The art of observation.

Over the ages painters have struggled to capture the elusive effects of light.


In this image the author would appear to have done so very well. On reflection, the reader may well conclude that almost anyone could get that image with a cheap digital camera and the use of paint packages which are freely available online.

That’s exactly what I did. The odds of me standing there for a couple of hours with a canvas, an easel, and a bunch of half-frozen oil pigments and dirty brushes and cans of turpentine are minimal.

I’m using tools that were simply unavailable to Vincent van Gogh or Paul Gauguin or any other famous painter.

The thing took a little effort, and I had to know how to use the tools. I kind of have to know what’s good because I actually took a number of photos and tried a few different things with some of them. The photos were taken impulsively. It’s the ice pack along the south shore of Lake Huron at Bright’s Grove. When I took them, I had no idea of what I was going to do with them or what the result might be, although the special effects did enter my mind. Yet there is a kind of spontaneity here as well.

I like that unexpected quality, the element of surprise that enters into it.

The landscapes around here in winter can be pretty sublime. It’s also a big, open, flat kind of place where you sort of have to look off into the distance a lot. The light is very angled and the palette muted, and the weather and atmospheric effects generate a random picture that changes constantly.

It’s the art of observation.