This will be a 2 month show of work arranged last minute so it consists of inventory that I have ready and includes pieces from my abstract series, landscape series and current Optimistic Architecture series. Feel free to stop by the studio anytime to take a look, Kirsten can help you make a purchase at the shop and accepts debit and credit cards as well as cash.

English Bay Sunset was done in 2007. It measures 36 x 36 inches (oil on canvas). I was expanding on an earlier theme from First Love (thumbnail). I sat at English Bay Beach in Vancouver and did quick sketches of pedestrians that passed by as I had done earlier for First Love. I sold this painting to a visitor to Vancouver as a souvenir.

I took a snapshot at a red light hoping to catch a blurry train whizzing by the moving light show on BC Place Stadium. I did this painting and sold it to some friends from Australia who titled it “Future Plus100″. I think it has something to do with an Australian brand of soft drink.

The final product has some strong references to other earlier work that I did. The black background and brightly coloured isolated shapes have been a stable of my work all along.

These two paintings called Knight and Day were done in 1990. I was still in college and living in Halifax, NS. These paintings and Future Plus100 were done 23 years apart but I see some of the same themes in  all three.

This project is an 8 ft x 12 ft 1940 kitchen. It is divided in half with an eating area that is about 4 ft x 4.5 ft and a cooking area. There is a built in cabinet with a glass door that  separates the two areas. I wanted the room to look retro and clean. The existing 43 inch diameter table was too big and too dark. I built a new table using existing pieces of furniture. I found an old cabinet that was 30 inches tall at one end (table height). I sanded, primed and painted it the same colour as the walls. I bought a quarter sheet of 3/4 inch birch plywood ($15). I chose plywood because the cabinets and the existing bar stools are plywood. I sanded and applied polyurethane to the 24 x 48 piece of plywood. I bolted the plywood at one end to the base and added a picture frame support. This design provided seating for 4 in a much smaller proportion than the 43 inch round table. Matching the colour to the wall gives the dinette a built-in appearance. The curved lines of the re-purposed cabinet base and the picture frame leg have an appropriate art-deco feel.

I made the curtains with wool ($20 – 4 meters) that I bought from the fabric store and mounted them on a brushed nickel curtain rod (on sale $20). The curtains were made using fusing tape and required no sewing

I had a electrician install a coloured lighting system in the liquor cabinet. It can be set to pulse between colours or stay one colour. It was an unexpected part of the project. I painted the interior of the cabinet flat black to maximize the effect of the lighting. In this photo you can see that I also painted all the cabinet pulls in flat black.

The last piece of the project was to attach a 5 foot piece of wood to the wall and then attach 4 hooks to the wood. I primed and painted the wood to match the walls. This serves as a pot rack and cost $5 for the wood. It suits the design and makes use of the wall space which is good considering that this retro kitchen layout has only one wall of cabinets. I found the metal wall-mounted pot lid holder at a local kitchen store for $20. Here you can see the big impact of the small black cabinet pulls.

The project cost a total of $100 and that includes the polyurethane and paint.

The frieze on the Lea Building located at 1455 West Georgia Street in Vancouver, B.C. perfectly personified my way of seeing  when I first laid eyes on it in 1992. This architectural flourish perfectly matched my aesthetic direction. I felt an instant connection to this Art Deco building.

Nelson BC is one of my favourite places. The houses are built into the mountain and the streets climb upward in unusual ways. When I am there I always look for scenes to paint. There are so many unusual houses built on the steep hillsides. It sometimes looks like they are built on top of each other. There is one little house that fascinates me because it is built next to the road but the hillside is so steep that the second floor of the house is almost even with the road.The fiire hydrant appears to be as tall as a house. Another house is built fronting onto a stairway rather than a street.

Lobby is 30 x 40 inches, acrylic on canvas, and was painted in 2008. It is called Lobby  because it was inspired by a frieze on the Lea Building in Vancouver, BC.  (1455 Georgia Street). To the average viewer there is no indication that this is actually an architectural painting. I tell people to squint and look at the black parts of the painting and tell me what they see. 

There Goes The Neighbourhood is acrylic on a 40 x 60 inch canvas. This size makes a great impact in any size room. 

This is a photograph of There Goes the Neighbourhood used in an ad for a Property Management company.

This is a photograph of me with There Goes the Neighbourhood at a show I did at The Leighdon Studio Gallery in Vancouver.

This is a study for a painting I will do this year. It is 24 x 30 inches on an “econostretcher”. I will be doing a 30 x 40 inch version on a gallery quality stretcher. Some clients were interested in the study and purchased it.

 This is a photo of the famous “Equestrian Pedestrian” bridge over the Stanley Park causeway in Vancouver. Everyday the Mounted Police cross this bridge on their way to work in the city. The iron bridge design is unique and adds some interest to an otherwise simple pedestrian crossing. This is a lead up to the famous Lions Gate Bridge that leads to Whistler and West Vancouver.

This painting of the bridge is titled “Equestrian Pedestrian” and is 24 x 36 inches (acrylic on canvas). It is available for sale for $250.00.