Rick Janson Art Studio

I took Sunday off. That is a bit of a rarity for me since I started down this path back to art. It helped that there was a Blue Jays game on during the afternoon — time I normally spend in the art hut. Art is a consuming exercise, the painting activity only half the work. It was nice to recharge my batteries, and yes, on Sunday the Blue Jays did win.

I also spent a part of Saturday revising my book project after a sample was sent to me from the printers in Montreal. It looked a bit smaller than I expected. My last book project was done on an A5 paper size, but it was hardcover and as such had a slight overlap on the inside pages. The paper was also a bit heavier on that project. Somehow This All Pertains To Me runs at 144 pages. It does have substance, including more than 90 images in full colour. The main body of the text runs to about 8,000 words.

Today I am following couriers who are delivering more framing towards two upcoming events — the annual Oshawa Art Association show at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery (April 24 – May 10), and the Scugog Studio Tour (May 2-3). Both are juried events — I won’t get confirmation that either of my two submisisons will be part of the RMG show until April 18. I’ve known since last fall that I will be a guest artist on the studio tour. There have been a lot of call for entries lately, but so many have overlapped, making it difficult to allocate resources.

For the first time I have placed an order with Kolekin, a Montreal-based framing company, which did dispatch my order quickly. The first batch has already arrived and the second expected shortly. I’m still hoping to get back into the studio sometime this afternoon.

Yesterday I finished my sixth 12″ x 12″ painting for the Scugog Studio Tour. I’m aiming to have eight new “smalls” ready by the time the tour takes place. I also began the 8th, a much more traditional landscape based on a view from the train between Dundee and Dunblane, Scotland. Number seven got started last week and is from Pickering — not the one down the road from here, but the one in Yorkshire.

The latest painting is a bit of a departure for me, although I had been thinking about taking it on for some time. It is of an entrance to the North Face shop on Buchanan Street in Glasgow. I’ve been since trying to find out more about what I call “The Greeters.” but most of the literature on the building only talks of the sculptural figures, not who they are or are supposed to represent. The building was not originally a retail destination — it was built in 1875-77 as the city’s stock market. Architect John Barnett used a distinctive Venetian Gothic style which makes the building such a head turner in Scotland. The use of the figures around the doorway are common to his work, Barnett having utilized numerous well-known sculptors in his day, although none are attributed to this particular building. The figure on the far column looks like a monk — a bit of an odd choice for a stock market. I thought Barnett may have used figures of workers, much as you can see on the frieze of the old Toronto stock exchange, but there is nothing about the character in the foreground to suggest that, although his hair and moustache do look distinctively modern (at least for 1875) and working class. I just don’t understand why, if he was a worker, he is not wearing any visible clothing? Then what is the status of the female figure on the far side of the same column? She looks more like someone drawn from antiquity than from the streets of Glasgow. If anyone knows the background to these figures, I’d love to hear from you.

The North Face logo was visible in the doorway, but I decided to edit it out as it didn’t fit compositionally. I was tempted to reflect the now modern status and use by including it, but I just couldn’t make it work as a painting. That was a long conversation with myself.

What was challenging is how the light changes the colour of the stone, depending on how it hits. Much of it has a warm tone, but I also noticed that on the far right it looks distinctly blue too. I do wonder if repairs were made that shifted the colour?

As anyone who has followed this BLOG knows, I have been challenging myself by taking on new subject matter and genres, and this one definitely did challenge me despite my normal affinity to architectural-based subjects. With all the detail around the stone work, and the more subtle colour changes, it was difficult to keep it painterly too. Thank goodness for all the imperfections and stains.

Painting old buildings is like painting older people — there is just so much more life lived in them.

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Want to avoid all the palaver and just look at pictures? My gallery, which includes pricing, is here.

Want to learn more about the Scugog Studio Tour, click here to see the participating artists (including me).