Tattooed bridge (Fall Collection)

"Tattooed bridge (Fall Collection) Oil on masonite, 9 x 12 inches

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November. Here's another point of view of the same railed bridge shown in one of my last spring paintings "Rail Tour". Eight months later I was surprised to find- all over the place- that huge amount of colored layers, perfect match for its daily container wagons. The surreal mood of the whole scene enhanced by the graffiti seduced me, I couldn't resist to create something from it.

During the sessions:
Phosphorescent - Wolves (Live on KEXP)
Max Richter - November
David Fonseca - Kiss Me, Oh Kiss Me

Thank you for your visits, comments and emails, they are
truly appreciated. Have a great week everyone!
-Pierre

Narrow passage

"Narrow passage" Oil on masonite, 7-1/2 x 10 inches

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Second half of October, with a temperature drop increased by shorter daylight. Autumn is here and winter doesn't seem so far, maybe an early one this year. A perfect weather to keep
warm in the studio completing all the unfinished pieces. For this scene, I was seduced by the
high contrasts of tones on a limited palette, typical for a northern soul.

Max Richter - Horizon Variations
Matt Bauer - Don't let me out

Last week, I created a second blog featuring smaller oil paintings. I will eventually show works achieved with other mediums. You may have a look here: Painted Snapshots

Have a great week!
Thanks for your visit,
-Pierre

Trackscape with a clear sky

"Trackscape with a clear sky" Oil on masonite, 9 x 12 inches

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Fall. Inner warmth. I love this season, I always did. An intense alchemical moment during the year with all these fast changes occuring in nature. Only a couple of months before this one is over... wich will have been a hard struggle for so many people. Uncertainty, crisis of all kinds, media confusion and manipulation, meanwhile very helpful to create that huge wave of quiet collective will for letting go. Letting go of everything that is not true anymore for our own sake. It brings more than hope, I feel it like a waking up. I see everywhere people changing their life with a sparkling smile on their face while they must overcome stumbling blocks.
I am one of them.
"... The sleeper must awaken..." (Dune, by Frank Herbert)

I'm overwhelmed by the specific and unusual sites encountered on the jogging road (you already know that) it's going difficult keeping centered without looking for the next painting subject.
For this one, the references were taken in the west section of Montreal's Old Port.

For who enjoy independant artists,
here are some special vibes that played in the studio last week:

J Tillman - Firstborn
Paul & Fritz Kalkbrenner - Sky And Sand (Berlin Calling)
Bon Iver - Stacks

Next week, I will launch a new blog: Painted Snapshots featuring smaller photorealistic works and studies wich will be on auction at a very affordable price. After more than a year, I still want to offer accessible quality works. I don't pretend that photorealism is better than looser styles but as it technically requires more time to achieve, and the fact that I offer my works via the web for now, I struggled all year long with the pricing while I gradually digged further into complexity.
But I won't stop the train! A Painting Room will continue and on the side, I will present smaller pieces and studies on a more regular basis.
This is not the project early mentionned here. The "project" will involve figures on larger scales.
More details soon.

Thanks for your visit,
have a great week!
-Pierre

Commission

"Harry, Annie and Meg" Oil on stretched canvas, 24 x 18 inches
Private Clollection

Doing commissions. I'm always thrilled and grateful with this part of my work. Being allowed to reflect and translate some kind of intimacy meaningful for someone from another part of the world, sharing some frozen moments of others life, are simply and truly precious gifts to me. Also, quiet a challenge when the 3 beautiful young souls live across the ocean! For this particular one, I only had a couple of pictures, my intuition and a short delay of almost two and a half weeks to complete the work and let it dries (safe enough to travel) during high heat of summer. But, I had a great time and the "project" ended up with a positive reception. Painting this spontaneous and joyful scene reconnected me with my own childhood. A perfect and accurate timing. Thanks to the models and G. C. (The client /art collector, photographer of the scene) for your generous complicity during the process.

Sigur Ròs - Glósóli
Pia Fraus - Japanese Heart Software

Have a great week everyone!
-Pierre

(Two) related

"(Two) related" oil on masonite, 10 x 7-1/2 inches

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September...already. I have totally lost the sense of time. Been very busy (but zen) during this pas month. Renovating our appartment, working on a commission and painting this piece mainly fulfilled my agenda. The commission is completed now. I had a great time (and a very short delay!) working on that project, a group portrait of children that I will soon show here.
It reinforced my passion for human figures and like everything else, it just came my way at the right moment, stimulating the urge to concretize a side project I'm planning for a long while now.
More details to come...
Before continuing the series of urban scenes, I choosed to create this "interlude" piece.
A simple composition with many technical challenges for that scale, set up with two objects, containers actually - wich give a suggested clue to the nonlinear title.
Over the past twenty years, I've been sculpting, creating visual concepts and designs, so playing with objects and shapes is a natural extension to it, that once in a while I enjoy revisiting.
For so, I prefer not using them in their functional context, it's more their metaphorical properties or their abstract qualities that attract me the most.
A way to balance the realistic rendering with the proposal of some unexpected visual issues.
Forms, architectures, shapes in movement, vibrating, traveling all around and reflecting each other.
A dynamic world composed of electrons and photons, what an exciting journey exploring, playing and learning from it.
Here are two great musician artists inspiring to me:

Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Careless Love
Fredo Viola - Wood Smoke
Fredo Viola - Red States (live performance by Viola in NY - I Am Your Autopilot in UK
and Scalde in France)

My friend Emmanuel from Paris, posted this short film a couple of days ago on his blog AIMA007. Presented by Radiolab, it's a tribute to the intense beauty of awareness, a celebration of life that was inspired by David Eagleman's book, Sum:

16: Moments (by Will Hoffman)

A beautiful week to each of you.
-Pierre

Cool breeze under a bridge

"Cool breeze under a bridge" Oil on masonite, 10 x 8 inches
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Bright intervals were precious moments in time during the last two months. I felt that these could bring a different lighting to my urbanscapes. During the making of this painting, I was seeing turquoise everywhere (always been aware of colors around me, they just spontaneously come like weekly or daily themes, pretty exciting and intriguing though...).
One evening, I looked trough my studio window and saw a young hooded lady seated on the opposite roof starring at clouds - the beauty of that scene kept my attention, so I went outside and had a look on my own: half of the sky was colored with pink, red and a bit of orange but the mysterious part of it was the other half, it wasn't blue but turquoise! Never witnessed that kind of sunset before. This happened a day after the solar eclipse, while spectacular northern lights were visible in Canada and US. What an unusual summer we're having this year. Inspiring world...

During my painting sessions,
great songs from beautiful artists:

Angus & Julia Stone - Mango Tree
Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Horses
Yeasayer - Tightrope

Thank you everyone for your words and visits,
I wish you a beautiful week!
-Pierre

Linked and secluded

"Linked and secluded" Oil on masonite, 8 x 8 inches
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Water... this would have been the main theme for the last two months with all the rain that keeps falling on our heads, day after day. For sure, we're having a "green summer" around here, plants and trees never looked in such good shape. Once in a while we may enjoy a full sunday day, I mean the most part of an entire day, wich provokes a kind of collective euphoria. Cool moments in time... Never take things, people or nature for granted. So instead of contemplating the stars during hot summer nights, I jubilate looking at the unexpected clouds formations wich furiously compete in the sky.

Max Richter - Berlin by Overnight
Jay Jay Johanson - Lightning Strikes
Here We Go Magic - Fangela

An interesting series of portraits in progress by american artist Zachary Proctor,
his blog:
Sketchbook

Thanks for your visits,
have a great week!
-Pierre

After the rain, suddenly vibrant...

"After the rain, suddenly vibrant..." Oil on masonite, 8 x 8 inches
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Here's a second piece on that location with the same fallen trees. Since time I shot these pictures, Parc Canada cleaned up all the site I named: "the beavers project". A "deconstruction" one which was purposed to create something new. Since a while I'm observing pretty much "deconstruction situations" around me, endings of long term relationships, institutions crashing down, well, many deep changes are occuring everywhere. It can be very difficult with lot of pressure but also exciting because we must be alert and follow our deeper truth in order to continue as creative beings. "Deconstruct: to break down into components; dismantle." - wich makes possible the emergence of new forms and ideas.

Timber Timbre - We'll find out
Beirut - Elephant Gun
Ulrich Schnauss - A letter from home

Amazing Aurora Borealis in northern Norway:
Northern Lights - The sky at night

Great blog from Gary Keimig:
Outdoor Adventures

Thanks everyone for your words and visits!
-Pierre

Timber!

"Timber!" Oil on masonite, 10-1/2 x 8 inches
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Back in April, some enthusiastic urban beavers were planning their new construction site along the Canal Lachine.

It looks now that they changed their mind, instead they left unfinished the beautiful art piece for contemplation.

I'm always astonished to encounter such wild life so close to downtown .

Two winters ago, while I was doing my morning jogging, I saw a fox crossing on the recently formed ice.

A magical way to start the day when you live in a city.

In my studio this week:

Sufjan Stevens - Concerning the UFO Sighting (Come on feel the Illinoise)

Sigur Rós - Gobbledigook (stills version)

Transparence - Runnin'

If you appreciate representational realism, either contemporay and from

the past, here's a very interesting new blog. Scroll down the archives

to read the interview featuring
the prolific and talented artist Stephen Magsig:

In The Real Art World

Thanks for your support, comments and visits.

I wish you plenty of sunshine, fresh air and good time!
-Pierre

Polarized

"Polarized" Oil on masonite, 9 x 8 inches
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Polarization (Brit. polarisation) is a property of waves that describes the orientation of their oscillations. For transverse waves, it describes the orientation of the oscillations in the plane perpendicular to the wave's direction of travel. ...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarized_light

I see in that particularity of light waves a metaphorical description for the unexpected patterns of coloured realities we all generate, day after day. We are here, under the sun, surfing on different paths inspired by personal truth, wich end up to define only one world: Earth. Intense collective artwork, our home...
Laurie Anderson - Radar
2nd Base - Eikesdalen
Aurora Borealis - from International Space Station

Two inspiring blogs:
Shaping Stones - by artist Ken Flett
AIMA07 - by Emmanuel Chaussade

Thanks for your visits and comments,
I wish you a great week!
-Pierre

Rail Tour

"Rail Tour" Oil on masonite, 7-1/2 x 10 inches

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Call it springtime...! This past Tuesday we had snow, again. The weather is still cold around here - but, we are warm, surrounded by the ones

we love, the ones we know and others that we don't know yet...

This scene from my neighbourhood is very close to the studio I was renting 10 years ago. Each afternoon, I can hear trains passing,

gulls singing ??(lol), crows calling and now geese coming back for renewal. Our own private April symphony.

"...if living is seeing,

I'm holding my breath

In wonder I wonder

What happens next?

A new world

A new day to see..."

Björk - New world (Dancer in the dark by Lars Von Trier)

Beirut - A Sunday smile
Björk - Big Time Sensuality
Björk - New World

Thanks everyone for your visits and comments.

I wish you all a beautiful week!

-Pierre

Lifted up

"Lifted up" Oil on masonite, 10-1/2 x 8 inches

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Good to be back after 4 weeks of busy weeks and hard work ( freelance again!). In the meantime, I did some work on files and pictures for the first large narrative piece of a series wich starts to become a little obsessive. More to come... This little glass standing on plastic bottles is the little brother of the one showed on my last piece. I got the whole family. I received that precious collection from my mother during Holidays, she inheritated it from her grandmother. It means something to me because I deeply know that this is meaningful to her even if I consider myself more as an "urban lumberjack" ( the soul, not the look!) than an advised collector. I have this passion for shapes and objects but also for simplicity and freedom, never been thrilled by the idea of possessing too much. It's not a moral thing, this always been my nature. So instead of repeating the traditional approach I opted for this little lab play wich fulfilled my need for colors and unexpected compositions . Colors... springtime... living beings gently waking up on the northern hemisphere... let's dance! slowly...

Blonde Redhead - Top Ranking
Ellen Allien - Sweet
The National - Ada

Bill Viola, one of my favorite american living artist:
Bill Viola - Ocean without a shore ( Venice Biennale 2007 )

I wish you plenty of good times, wherever you live - North or South on the globe.
Thanks for your visit!
-Pierre

One & one, standing still

"One & one, standing still" Oil on masonite, 9-1/2 x 7-1/2 inches

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I love winter as I enjoy every nature's manifestation but will wait a month or two before painting new urban outdoor scenes, I miss them though. I took so many pictures lately on this purpose but the
winter palette just doesn't work for me right now. I leave it to the amazing watercolorist Don Gray who has this talent to capture each poetic aspect of his beautiful surroundings.

Montreal based contemporay dance company "La La La Human Steps" had showed a unique
commitment for excellence and creativity through the years. They started with a surprising
punk-rock attitude but since then they evolved with maturity including traditionnal aspects of classical dance in their choregraphies. I've seen them many times, they're still inspiring:
La La La Human Steps - Exaucé/ Salt
La La La Human Steps - Amélia

For the song and the visual metaphor:
Ola Podrida - Eastbound

Thank you for taking the time,
I wish you a beautiful week-end and a creative week!
-Pierre

In your own darkroom, wishes...

"In your own darkroom, wishes..." Graphite and conte on bristol, 9-1/4 x 11-3/4 inches

Yeap, graphite again, kind of a new addictive ritual - good exercise for sharpening my
perception of tonals. I call it a " ritual" because I allow myself the time to work on as many layers as the surface can take. For this one, a dark board would have been much appropriate but this would have killed the fun of playing with black powder on my fingertips.
I spent a whole day last week-end taking pictures for new paintings, there were good shots in
the lot but none of them felt quiet right so I spontaneously jumped on my last year's files looking for something meaningful to draw- I thought that this image could easily relate to my last post.
The more I get older, the more everything tend to become one- interesting that focusing on things make them melt and merge...I cannot create anymore without involving my experience of living (although I never represent myself directly). This image is metaphorical, not a self-portrait. M. is the same model I used for the large paintings on that same subject.

If the weather is "photo-friendly" tomorrow, I'm planning to have a little winter safari into my post- industrial surroundings, I miss painting, colors are calling...
This past week, I met by Blogger a kind and humble gentleman with high rated artistic qualities, if you appreciate strong and peaceful realism in painting, have a look: Paul Brown

During my last drawing sessions:
Grizzly Bear - Shift
Elvis Perkins - Sampoo
Ray Lamontagne - I still care for you

One of my favorite contemporary artist Matthew Barney,
an excerpt from his last footage wich I saw in Montreal 2 years ago:
Matthew Barney - Drawing Restraint 9 - Construction dance

Thank you all for reading, listening and sharing your thoughts.
Have a great week!
-Pierre

Waiting

"Waiting" graphite and conte on paper, 12 x 8-1/2 inches

Another figure study for a future large painting- so practical having a generous and
cooperative model that stands by you, Michel is my partner in life. He had learn trough the years
that my approach wasn't always flattering - as I soon noticed his versatile and expressive physicality. After many years he's more comfortable with all of this process, good for him and for me :)
I called this drawing " Waiting", some part of the living experience I want to explore.
We've been teached early in life to expect that everything will come from the outside but what I can tell as an adult is the simple and raw conclusion that this doesn't work at all, I mean you can live all your life wishing that a magical event or someone else will give you all the answers or the " good " conditions for your life, time passes and then... How many wake up calls do I need, do we need
to let it go on this mesmerizing program, the real thing is happening now...
Could it wait a little longer for me?
Philip Glass - Opening
Max Richter - Written in the sky
Max Richter - From the Rue Vilin

Thanks for visiting,
Have a great week!
-Pierre

2009, going fast slowly...

" Michel in the studio no. 2" graphite on bristol, 10-3/4 x 9 inches

After returning back to work I feel it's time to turn the lights on in my studio. I have so many painting projects in store for this year that I decided to start slowly and go back to basics: drawing. I need to play with simplicity for a while - enjoy what's emerging.
What I project for 2009:
Small paintings /still life and industrial urban subjects wich will still be available
to purchase on eBay via this blog/ drawing and maybe watercolor/ larger paintings- narrative works involving human figure, for an upcoming show.
Stay tuned...
Bon Iver - Blindsided ( Myspace Transmission )
Bon Iver - For Emma ( a cappella )
The National - Fake Empire ( on Letterman )

I wish you all the best for 2009,
many thanks for your generosity!
Have a great week-end.
-Pierre

Happy Holidays!

"Winter Solstice" Oil on masonite, 9-1/4 x 8 inches

( In progress )

May this 2008 Holiday's time be joyful and peaceful for all of you!
December was pretty busy and so, like many of us, I struggled with my overbooked schedule (still work full time) to keep painting. Didn't know how to achieve it but 2 days ago I decided to please myself by creating
this one even if this meant working during night time, and also I was completing a commission on the side. So this one is not finished, it needs 2 or 3 more sessions but as I planned to post
it on Christmas day - an humble gift for all of you: friends, fellow artists, suscribers, followers and visitors, here it is: Merry Christmas!
These tied Xmas lights, some lighted, some not, are just like us right now all together on the same fragile world.

for the spontaneous little girl dancing:
Arms-Seabear

because if light is information trough universe, love is the essence:
All is full of love-Björk ( live in Riverside NY)

thanks Deb for this creative clip-it's winter now so it's the right time!
Black Cab-Jens Lekman

Have a wonderful day and a good week!
-Pierre

Steel, Water and Sake

"Steel, Water and Sake" Oil on masonite, 7 x 9 inches
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An other bridge situated near where I live, at the end of my jogging trail. I've thought of painting this since 2 years but never allowed me the time to set a photo shoot before that early and cold morning, 2 weeks ago. This place is magic, even more with all of these recent white tags wich ornate every single piece of rusted steel. I like this old bridge, witness of an industrial past - its graffitis remind us that some young human beings are here now to recreate, express something. Time layers for time travelers.

Our Society still hardly strives sticking on a carthesian definition of living. That old collapsing structure will have to leave all the space for a quantum (non-linear) way of experiencing life. Art brings fresh air, helping to generate new roads or highways between each aspect of
our human experience.

Multi-layered music ( hundred of samplings) from one of my best ,Ulrich Shnauss:
Ulrich Shnauss/ Stars-Goodbye

A creative stopmotion clip fom Seabear, one of my favourite Icelandic band:
Hands Remember

Talking about Iceland, this week I found that clip filmed this past summer at Nattura, a special
event for nature preservation. I was deeply moved to see Sigùr Ros playing with special guest
Björk. They were like kids playing around with great joy and happiness:
Gobbledigook

Thanks everyone for stopping by and sharing your thoughts.
Have a great week-end!
-Pierre