‘The Way Home’
January 24, 2018
In the spirit of watercolour experimentation, it was interesting to take ordinary white mat board and coat it with a thin layer of clear acrylic medium. The board then had to dry for a good 24 hours. The experience when painting is one of finding it acts as a kind of resist while providing a rather intriguing texturing quality.
It is a bit tricky because there’s no wet-in-wet opportunity, or much reworking/touching up or the acrylic medium will moisten and lift from the surface and become gummy. So getting one crack at it is pretty much all one gets, making every brushstroke really count.
One Room School
January 3, 2012
Not far from Kamloops is the lovely rural town of Pritchard. On Duck Range Road was an old one room schoolhouse that was ‘adopted’ by a local farmer who had attended it as a boy and hoped some community-minded group would see to its preservation and restoration.
Unfortunately, that never happened and in the summer of 2011, it was finally knocked down. Although this painting takes some liberties over the school’s original setting, the rendering of the building itself is true to the way it looked. It was hung in The Federation of Canadian Artist’s Open Show in The Old Kamloops Courthouse, and was a favourite in a fund-raising draw for The Federation.