There was a lot of renewed attention paid to celebrated Canadian pianist Glenn Gould after he passed away in 1982. One of the biographical details I recalled was his habit of driving around while humming a Petula Clark song in his car. He actually did a radio documentary about this, documenting a drive to Thunder Bay from Toronto in search of the technical qualities of a singer he called “Pet Clark.”
I’m not sure why that came to me at a time I was experimenting with more abstract forms of painting in art school, perhaps I was playing some of Gould’s work in the studio at the time? His recording of Bach’s The Goldberg Variations was among my new collection of CDs. CDs — how exciting! Or perhaps I was once again linking music to visual art. Like many artists, I can’t paint without some form of music playing in the room.
A larger work, this painting was towards the end of my time at NSCAD. Short of money, I started painting on linen, finding it an interesting substitute for canvas. Linen cheaper than canvas? It is if you are buying sheets from the army surplus store around the corner from your one room apartment near Agricola Street in Halifax.
This was actually my second piece on linen. The first I had gesso’d over and painted conventionally. This one involved painting directly on the linen. No gesso.
I found it really worked with the softer side of my work. No hard edges. I liked the way the paint floated on the surface.
I don’t spend a lot of time on painting titles, but it helps me to delineate them a little better than simply applying numbers or universally applying “Untitled” to them. Art history is littered with examples of confusion over badly titled paintings, or artists who had given more than one title to the same painting.
With my abstract art, the titles are often a clue to what I was feeling when I made the painting. They often bring a smile to people who read titles, as if I gave them a key to unlocking the work. Maybe I did?
This one? It’s called Glenn Gould Driving Around Toronto Humming a Petula Clark Song. It may account for the map-like parts of the painting, and I swear, some people can see traffic.
The question is, looking at it, should one be playing Glenn Gould or Petula Clark?
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