Colour me -- confounded

 

The seasons' change is in the air.  Autumn is almost here, and Summer Camp 2026 is nearing its conclusion.  In this year’s adventures, some of the artists I’ve sought to emulate – or in any case, to be inspired by – are from other eras, other countries.  To the forefront now, at this late date, comes a contemporary Vancouver artist who is greatly admired particularly for his landscape paintings.

 

A practicing medical specialist until his 2017 retirement, he is almost a lifetime artist.  This account from his medical peers tells part of the story that he’s still writing today with great energy and expertise.  I’ve admired his work for years in reproductions and had the luck to meet him on the last day of his Fall 2025 exhibit.  His warm smile suggests the kind of physician he must have been.  He genially spoke with his visitors and generously let me have one each of his rack cards.

 

Meanwhile, as August came into view, I’d been looking at years of photos from my cherished friend L, taken at her beautiful home on Galiano Island.  The sunsets were always spectacular – did I dare give this one a try, even as the colours in nature are overpowering??

 

Looking particularly for examples of sky in DH’s paintings, I found this one from his earlier series on Vancouver’s harbour.

 

His process is so intriguing – are the lines on a tree trunk, for example, painted after and over the trunk’s colour, or is their colour painted first, then painted with the trunk's colour, and then the lines “carved out” from the overlay?  

 

This is no less clear to me now, after finding this description just this morning.  Scroll down about 10 short paragraphs, below the painting titled, “View from the Spit…” and try to match the description to the outcome.

 

Nevertheless, in mid-month, I plunged in:

 

As I continued, the puzzles became more confounding:-- the sequence for the colour application; the lightness or darkness of reflections on the water; the particular quality of yellow.  An interim stage:

 

Big sigh.  One of the givens of colour mixing is that white not only lightens other colours but might at the same time dull them.  Sometimes a touch of yellow is preferred instead…but how could you lighten yellow with yellow?

 

Well – here’s the finale. “Memories of Galiano – Summer Camp series,” copyright 2026.

 

No, I didn’t get the colours right – and its biggest flaw is that I just could not make the “branches” of the centre tree thin enough.  (Hmmm….I feel an urge to repaint coming on).

 

However, another happy surprise from this morning’s online search, is this:

 

Another exhibit this October, and it’s in my calendar now!!

 

Now, is it time to fold the tents on Summer Camp?  ….not quite.

 

Time for spooky tales around the campfire?

As Summer Camp wends onward, I’d planned for a landscape focussed on an old house.  The abandoned tavern shown here is from a regional vintage photo site in New York state  -- not fair game for my purposes.  I hoped to locate another old Vancouver house like the one that enchanted me last year. 

 

My time for exploring has been limited lately as Serious Stuff – a research project I mistakenly volunteered for -- impinges on my summertime fun.  I used Google maps to explore some possible neighbourhoods, to no avail.  I was much more successful in finding a painting I might emulate, titled “Deserted House.”

 

It’s by 20^th century Canadian artist Prudence Heward who is top of my list right now for preferred painting partners.

 

How could I have forgotten her after seeing a blockbuster show at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2023?  Here, she has painted another similarly “lost” artist, printmaker Edna B. Hopkins, an American of roughly the same period. 

 

I would love to have painted this!!  And once found, it quickly led me to abandon the abandoned house motif and any thought of spooky tales.  Instead, I decided to paint two “sisters in art” – Prudence herself and the close friend of a coffee buddy I’ve become acquainted with in the past year.  This young woman (“young” equals 50-ish, right?) wears different hats so stylishly and, just incidentally, has started taking watercolour lessons.

 

Here’s the first lay-in:

 

A midway point:

 

And the final version, “Sisters” – Summer Camp Series, copyright 2026.

 

I’ve left the equivocal facial expressions just as you see them.  Is Prudence viewing a younger version of her friend group, wondering about how future generations might express themselves?

 

And here’s more food for thought:  I’d hoped to suggest there was still time to grab a spot in another summertime Commedia program.  Then I had the wisdom (!) for once to check out the meaning of its title, psicodramma.  I should have known! – psychodrama – and my extracurricular research activities of the summer have already brought too much of that!!