|
The back label story...This is Sarah, my youngest daughter. Here she’s age 10. We’re down at the park on the waterfront in Oak Bay, BC. Canada. It’s late on a sunny fall afternoon... golden hour sunshine.
Over my years of painting I’ve come to notice the temperature of light during the various seasons. Spring is crisp, clear light and intense colour, with the foliage and grass all sporting new, fresh colour. Summer is warmer light and a hazy atmosphere. Fall is clear light and the colours of spring have aged and seem richer and more mature. Winter is stark and everything is grey. I don’t paint winter at this time. That may change in the future, but at this time, cold grey and depressing doesn’t inspire me. I’m moody enough, without wallowing in all that. Geographic region makes a remarkable difference to light as well. My father and I hosted tours around the world for years. He painted watercolour and always used the same palette of his favorite Windsor and Newton colours. Despite that, the temperature of the colours was distinctive from place to place. I recall a particular painting he did of Tangier Harbor. The colours and lighting in the painting came out, somehow, distinctly North African. I don’t know what combination of elements in that painting made it that way, it just was. The same can be said of his paintings from our tour of China, Mexico, England, etc. So back to this painting. I’ve tried to capture that combination of ethereal elements of colour temperature that make this painting distinctly fall on the West Coast of Canada. The lack of background features makes the location more difficult to pinpoint. The light and shine are the only clues. Mark Heine |
