The Naked Silo

More from sketchbook #25. Yeah, so I guess I did this; a whole page of squares. Why? Not likely boredom, because there seems to be a deliberate nature to the squares rather than it being a lackadaisical mess. Maybe it was a test of patience, endurance, discipline. Maybe I lost my mind for a little bit.

22" x 15", watercolour, 2002 I thought I had posted all my paintings featuring Ashley, but here she is one final time as part of my Red Shifts mini-series. Her dress is really black and white (as in the bottom half of this painting), but I changed it to white and red for the top half to reinforce the idea of purity –while still trying to evoke passion with her expression. I changed the colours of that dress in exactly the same way for Corona Solis (november)  about two years earlier. The title is a line from "Cut to the Chase" by Rush  from their Counterparts album.

22" x 15", watercolour, 2002 Also part of my Red Shifts series, this painting deals with the colour red as it relates to anger. For reference, I used a photo from a magazine of actors Al Pacino (left) and Robin Williams (right) from their 2002 film Insomnia . I added that red wedge to reinforce the already strong emotions between the two characters.

7 1/2" x 22 1/2", watercolour, 2001, private collection Part of my limited Red Shifts series, this painting deals with the colour red representing warmth and comfort and features my friend, Karen, as the model –and also features some nice contrast that I seem to keep going on about. I tried to keep the background dark to evoke being cozily wrapped in velvet –rather than evoke being surrounded by fire (which would be too warm).

As If 22" x 15", watercolour, 2001, private collection This painting was part of a series I was developing called Red Shifts , exploring various strong emotional states (anger, passion, etc.) associated with the colour red, and seeing what that colour does to some relatively milder emotional states (comfort, hope, etc.).  I only ended up doing a handful of paintings even though I was getting into it and enjoying the monochromatic limits of this series. This one deals with skepticism, a slight topic, but I think rendering it in such strong, evocative colours,  puts that skepticism in a much more powerful light than simply being about doubt. As viewers, it's our own emotional associations with red that provides a deeper subtext. Obviously, I didn't just pull out my Alizarin Crimson and go to town with these (that would be boring); I made the rich blacks like I normally do by mixing various blues and browns, and colours other than red appear in the red areas...

11" x 17", watercolour, 1997 Red looks really weird in jpegs and on the Internet in general, so this painting (as most do) looks much better in person. I wanted to play up the vengeful expression on her face by making the black and red areas flat, but the red ended up looking kinda like velvet, which is a pretty cool conceptual contrast if you think about it. The gun is actually a water pistol I've owned for many years and it showed up later in this painting  (and maybe a few others --I don't even remember anymore).