commentary

“H’Sao” - Live painted on 30×40 canvas in 3.5 hours at the Halifax Jazz Festival. 80% of the proceeds of this work went towards Jazz East.

Now this work was a challenge! I set up on my cute little stage with my duct-tape secured chair (see last entry) and easel ready to paint the show on a giant 30×40″ canvas, and then I encountered something I haven’t contended with while painting indoor events – fog! A 30×40″ sized canvas to be painted in a bit over three hours.

Thank goodness the Jazz Festival volunteers let me use this rusty trusty flashlight to see the canvas!!

In fog!!! I must be out of my mind. If you ever wonder if I am thinking such things to myself when I set up to paint places while things are going on around me, well yes… sometimes I do think that… because oh my goodness! Does the paint ever work differently when you paint in mist!! Someone was kind enough to take a picture of me with my flashlight working hard on this piece despite my frustrations with the drying time. I understood why they took the picture afterwards when I wasn’t busy struggling with the weather.

The paint I use is acrylic and therefore it’s water-based. The fine water in the air prevents the paint from drying… so I could rework a section of colour an hour and a half after initially laying it down initially. You know sometimes people ask me if the paint I’m using is oils and I tell them that would be impossible because it takes a few weeks for oil paintings to dry. Well, that night I felt like I was live painting in oils! [Kids, don't try this at home - leave it to the pros!!]

This work has a slightly different feel from my other works in that the colours (at least to me) have a feel of being put on the canvas all wet at the same time.

TD representatives were present to host this night’s event. We’re all glad to have their support in order to make these festivals take place. The TD colours and logos and such were stronger in this work than even the night before. Then at the end of the night, the bank said they’d buy this painting. I wonder if it will go up in a branch in Halifax, or what banks do with artwork they purchase?

H’Sao were nice people as well as good performers. They came up and talked to me after they performed to see how the painting of their performance turned out. They seemed appreciative of it. It makes me happy when performers like seeing themselves in the completed painting.

Matt Semansky – a blogger from The Coast snapped a picture of my paint in progress and quoted me when I talked about the nature of painting in foggy weather. (If you live in the maritimes, it is pretty normal. It’s foggy every other day, really.) the Coast blog entry is here.

There’s one more jazz festival painting to blog in this set of four, then there are other events I’ve done since that I still haven’t told you about. [Yes I keep busy these days!!]