is tilted and offset, further contributing to the elliptical movement. Only the horizontals in the earth and sky provide some stability.

Great cities are often built on ruins. It's often the successive layers that make them so interesting.

Couldn't quite get the colour right in the photo--it's a lot fresher feeling real-time. But this gives you a taste, anyway.

Working on a cool project with good friend of mine--designing his tattoo! Will post pixs as it develops. Just enjoying some time off here, too, after working 7 days a week for a couple of months.

Gotta get some painting done here before 2:00 so should go do that.

Art Happens

"Still Life with Apples and Cello" 24 X 24" Oil on Canvas.

Derek Houston's cello again--which he needs to come and get! With the lack of room around here... . But in the meantime, I am getting some more material out of it. A wobbly, not-too-realistic still life, with a nod to Matisse. Maybe even a little Fauve. A good platform for all kinds of colour improvisation and some of my signature dry-brush overpainting. I incorporated such mundane objects as a waterbottle and several plastic bags. Those of you from work looking at this, you will see that the cardboard boxes are Tena boxes. I left just enough logo showing for that. They are great for storage!

High Noon

Yup, you know where this is. It's not that I have a one-track mind so much as I really love the place, and find the landscape there exactly the vehicle for the emotions I want to project.

"High Noon, Douglas Lake" 18 X 24" Oil on Canvas

Pretty easy to pick out the repeated rhythms and diagonals, so I'll leave you to it. I took the photo the same day I took the photo of the first Big Pine. The composition for this one was already all there, so it was fun piece to do since I didn't have to burn too many braincells getting it together. Sometimes I need to do a simpler piece to unwind. But this one is still pretty dramatic in its own quiet way. It's full of fresh, clean air--unlike my life right now. Wish fulfillment, I guess. I paint what I need.

After Ten Years, a Self Portrait

"Self Portrait 2009" 18 X 20" Oil on canvas.

Well, I took the photo for this back in 2007, but all that has changed since then is a few more wrinkles and gray hairs, I guess. I'm as happy with the likeness as I am with the picture itself. Lots of subtle poetry, and even the shadows are packed with colour.

From the Show

Video of the show and interview with me
by Efren Quiroz
on youTube




Life is a blank wall sometimes.

The show, hung.
Miriam has an infallible sense of what goes where, for which I am thankful.

It was a whole day's work, getting it up.

My big piece with the paint still wet.

It wasn't just good art you missed... .

Me and the wifey.

VICTORIA REVISITED [the other side] runs until October 22.
See you down there!

All photos (c) the artist's wife and Miriam Mulhall.

Please Come to Our Show

A Bigger Big Pine

"Big Pine, Early Spring"
22 X 28" Oil on Canvas

I think the Williams family needs to adopt this tree as our clan crest.

Here it is again, with many of the same compositional devices, but with more road, more sky, and a lot more blue. I wanted, above all, to get the effect of the intense blue of the sky and how it bleeds into and dissolves the outlines of the tree. I'm not an Impressionist. I'm not interested in flux, in impermanent lighting conditions. However, actual optical effects do interest me--but more in the tradition of Vermeer (Using the digital camera, rather than the camera obscura. Hey, I'm a man of my times, as he was.)


I also expanded on the device of the lines of the foreground running through into the sky, tree and background. I copy the tones found in nature, my draftsmanship is accurate, and I use both aerial and linear perspective, but, under no circumstances will I sacrifice the integrity of the picture-plane. It's a two-dimensional surface, period. I don't put holes in people's walls.

Interestingly, the tree itself is not that much bigger than the last attempt, even though the canvas is four inches larger in both dimensions. I may have to go radically big to get the full monumentallity of this tree. It's not over yet!

Springtime in the South

"Apricot Orchard, Osoyoos"
24 X 30" Oil on Canvas.

My good wife found this one, from the balcony of the care home my grandfather lives in. She has a pretty good eye for what I need, and relates emotionally to art, even though she is not artistically inclined (she claims). Well emotional reaction is what art is all about, and she has that part dialed.

I've been wanting to paint this subject matter for ages, and hear it is. Van Gogh famously tackled this subject, but my treatment here is more Cezanne. Well, I was born in the Okanagan, so I don't have much excuse not to tackle the subject.

Unusually for me, no sky is showing, only the rising sagebrush hills. The slightly askew horizontal and vertical axis, the unified tonalities, and the treatment of both the tree-trunks and branches, as well as the white house, all give a stiff nod to Uncle Paul. This is because my aim is the same as his--to unify the picture-plane and compress the internal pictorial space. It's a 2-D surface, and I want to keep it as such. Buit if the volume of the house and the planes of the background, orchard and foreground where all parallel to the picture-plane, it would loose its internal dynamism and become a bit boring. So it is in the space between static and dynamic that the picture makes its home in the eye.

You'll notice one obvious device in the vertical of the telephone pole which is continued into the foreground tree-brace. This exists in the photo, and is simply emphasized there.

I gave the canvas a light reddish-brow wash after the drawing was done to keep the canvas from glaring through. You can see how I use it in this detail shot. The field behind the house is the ground itself. This also helps create the feeling of overcast light.

The far background/ top looks contrived, but that also was in the photo, just harnessed by me to allow a circular motion against the top and keep the horizontals from running out so badly.

All pink and green. it was fun to paint a lot of some colours I don't use a lot of otherwise.

Christ Church Cathedral

"Christ Church Cathedral" 18 x 24" Oil on Canvas.

In the spirit of innovation, and to continue with the promise I made myself a few posts ago, here is Christ Church Cathedral under a sultry summer sky, painted fast and loose. The painting underneath (turned on its side) provides a textural and tonal base. I'm all about having fun and not copying to strictly with this one. Yet the tones and details I include are just enough to firmly place it, looking south down Quadra St. The cars, cube-van, streetlight, and London Drugs sign--it's all there, but I make you work for it.

I'm becoming fixated with this old building.

Scintillating like a fire opal, I once again make the sky the focal point with successive overpaintings, deliberately building up the impasto. Well, the focal point is really the tower, and its contrast with the burning summer sky.

Mmmmm. Ice cream for the eye.

Douglas Lake Revisited--In Person

Open Range, Douglas Lake. Oil on Canvas. 22 X 28"

Going back to the Okanagan with my Dad and my new bride for a honeymoon, we took the obvious "shortcut" of the Douglas Lake Road, just down the #5 from Merritt.

Well, well. The Big Tree is still there! As it has been for about 200 years. And as we hope it will be for another 200. Such a relief to come around the corner and find it here. We were all a bit apprehensive, what with all the beetle-kill on that mountain... .

I took a print of my painting of it to my 95-year-old grandfather in Osoyoos. We told him that we had gone up through Douglas Lake, and he immediately said, "Yeah there's a really big pine tree near the summit on that road... ." And I said "Boy, have I got a surprise for you!" Some things just work out.

While we were up there I got a couple of really good shots from different angles of the Tree, and I hope to be working them up over the winter, if not sooner.

But for now, here is a seemingly plain piece of just rangeland and sky. I tried to copy the shapes of the clouds fairly exactly (although I may have overworked them a bit) and increased the amount opf colour in the photo. It was shot through the dusty window of a Honda minivan. I picked out a few subtly repeating curves, too. It was hard to paint that much drab tone; the dead grass and leafless trees of early spring.

Mt. Doug Remix

"Mt. Douglas, Late Evening" 18 X 24" Oil on Canvas.

As per my post of 12/03/09, here is an attempt to push things sideways a little it a more painterly way. I wanted to use all the elements of "pure painting" while still holding firmly onto the motif. I was much more concerned with the overall effect and the surface quality of the paint than with anything else. Things seem to harmonize pretty well, although I may take another poke at it sometime, to bring some of the compositional elements into a tighter alignment. Or not. The trick is knowing when to stop.

There's a pound of paint on this one--probably 5 coats on the sky. There's an almost-finished painting underneath, and, instead of throwing it out, I used all that frustration and thick texture underneath to contribute to the new image. I also wanted to leave lots of evidence of the struggle to create a tense and edgy painting of a serene subject.

Beauty is born from the inner struggle.

Open form and open colour both interest me. If I can only let my guard down long enough to allow it to happen.

Living Between Earth and Sky

"Houses, Harling Point" 14 X 18" Oil on canvas.

Since I moved to Victoria in 2004, I have been wanting to have a crack at painting Harling Point. Perhaps not the most dramatic place in Victoria, it is, nonetheless, one of the most interesting. The Chinese Cemetery is located there as well as two different geological massive of rock (which can be seen in here).

It's an open and elemental kind of place. I don't show the ocean in this image, but it is off to the left. On a sunny day, the four Platonic elements (air, fire, water and earth) are there in abundance.

These older cottage-like houses on Penzance Rd seem compressed between the rocks and the sky.

Not the easy painting I thought it would be. I cut it down from a larger original, being dissatisfied with the mass of irrelevant detail in the rocks, and the too-obvious composition. The result of the trimming is an image that is a little more precarious and tense.


I overpainted the sky several times, finally settling for more tonal and chromatic drama with the dry-brushed pale lemony green near the horizon. All the impasto of the previous workings add to the effect, the contrasts creating a better balance with the masses of windblown pines on the right.

I think I successfully introduced an airy feel here with my loose brushwork and treatment (or neglect of) the edges of things.