The Naked Silo

30" x 22.5", watercolour, 2006 Krista's sister, Caitlin, is coming to visit next week and we're very much looking forward to her stay. This post's in honour of that. This painting's another composition made by juxtaposing two separate photos. Caitlin was photographed by me during her last trip out here a few years ago. The background was shot by a friend (probably around the same time) when the movie, Cinderella Man , was being filmed in Toronto (and a bit of Queen Street East was dressed in period clothing, so to speak). Why the juxtaposition of contemporary Caitlin vs a 1930s street scene? Why not?

30" x 40", oil on canvas, 2002 For this Interior I lit the bathroom only with the tea light candles I placed around the rim of the sink and used a long enough exposure to get me the image. I never keep records of my camera settings (f-stop, etc.) so I'm always winging it with each photo, usually going by the camera's internal light meter. Once again, I used a blue filter to colour-correct the image --otherwise, it would have been extremely yellow because of the low light and the candles as the light source. I particularly like the way the light's reflecting off the door on the left and the tiles on the right.

15" x 22", watercolour, 2000, private collection In 1999, I visited New York City for the first time and I brought my camera and tons of film (this was back when I was still shooting on film!). I knew I was eventually going to do some NYC-based paintings based on my photos, but I didn't want to focus on the obvious landmarks and clichés, so I mostly took pictures of architectural features I felt were New Yorky and interesting. That first trip was sort of a whirlwind tour and I saw the city mostly from the passenger seat of my friend's car and most of the photos I took were shot on the fly. I took some good ones, but missed a bunch more, and I'm lucky I got what I did.