I snapped the remaining brushes, stomping on them over the curb. Later I wrapped the largest one with electrical tape and made a knob on it like a hockey stick. It worked out great because I could put my brushes in the water bottle, cap it, and wash them with soap and set them later in the studio. Oil painters can leave their brushes for days but acrylic dries fast in the air.

The water bottle functioned as a weight to keep the easel on the ground in the wind and a counter weight against my sometimes less than gentle brush work.

I began thinking that the city was probably best painted in a fauve style but, as usual, I was kidding myself; I was starving for colour. An older couple came by while I was painting the grey, neo-classical factory blue and orange with a big brush on a tiny panel. They didn't approve and asked me how long I'd been painting. I told them that I had just started. The woman said, "We will see how you improve."

I guess it was near the end of April when Paul and I got back together at the same place on the Ganaraska River. It was a fairly nice day with the fish spawning. We were getting a little crazy when we choose an old willow to paint which had been walking away from the river going north by sending down branches into the ground to make new roots. We both agreed that it is necessary to choose plausible and believable subjects but we painted it anyway. I was beginning to have fun with the calligraphy of the big brush.

After returning to the city I was still seeing the colours of spring. I had my sketching gear in a backpack and was riding my bike looking for spots. I found a nice place off the sidewalk beside an iron rail fence around a playground. The kids were laughing and playing baseball. A boy about 8 years old came over and said: "Are you an artist?" I said... no. He said, "You should turn pro." A few minutes later a young woman offered to give me $25 for the sketch.

In the beginning of May I bought a gross of 11 x 14 inch primed canvas cardboard panels. I was becoming more interested in details and using smaller brushes on a larger panel when the trees began flowering beside an A.T.V. trail in the Oakridge Moraine.

While I was painting a sugar freighter from the Caribbean the dock workers where coming over during their lunch break. One guy said "Why don't you take a picture and paint from that? I know a guy who paints portraits of dogs that way." Shortly after a guard set me packing, so I...

I went down to Cherry Beach. Two young women were sunbathing bare breasted wearing only tiny thongs. It was the first real warm day. A security guard sent them away. Why I didn't ask if I could paint them? Sketching is probably the first "performance" art. I get stage fright.

Like trolls; Tony, Paul, and I went sketching under a 401 freeway bridge over the Ganaraska River. They are faster than I am so to keep up I used washes that day. Acrylic washes can be done on a warm sunny day. Unfortunately it was damp and muddy so I spent a few hours sleeping in a willow beside the river with my arms and legs dangling waiting for my canvas to dry while they painted. Drying time is a distinction between oil and acrylic. Oil paintings take days to dry. The idea of using water washes cured in my mind while the river babbled in my ears.

One of my favorite professors of Renaissance art believed that alleys are interesting. "If I painted, I'd paint alleys." She said with a Renaissance painting projected on her body.
A woman came out of her house. "You seldom see artists painting anymore. I like to see how other people see." She said slipping behind me into the knot hole space.
"Look, I don't see like this. It is an abstraction of paint, brush, and canvas based upon your alley."

Sometimes a little crowd gathered. A man said that my painting reminded him of the day he dropped the urn containing the ashes of his pet dog into the lake. "Would you paint an urn in the water? I will go to the bank and get some money."

Tony Cooper, Sebastian Hergott, Olexander Wlasenko, and I went to the La Cloche Mountains to sketch for a week.

I learned during the hiking, scrambling, canoeing, portaging, and tornado twisted lightning struck slogging rain soaking up all night hardships that canvas covered boards are not hearty enough to be in a good back country sketching kit.

I switched to 11 x 14 inch "door skins" (1/8 mahogany ply) which Tony and Paul use. The washes I had been using on canvas became wood stains on the panels. I began to understand that I wasn't simply spending a year doing one sitting paintings. I was doing a cycle of the seasons.

In September I returned to the La Cloche Mountains on a five day solo sketching trip with a futuristic kayak and hammock camp. Up that far north the trees were already turning colour and the temperatures were getting close to freezing at night. It was the bright sharp fall colour that inspired me to explore the technique of setting soft stains and bold impasto strokes working together.

The seasons are marked by colour; each season has a distinct register of tonality too. As the winter weather set in I retreated into my studio. I am a studio artist. It was good to return to the studio. Acrylics freeze at about the same temperature as water. I couldn't work outside but, Tony Cooper painted all winter outdoors, using oil paint.

I think I know why Van Gogh went nuts. If I wasn't able to write, sing, make music, do animation for Book 23 of Iliad waiting for good fall weather, and if I hadn't come in from the cold to paint in the studio; I probably would have eventually shot myself too.
The truth is I made a discovery: Mary and I flew to Belize and rented a four wheel drive truck with a compound low gear box. We found the fifth season down in the tropics.

I got out sketching on the first warm day to Paul's place near Port Hope, Ontario. Paul wasn't feeling well so we sketched from his property. I added a camera lucida to my sketching kit. My pack weighs more but it is fun to have a new toy to play with. If I must do serious scrambling and portaging my two part pack divides with zippers and I can leave the large part of it containing the lucida and its tripod behind.

Enjoy the show!

 

 

Portraits of me painting and panting by Sebastian Hergott.