Rick Janson Art Studio

The Gauguin you likely didn’t know…

May 12, 2026
One of the New York Times recommended books from 2025 was Sue Prideaux’s Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin. Gauguin was an artist who influenced many of the most important figures in 20th Century Art, including Picasso. He was championed by Degas and his relationship with Van Gogh has been imprinted on the public’s imagination. Yet stylistically he was difficult to pin down, at first exhibiting alongside the Impressionists, then later regarded as a Post-Impressionist and a Symbolist. In addition to his painting, he is well known for his pottery and his writing. His 1892 painting of two Tahitian girls set a record at auction in 2015, selling for $300 million US, an irony given much of Gauguin’s later life was spent in financial struggle and debt. When he died, the official in charge of selling his remaining property stated that he was already “convinced that the liabilities will considerably exceed the assets, as the few pictures by the late painter, who belonged to the decadent school, have little prospect of finding purchasers.”

Having just read Prideaux’s book, I have put together a pop quiz on the life of Gauguin to wet your appetite for this excellent biography. How well do you really know this important 19th Century painter?
1. Paul Gauguin’s early childhood was not spent in France. His father was an anti-Bonapartist journalist who fled to exile when Gauguin was a little over a year old. What country did the family flee to?
  A) Italy
  B) Peru
  C) Mexico
  D) Tahiti
2. Throughout his life Gauguin was fascinated with a painting by Manet that he carried with him, pinning it up on the walls of his studio, never able to replicate it despite many efforts. Was the Manet painting (titles translated to English):
  A) A Bar At The Folies Bergere
  B) Luncheon On The Grass
  C) Olympia
  D) Execution of Emperor Maximillian
3. Gauguin returned to France and spent his late teens in Paris where the city was undergoing a massive Second Empire transformation under Georges Eugene Haussman. About 350,000 people were displaced as narrow medieval streets were replaced with Haussman’s wide boulevards. About 10% (35,000 people) among the displaced were…
  A) Immigrants
  B) Labourers
  C) Prostitutes
  D) Artists
4. Gauguin wrote publicly about this artist under a pseudonym: “When you want to discover how many hairs a donkey has on each ear and determine the colour of each, your place is in the stable rather than the studio.” Was Gauguin referring to:
  A) Seurat
  B) Courbet
  C) Degas
  D) Himself
5. Gauguin had seen an exhibition by the Painters of the Petit Boulevard at a restaurant on the Avenue de Clichy. Among the group was Vincent Van Gogh. However, the exhibition was short lived because:
  A) There was a fire at the restaurant
  B) The group was offered a better venue at Boussod, Valadon and Cie
  C) Vincent got in a fight with the dinner patrons
  D) The paintings were putting the patrons off their food.
6. When Vincent Van Gogh cut off his ear in Arles, Gauguin was…
  A) Already back in Paris
  B) Initially accused by the police of Vincent’s murder
  C) In the brothel where Vincent delivered his ear in a box
  D) Staying with Theo Van Gogh
7. About how long did Vincent Van Gogh and Gauguin famously share the yellow house in Arles? A) Two Months
  B) Six Months
  C) One Year
  D) Two Years
8. In the late 1880s Gauguin painted a number of images of Jesus while in Brittany, including the now famouse Yellow Christ. His image of Jesus was based on the likeness of…
  A) Vincent Van Gogh
  B) Theo Van Gogh, his art dealer
  C) Himself
  D) His disciple in Brittany, Meyer De Haan
9. When Gauguin represented indigenous Tahitians as Biblical characters, such as the 1891 painting la orana Maria (Hail Mary), the Catholic Church viewed it as blasphemous. It remained that way until a Papal encyclical reversed that decision in what year?
  A) 1904
  B) 1939
  C) 1951
  D) 1973
10. In February 1895 Gauguin had planned to return to Tahiti after a stay in France to show his Tahitian paintings, but the slow recovery of a leg wound and one other reason delayed his departure until July. What was the second reason?
  A) He needed to also recover from a dose of venereal disease
  B) He needed to raise more money for the voyage
  C) He needed to finish selling off his effects in Paris
  D) He awaited a ship that would take him on as crew
11. The leg wound which would torment him for the rest of his life was the result of …
  A) A beating from a group of locals in Concarneau over an incident with a child
  B) A fall from a horse in Brittany
  C) A fall off a cliff near Pont Aven during a plein aire outing
  D) A failed operation in Paris to fix his unequal legs
12. Gauguin left Tahiti in 1901 to go to the Marquesas Islands because:
  A) He was fleeing debts in Tahiti
  B) The French authorities were pressuring him to leave
  C) Tahiti had become, in his opinion, too Westernized
  D) To flee a paternity suit in Tahiti
13. Unable to afford canvas, one of his epic masterpieces, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897-8) was painted on…
  A) Cardboard
  B) Sack Cloth
  C) Wooden Siding
  D) Table Linens he had brought from Paris
14. Gauguin died in 1903 just prior to a prison sentence of three months for…
  A) Sexual abuse of a minor
  B) Libel of a police officer he accused of taking bribes
  C) Unpaid hospital bills incurred on Tahiti
  D) Stolen Property (a chicken)
Scroll down to find the answers and see how well you did.

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The Answers: 1 (B); 2 (C); 3 (C); 4 (A); 5 (D); 6 (B); 7 (A); 8 (C); 9 (C); 10 (A); 11 (A); 12 (C); 13 (B); 14 (B)
Exhausted

May 6, 2026

Well that was exhausting. Last weekend (May 2-3) I participated as a guest artist on the Scugog Studio Tour. As a guest artist I was an invited to show alongside the host in her studio as well as with one other guest artist. The tour organizers appear to vary the media on offer at each location. In our case, I joined a weaver (Pat Neal) and a fused glass artist (Marjolyn Pritchard).

You’d think, two days, no biggie. But after months of preparing and framing canvases, the weekend was in fact a five day event for me. Thursday April 30th was set up day, which included renting a cargo van, organizing my inventory and display material for transport, unloading and unpacking it at the site, then setting up. Friday May 1st we toured most of the sites as a group and got a chance to meet each other. Ordinarily that would not be possible given we are expected to be on site during the show. That was very special, but it did mean somebody always had to shuttle ahead to open up the next location. May 2-3 we welcomed the public to the tour, and May 4 I picked up the last of my stuff and then brought it home, where I spent the better part of the day cleaning and tidying my art hut studio before putting stuff back in. As I did so I could see the canvases that were begging me to return to work.

The question is, was the event a success? I think that’s a long term answer, although yes, I did sell a major painting, copies of my book, and made contact with dozens of people who at least told me they liked what I was doing. Despite the politeness of most Canadians, you can usually tell who was genuinely interested and who was there that day for Pat or Marjolyn’s work. Some would tell you outright. I’m sure Pat and Marjolyn experienced something similar.

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What sells artwork? Evidently the answer is familiarity with your work. For somebody who is encountering my work for the very first time, the likelihood of a purchase is small (but not impossible). Most of my sales on the tour were to people I already knew. But each of these events does help to build an audience, and encouragingly, many people took copies of my postcard. This art stuff is a marathon, not a sprint.

I did have concerns this would not be a stellar weekend — such fears were confirmed when I was told that at our site the numbers were down considerably from last year — fewer than 140 people came through the door over two days (compared to about 200 the year before). That, of course, prompts questions why? The obvious culprit was the weather, which was both colder than usual and at times overcast and rainy. Do you really want to spend the weekend shuttling around the countryside in grey and gloomy weather? We also had competition with numerous other festivals and art events that welcome the start of May. The Oshawa Art Association was hosting its Camp Samac sale the same weekend, which normally attracts a considerable number of regional art buyers. Then there is the economy — do people really want to drive about in the countryside when gas is selling for $1.83/litre?

Making art can be a very solitary occupation. Getting out and talking to people can be joyous and a way to view my own work through some fresh eyes. I was not shy, able to tell the stories behind much of my work (and of course reminding people that those stores were in my new Monograph, conveniently for sale). It was interesting to see what people gravitated to — this was the largest showing of my work ever. Some understood the humour behind the crowds in my Peggy’s Cove painting, or my Aunt and Uncle looking towards the viewer from Wasaga Beach in 1962. Some compared it to the gaze of figures in Alex Colville’s work. As I’ve previously encountered, it is often the kids that are the most enthusiastic, some younger ones having to be restrained from running their fingers over it. My painting of Le Dauphin (Tournon) had a self portrait reflected in the window of the cafe. That led to a lot of patrons searching the image to find it. Kind of a Where’s Waldo moment. The star of the show was my newest painting of Port Perry. I wanted a Scugog painting for the tour, and it got a lot of attention before it was sold.

I spoke with many artists on the pre-tour, including Carol Matsuyama. Her work was showing at the Scugog Arts Space on Queen Street in Port Perry, where our pre-tour stopped for lunch. I loved her brightly coloured still life paintings (acrylic) and returned at the end of Friday to buy one that is now hanging in our kitchen. This only underlines the advice I previously got — don’t rule out other artists as your potential patrons.

I also got a bad case of studio envy seeing where many of these artists worked. Some of the settings were stunning, including one where the couple had built a swimming pond on their property with its own beach. At that site artist Sarah Holtby did large-scale life-like portraits using ink spread on the canvas with her fingers. Yes, her fingers. I said to her that in the distant future there will be little doubt about provenance given her finger prints were all over the canvas. At the same site Josh Sims presented a sculptural piece that looked abstract until he showed you the picture that inspired it — a moment in the World Series when the ball lodged in the padded wall of the Rogers Centre. His scuplture was a small section of that wall, the fragments of typography on it very much abstracted. At another site in Blackstock, it felt like driving into a plantation as we proceeded up a long drive between rows of sugar maple trees. At the end of the drive we found a compound of buildings, including a barn hosting an exhibition of artist Karen Doran’s work. The first site of the day we had to park our car and walk up a trail to see a massive barn that had been relocated and built by the Mennonites on site. A large selection of Joanna Malcolm’s work was spread out through the first floor, including some very interesting abstract work. I took the steps up to the second level to see her amazing loft work space too.

My spouse and I were also enthusiastic about our host’s work and bought a sample. Pat Neal has an amazing second floor studio with generous light pouring in. Unlike some of the barn studios, which were too cold to work from year-round, this one was a comfortable all-season facility. Pat has been on the tour on and off for 26 years. She was there when it started. I was told in advance of the sandwiches Pat’s partner made for us on home-made bread. That was a major treat. The Greeter would welcome each visitor, some surprised to learn that Pat’s weaving studio is called The Naked Lamb. There was a brief moment of hesitation by one who had to be reassured she could keep her clothes on. The greeter also introduced all three of us.

At this point I don’t yet know if I’ll be back for 2027. Among other things, there is a jury that decides who participates and I wouldn’t prejudge that. Could I build on this?

This week is going to be hectic, but I am hoping to get back to the Robert McLaughlin Gallery to take a better look at the Oshawa Art Association show. I was fortunate to get one of my paintings into that large exhibition of work by about 100 regional artists. On opening night it was very crowded and warm, so I didn’t get a chance to fully appreciate the work. I suspect this afternoon will be ideal for such purposes. Its still grey and gloomy out. The show is on only until May 10th. After that… there are plenty of Call for Entries coming up, but I have nothing for sure on the calendar. I might just enjoy that for a little bit and get myself back into my own studio.

I would be remiss to point out that my book, Somehow This All Pertains To Me, is now available. It is 144 pages long, has more than 90 colour images, and fits comfortably in the glove compartment of your car. If you are not in the local area, you can send me your mailing address and e-transfer $30 (to rickjanson460@gmail.com) and I will mail it to you. Minus the postage and handling, the book is $25 if you plan to pick one up in person.
Getting ready for this weekend

April 29, 2026

All this week has been ramping up towards guesting on the Scugog Studio Tour this weekend. I’ve been frantically framing some final works, including today’s feature image of Port Perry, as well as collecting packing materials to get them there safely, organizing price lists, acquiring boxes for the giclees, running off draw forms (at each location you can submit to a draw for a prize from an artist at that location), making sure my new system for accepting payment by card (credit or debit) works, and boxing up everything I need for the weekend, including tablecloths, monographs, giclees, signs, music, easels, paperwork and my pop up banner.

If you’d like to experience the tour, the details are linked here as well as by clicking on the Tour logo. The location I’ll be at is at the northwest corner of the intersection of Myrtle Road and Baldwin Street (Highway 12). If you are coming from Oshawa, head North on Simcoe Street then turn left on the Raglan Road (by the White Feather), which turns into the Myrtle Road. Cross Baldwin and it will be immediately on the right. You’ll see the signs. Of course, there are many terrific artisans on the tour, so by all means don’t stop there.

Tomorrow is set up day given there will be a pre-tour for the participating artists on Friday. Its our chance to see each other’s work, and in some cases, meet each other for the first time.

One of the tasks I have today is make a complete inventory list, which is a bit tricky given I don’t know how much will fit in our Honda CRV. It’s possible there could be two trips involved. It looks likely that I will have more than 20 original paintings on site — or about the contents of a solo show. I’ve deliberately made sure that there is price range for original work from $350 (for each of a series of eight 12 x 12 paintings done specifically for the Tour) to $2200 for a large painting depicting a view along the Rhine River. As well, I am offering my brand new monograph books for $20 (Regular $25) and some small 8 x 10 giclees of two locations in Cobourg for $25 each. If you like my work, there will be something affordable to take away.

I will be sharing the space with two other artists. Upstairs is Pat Neal, whose studio we are participating as guests. Pat is a textile artist and she has a series of looms in her breathtaking and bright space on the second floor. Sharing the downstairs space with me will be glass artist Marjolyn Pritchard, who I look forward to meeting on Thursday.

Given we are in Scugog, I wanted to bring along a painting from Port Perry. For years I have admired a long Italianate commercial building on the main street, but could never figure out how to frame it into a workable piece of art. When we were in Port Perry this winter I noticed a reflected and refracted view of the building in the glass of a jewellery shop across the street. It was a big aha moment. Given its complexity I was a little uncertain whether I could pull it off in time, but I did focus and spent longer than usual sessions in the art hut to do so. This multi-view approach to painting can also been seen on my previous piece from Tournon, France, where you can see inside the cafe as well as a view of the streetscape around it. In that painting, you get a slight glimpse of me too. In this painting, I knew that the remarkable arrangements in the urns would be a challenge. I didn’t want to overpaint it, but I wanted to capture a feel for it.

Port Perry (2026) 24″ x 24″ Oil on Canvas.

I have used Port Perry as a location for my work in the past, but was never really satisfied with the paintings that emerged. My spouse says this is now one of her favorites.

Meanwhile, this is a rare month where I have work on display in two different locations. The 58th Annual Oshawa Art Association show is on at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa. My painting of Connaught Park is on show there. There is a terrific selection of work in the OAA show — the odds of making the show were about 1:3 with about 300 artists submitting material and the jury accepting work by a third of that group. And rarely for a show there, you can buy just about everything you see through the OAA. That show continues until May 10th.

Hopefully we will see some of you on the Scugog Tour this weekend. Meanwhile, don’t forget to subscribe!
A Big Day

April 23, 2026

Its a big day here. My first monograph is being delivered this afternoon. The 58th Annual Oshawa Art Association show opens tonight, of which I have a painting in this group show of about 90 Durham, Region Artists. And I need to make significant progress on a larger Port Perry painting (24″ x 24″) for it to be completed and sufficiently dry for showing at the Scugog Studio Tour May 2-3.

My goal for the studio tour was to have eight new “smalls” (12″ x 12″ paintings) ready. The last of the eight was finished yesterday — a painting based on a view from the Scotrail train between Dundee and Dunblane. The day before I finished up a painting I had been struggling with from Pickering UK. A ruler helped figure out where the alignment went wrong. The nice thing about oil paint is it is very forgiving. Make a mistake — no problem, you just adjust and paint on. Fixing the alignment of the windows in the painting made all the difference.

In recent days it has been a parade of vehicles to the house with materials for the upcoming studio tour. At one point three display easels were dropped off at 4 am by a delivery vehicle. I tend to wake up a lot in the. middle of the night, and actually saw the delivery driver on my front steps. At 4 am it can be a bit disconcerting to see someone standing on your front steps. The next morning there was another box with plastic literature holders (for my price list and my portraiture pitch). Later that afternoon the last box of frames I had ordered. In the next few days I have to start thinking about how all this stuff loads into our vehicle, and whether or not I may need two trips to the site I’m sharing with two other artists.

I’m also planning for what’s next. To date I have had two generous individuals interested in working with me on portraits — see the previous post for details should this strike you as something fun you’d like to do. There is very little obligation on your part and it helps me expand into a (relatively) new genre for me. And if you like it, you may have a new piece of art for your home at a nice price.

I also have another image I’d like to get started on. It is from France when I went swimming in the Gardon River at the Pont Du Gard. The Pont Du Gard is a famous Roman aquaduct — it is important enough to be on the back of the five euro note. I loved the casual experience of the swimmers (including me) against such a dramatic backdrop. I’m hoping to get this done in time for the RMG’s 55+ plus competition later this year. The theme of the show is “That Summer…”

Between Dundee and Dunblane (2026) 12″ x 12″ Oil on Canvas

The last of the small paintings — Between Dundee and Dunblane — is a departure for me. I sometimes get complaints that I’m not a true landscape painter given my penchant for portraying architecture, often populated by a stage set of people and bicycles. Some people might just call that an urban landscape, but I digress. My art is not always easy to pigeonhole. I was taken by the colours in this painting, but regret that the horizon falls somewhere towards the center of the picture. I tried moving it one way or another, but I think in the end the land and sky operate in complementary blocks. The composition reminds me a little of some of Mark Rothko’s work. Funny how this push and pull between the abstract and representational always happens with me. Part of what does make it work is the use of complementary colours — the heavy use of orange and blue. While this fits more comfortable within the landscape genre, it does feel very abstract to me.

Pickering (2026) 12″ x 12″ Oil on Canvas

The second painting finished this week is of Pickering, UK. When we travelled to Yorkshire last autumn, many of the place names sounded very familiar. If you head west from where we live in Oshawa, Ontario, you run first into Whitby, then a little later Pickering and Scarborough. All of those are taken from their Yorkshire cousins. We were in Pickering prior to taking an antique steam train — the Flying Scotsman — from Grosmont back to Pickering. It was among the first runs of that train along the North York Moors Railway. Hundreds of people lined up beside the track to get a glimpse of it in operation. Unfortunately, being in the train made it hard to see, well… the train. But we did have a good time beforehand in Pickering, wandering through its impressive but compact High Street. It also has an incredible church with wall paintings that are definitely worth seeing. I took a lot of photos there thinking they would make good painting subjects, especially with the long light that was illuminating the buildings. I had initially drawn out this subject well — I use the grid method for placing my subjects on the canvas — but somehow the top two windows in the eves didn’t align with the windows below. When I double checked, I realized that this was not an anomally of the building, but an anomally of my painting. While the building had obviously undergone many changes over its life, the windows did still line up from top to bottom. A ruler fixed the problem, and suddenly I felt the painting worked. I do like the composition on this one, with the human activity low down on the canvas. Oddly one of the elements that I think really helps this image is the orange cone on the bottom right hand corner. For some reason it feels like a punctuation on the image.

So… if you are in Eastern half of the GTA and at loose ends, come join me tonight at the opening of the OAA Show at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa. We’re promised light refreshments, a cash bar, and music. It should be a big crowd given the number of participating artists. Tourism Oshawa has also been promoting the event on Facebook. If you can’t make that, come see me the first weekend in May on the Scugog Studio Tour — it will be the most work I have ever shown in public. Details of where to find me are here. You can also get information on the full tour by clicking here.

Don’t forget you can subscribe for free. Depending on the device you are using, that link should be somewhere on the page.
Collaborators Wanted

April 20, 2026

I must be crazy. I’ve decided that I want to get into portrait painting. It’s not like I haven’t ventured there before, but it is full of danger, including sitters who have a very different view of themselves sometimes broadly discharged from reality. For example, I have no interest in turning your portrait into a depiction of Jesus, or a doctor who happens to look a lot like Jesus. But if you want to dress up in a cow costume and stand outside a barn, that might be different.

To that end, I am looking for potential sitters for as many as two relatively short sessions. At the end of the day, if you like the portrait and wish to own it, I can offer you a very favourable rate (say about 25% off of my normal pricing). At the very least, I can provide you with a digital copy you can post on social media in which you can offer praise or savagely ridicule me. I’m fairly thick skinned. Beware, the image will go up on this site, and perhaps in my next print book, that is unless it really goes off the rails. I retain all rights to the image.

The idea is to primarily gain some practice at the art of portraiture.

Ideally I would like a sitter who is also energetic and un-self conscious about being a collaborator. I don’t want you to sit like a lump on a chair. I’m looking for a more creative collaboration.

The process would look like this: We meet and talk about how you want to be represented. Maybe at that meeting a few photos are taken. I go back and think about it. I may make some sketches, think some more about composition. Giving the hamster time to turn that wheel inside my head, we get together for a second photo session. A painting is made from that material. You love it. You hate it. We both move on with our lives and never talk about it again.

Because this is a collaborative process, I can’t really do this with young children. The children I know mostly pull faces when I come anywhere near them with my iPhone anyway. I also don’t want to be one of those people that gets fingered in a lawsuit when the child grows up and blames all their shortcomings in life from the trauma they encountered having to sit for THAT artist. This is real, trust me. I’m sure Renoir never had to face that after he painted young Jean, who showed no sign of trauma as he went on to a legendary film career.

If you are thinking about it, but wondering what 25% off my normal pricing looks like, click on the link to my gallery page (you just passed it), look at the prices based on the size of the canvas, then knock off 25%. This is a time limited offer.

Can you give me a photo to work from instead? No. I get no sense of the person from a photo someone else took. Been there, done that. No thanks. As I said, this is a collaboration, which entails fresh images.

What kind of stuff to expect from an interview? I might ask about your happy place, about any events in life that shaped who you are, or what you might be looking for in a portrait (don’t say make me look younger).

Ideally you should be in the Greater Toronto Area unless you want to travel to the exciting city of Oshawa to meet with me (and perhaps take in the sights). Or maybe you are a rich dude who wants to fly me on his personal jet to paint his mistress in Monaco. That would be good too.

You can contact me through this site, or via Facebook Messenger, or whatever method you prefer.

Let’s do it!

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This week the 58th Annual Oshawa Art Association Show opens at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa. The kick off is at 6 pm Thursday (April 23) at the Gallery, with music and cash bar. My painting of nearby Connaught Park is my contribution to the show. The exhibition features about 90 local artists from Durham Region, and yes, most of those paintings are being offered for sale too. And please come visit me May 2-3 at the Scugog Studio Tour. I will have a lot of new painting on hand as well as copies of my Monograph (book) which has more than 90 colour images, including drawings from the 1970s to paintings from last month. The book is listed at $25 but I’m offering it to tour visitors for the low low price of $20. How can he afford to do that? I also have a box of giclee prints of some of my earlier blue work in Cobourg, which I’ll bring along too.
Straighten and Paint

April 16, 2026

This was another moment on my travels when I realized I was looking at a future painting. Sometimes you just know. Across from the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh there is a bridal shop in an elegant building that echoes the formality of their wares. Next to it is a tangle of foliage that sits almost as a counterpoint to the business taking place.

Lately I have been playing with the idea of making buildings look like they are an architectural elevation, the art adding in all the extraneous life and light that is absent from such technical drawings. There is an app on the iphone that allows you to manipulate the image to essentially straighten it up. There are often some anomalies when doing this, but they can be corrected if the point of the photo is to provide a reference to the painting.

This is not the first time I have tried this. A few weeks ago I posted an image from Troon of a 1905 building on Portland Street. Same story. Straighten and paint.

While the complexity of the 1905 painting showed lots of evidence of human scale, I felt this painting needed some bodies in front of it. I could have made them up, but waited a moment or two for a couple to pass by, waiting until they reached a point that would fit my composition.

I do this a lot when when scouting material for future paintings. Sometimes it is comical. I see someone approaching and raise the camera… then they fail to appear. When I take my eye from the viewfinder, the person is standing just outside the frame waiting for me to finish. How polite, but what they failed to realize was that I wanted them as part of the narrative.

Some people get quite cranky about it, others are nice, and if they bother to ask, are flattered to be part of my endeavour. One time I was in Ajaccio, Corsica. After taking a picture of a large number of people strolling along the main (and very public) shopping street, an elderly woman came up to me and insisted I delete the photo with her in it despite the fact that she was a speck in a broad crowd shot. There was no way she would have been identifiable. I showed it to her, then deleted it to avoid a scene. This does raise the thorny question of how far the right of privacy extends? Does everyone need a permanent shield from being in somebody else’s photos? Could get interesting at the Disney theme parks. In Wedding Dresses nobody would recognize the couple depicted on the sidewalk. In a 16 x 20 painting their faces are represented by a blob of paint. Usually what I am looking for are broad gestures or a sense of movement, as is the case here. There is no question they are strolling.

Wedding Dresses (2026) 16″ x 20″ Oil on Canvas. Private Collection

I often like to add figures into my work to give both scale and life to the image. I don’t set out to make portraits of random people (although I wouldn’t be the first if I did). I can’t imagine a celebrated artist like Jason Polan drawing people at random in New York or Tokyo then running after them with a legal release form. And if he dared ask beforehand, he would lose the spontaneous nature of those drawings.

When I first considered painting the bridal shop, I saw a shaft of light hit diagonally across the left side of the building. We were having lunch in the cafeteria of the gallery, and there was no time to run outside and snap a photo before the sun retreated again (this is Scotland, after all). I thought it possible to reinvent it without a visual aid, but instead decided I didn’t need it. It would have unnecessarily complicated the image. Instead I had fun with the texture of the stone building.

I often takes pictures of work in progress, often just to get a perspective of what I’m working on. My studio is so small you can’t really stand back. Instead I take a photo. Sometimes I post them to show my process on social media. I posted this one several times. When the finished painting went up, it was sold within 24 hours. I guess that is one less painting for the Scugog Studio Tour next month.

Last week I attended a meeting of the Oshawa Art Association where it was show and tell day. I did bring my 1905 painting (convenient to bring at 12″ x 12″), but also handed around the draft of my upcoming book, which the printer tells me I should be receiving next week. One member saw the website on my book and decided to take a look. She initially thought I was hacked because the first image she saw was by Modigliani, not me. It got me to thinking, that while I almost always reference my gallery paged in the text, it would be better if I visually promoted it on my BLOG pages. To lead with Modigliani was rare, but I thought making the connection to my gallery pages needed improvement. You’ll notice a brand new banner starting today. Just click on the image and you can avoid all my palaver.

As usual life is hectic. This afternoon I am taking two paintings over for a jury to look at for a show at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery (and its pissing rain). I am in contact with my printer over delivery of the art book, and now need to run some stickers with the ISBN number on it, because, well, that ISBN arrived more than double the time I was told to expect and subsequently missed my print deadline. I’m still trying to finish another three paintings in time for the Scugog Studio Tour, although I am feeling confident I have sufficient stock for the space I am sharing as a guest artist. There is a 24 x 24 of Port Perry that I am urgently trying to finish in time for that event. And having sold the Wedding Dresses, I have one more picture to frame and ship within the next week. Phew! Nobody said this was going to be easy.
Nazis looted 650,000 works of art

April 8, 2026

Some Of It Is Still Being Recovered Almost 90 Years Later

A recent court case over a $25 million painting by Modigliani resulted in its return to the estate of the Jewish art dealer who had originally owned it prior to fleeing Paris from the Nazis in 1939.

Nearly 90 years later, we are still seeing cases of art stolen by the Nazis run through the courts. In this case, it was a 17-year pursuit by the grandson of the original owner, Oscar Stettiner, to return the painting, Seated Man With A Cane, a portrait of Modigliani’s friend and chocolate merchant Georges Menier.

Recovery of Nazi-stolen art is still a major pursuit. With works valued in the millions of dollars, it is not a surprise that there are companies like Monex that still exist specifically to recover stolen art.

The Nazis looted an estimated 650,000 works of art in Europe, much of them from Jewish art collectors, although to complicate matters, unscrupulous French art dealers traded legitimate works for pieces considered by Hitler to be “degenerate art.” While the Nazis disliked modern art, they had no problem using it to barter for other works or to ship pieces by Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani and others to Swiss auction houses for sale, the proceeds to fund their war. Under the occupation, French art dealers shipped stolen work to clients around the globe, in some cases their wealthy clients undermining the war efforts of their own countries.

A recent book by Michelle Young about French curator Rose Valland speaks about her brave efforts to document the looting during the Nazi occupation and after the war, to recover about a tenth of that – or 61,000 pieces. It is estimated that there are still 100,000 Nazi-looted art works still unrecovered. Make that one less with this recent court case (maybe).

What seized “degenerate art” the Nazis couldn’t sell or swap, they simply destroyed. Valland was witness to the cutting and burning of valuable artworks on the grounds of the Jeu de Paume, the museum the Nazis used as their clearing house in Paris for seized artworks. The Jeu de Paume would set up exhibitions for Hermann Goring, then considered the second highest ranking individual in the Nazi hierarchy, to select pieces to send back to Germany.

While Valland was doing her best to document what the Nazis were doing – and subsequently putting herself at great peril – many were suspicious that she was instead collaborating with the Nazis, which has been since debunked (Valland is one of the most decorated French heros from World War II). The 1964 Burt Lancaster movie The Train is based on Valland’s book about the period, including the race to stop the last train loaded with Nazi plunder from leaving Paris. Valland was a secret member of the French resistance and had alerted them to the urgency of stopping the train.

Curiously, the whereabouts of the Modigliani was confirmed by the Panama Papers, which, according to Artnet, led Swiss authorities to raid a storage facility in Geneva in search of it. The work had first surfaced in 1996 at a Christie’s auction in London, purchased by a billionaire’s holding company. Marcel Phillippon, an administrator working for the Nazis, sold the Modigliani in 1944 to John Van der Klip, who had claimed he had sold it on to an American military officer, although the provenance lists a J. Livengood as the owner, but Livengood was the work’s consigner and Van der Klips heir and grandson. “It would seem he lied to the court about having sold the painting to avoid returning it to Stettiner,” writes Sarah Casone on Artnet.

Seated Man With A Cane (1918) by Amedeo Modigliani. A recent court case determined it had been stolen Nazi loot and was ordered returned to the estate fo the original owners.

The Artnet story states that billionaire David Nahmad initially denied that he owned the painting until the Panama papers suggested otherwise. His lawyers then argued in an American court that there was no evidence that it was stolen Nazi loot. Nahmad had tried unsuccessfully to sell it on at Sotheby’s New York for $18 to $25 million. The Sotheby’s researcher had contacted the Wildenstein Institute in Paris looking for information related to provenance. The Wildenstein provided a photograph of the painting from its archives that included, according to Artnet, notes reading “Famille Stettiner” and “vole” (French for stolen).

The case is still fresh, and there could yet be an appeal. It does underline the difficulty of restitution almost 90 years after the German army walked into Paris and began looting collections throughout Europe.

One of artists who didn’t flee the Nazis was Pablo Picasso. Michelle Young’s book (The Art Spy) repeats the often told story of the Nazi’s arriving at Picasso’s Atelier and seeing a picture of Guernica on the wall. Guernica was Picasso’s famed depiction of the horror of the Nazi bombing of the basque town of Guernica in support of the fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War. It is still considered a strong anti-war statement and likely Picasso’s best-known painting. A German officer, spotting the photo, asked Picasso if he did that? Picasso purportedly replied, “no, you did.”

Meanwhile, war continues to put the world’s heritage at risk – the recent attacks on Iran have impacted a number of UNESCO World Heritage sites, including the 16^th-Century Golestan Palace, The Sotoun Palance and the Jameh Mosque.

Sometimes we forget the importance of art to the world, but then you look back at the enormous efforts to plunder the art of another nation and realize that it plays an outsized role in our culture.
In Canada that is sometimes hard to fathom. This week the Kingston Prize, the predominant portrait competition in the country, has just moved from biennial to annual. We couldn’t previously run this competition more than every other year?

This week I am toiling away in preparation for two upcoming events — the annual Oshawa Art Association show at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa, and the Scugog Studio Tour. I’m still aiming for eight new 12″ x 12″ paintings for the tour, numbers seven and eight well advanced. I’m also looking at applying to show at the culture hall outside the City of Oshawa Council chambers. Given how few opportunities there are for this space, I suspect competition will be great. The City has been advertising its call for entries for weeks now on Facebook.

Meanwhile, if you want to see my latest work, click here on the gallery section. Yes, these works can be purchased, although with two events on the horizon I’m not spending a lot of time pushing sales right now.
A Monk on a Stock Exchange?

March 31, 2026

I took Sunday off. That is a bit of a rarity for me since I started down this path back to art. It helped that there was a Blue Jays game on during the afternoon — time I normally spend in the art hut. Art is a consuming exercise, the painting activity only half the work. It was nice to recharge my batteries, and yes, on Sunday the Blue Jays did win.

I also spent a part of Saturday revising my book project after a sample was sent to me from the printers in Montreal. It looked a bit smaller than I expected. My last book project was done on an A5 paper size, but it was hardcover and as such had a slight overlap on the inside pages. The paper was also a bit heavier on that project. Somehow This All Pertains To Me runs at 144 pages. It does have substance, including more than 90 images in full colour. The main body of the text runs to about 8,000 words.

Today I am following couriers who are delivering more framing towards two upcoming events — the annual Oshawa Art Association show at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery (April 24 – May 10), and the Scugog Studio Tour (May 2-3). Both are juried events — I won’t get confirmation that either of my two submisisons will be part of the RMG show until April 18. I’ve known since last fall that I will be a guest artist on the studio tour. There have been a lot of call for entries lately, but so many have overlapped, making it difficult to allocate resources.

For the first time I have placed an order with Kolekin, a Montreal-based framing company, which did dispatch my order quickly. The first batch has already arrived and the second expected shortly. I’m still hoping to get back into the studio sometime this afternoon.

Yesterday I finished my sixth 12″ x 12″ painting for the Scugog Studio Tour. I’m aiming to have eight new “smalls” ready by the time the tour takes place. I also began the 8th, a much more traditional landscape based on a view from the train between Dundee and Dunblane, Scotland. Number seven got started last week and is from Pickering — not the one down the road from here, but the one in Yorkshire.

The Greeters (2026) 12″ x 12″ Oil on Canvas.

The latest painting is a bit of a departure for me, although I had been thinking about taking it on for some time. It is of an entrance to the North Face shop on Buchanan Street in Glasgow. I’ve been since trying to find out more about what I call “The Greeters.” but most of the literature on the building only talks of the sculptural figures, not who they are or are supposed to represent. The building was not originally a retail destination — it was built in 1875-77 as the city’s stock market. Architect John Barnett used a distinctive Venetian Gothic style which makes the building such a head turner in Scotland. The use of the figures around the doorway are common to his work, Barnett having utilized numerous well-known sculptors in his day, although none are attributed to this particular building. The figure on the far column looks like a monk — a bit of an odd choice for a stock market. I thought Barnett may have used figures of workers, much as you can see on the frieze of the old Toronto stock exchange, but there is nothing about the character in the foreground to suggest that, although his hair and moustache do look distinctively modern (at least for 1875) and working class. I just don’t understand why, if he was a worker, he is not wearing any visible clothing? Then what is the status of the female figure on the far side of the same column? She looks more like someone drawn from antiquity than from the streets of Glasgow. If anyone knows the background to these figures, I’d love to hear from you.

The North Face logo was visible in the doorway, but I decided to edit it out as it didn’t fit compositionally. I was tempted to reflect the now modern status and use by including it, but I just couldn’t make it work as a painting. That was a long conversation with myself.

What was challenging is how the light changes the colour of the stone, depending on how it hits. Much of it has a warm tone, but I also noticed that on the far right it looks distinctly blue too. I do wonder if repairs were made that shifted the colour?

As anyone who has followed this BLOG knows, I have been challenging myself by taking on new subject matter and genres, and this one definitely did challenge me despite my normal affinity to architectural-based subjects. With all the detail around the stone work, and the more subtle colour changes, it was difficult to keep it painterly too. Thank goodness for all the imperfections and stains.

Painting old buildings is like painting older people — there is just so much more life lived in them.

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Want to avoid all the palaver and just look at pictures? My gallery, which includes pricing, is here.

Want to learn more about the Scugog Studio Tour, click here to see the participating artists (including me).
Finding Colour in Yorkshire

March 25, 2026

When I titled this painting I wasn’t a hundred per cent sure of where it was. I took a picture en route to Grosmont, where we were to take an hour ride aboard the Flying Scotsman along the North York Moors Railway. Yes, that was one of the trains used in the Harry Potter movies — when we boarded the train we were told that people often dress as characters from the movies at the next station, which was also used in the film. The camera data tells me it was Whitby-Grosmont. We passed Whitby, but only got a glimpse from a great distance. Whitby it wasn’t. Although when I look at other people’s photos of Grosmont, assuming you can find one that isn’t of the historic train station, the buildings don’t look like this.

This row of houses particularly stood out given many of the buildings in the region are of stone, so the overall impression is of brown and gray buildings. This was different. While the colour stood out, so did the odd ornamentation on the buildings, including the Palladian quoins, the triangular corbels and the medallions. It struck me as unusual that such modest houses would carry the weight of such ornamentation, especially off in the in Yorkshire countryside.

So far what people respond to is the colour. Between the green and pink pastel colours, there was a brilliant blue sky to work from, which I built up in layers.

Yorkshire (2026) 12″ x 12″ Oil on Canvas

I’ve been reluctant to get into the reference images I brought back from Yorkshire given how different they are from those in Scotland.

This is another of the eight “smalls” (12″ x 12″ paintings) intended for the Scugog Studio Tour May 2-3. So far I have five completed although I just underpainted two more yesterday. The next is not far from completion (maybe today) and goes into far more detail on building ornamentation — this one an entrance to a grand building on Buchanan Street in Glasgow.

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Last night TVO aired an episode of Fake or Fortune that came to Canada. Back in the UK, someone in the UK had purchased a painting purported by Canadian impressionist Helen McNicoll for two and a half thousand pounds. Lately the world has rediscovered McNicoll. The prices are hard to gauge given very few ever make it to auction, but the record appears to be $653,755 paid by a Canadian billionaire that Mould unusually interviews in the show. The collector asserts that he has more paintings by McNicoll than anyone else, including collections in museums and galleries. He says that one day he will pass his collection on to a public gallery. McNicoll died young, having only produced about 300 paintings in her lifetime. The painting in question had been folded over, hiding her signature to make the canvas smaller. It also had a label on the frame that incorrectly spelled her name, and likely did not get the title of the painting correct either. Art dealer and Fake or Fortune co-host Phillip Mould travels to Quebec City, Toronto and Hamilton, the latter where he discovered that McNicoll unusually used a bright pink underpainting in select areas to warm up features, such as a subject’s face. They were also able to tell him the weave count on the canvases McNicoll used, both of which corresponded with the painting in question back in London, England. Having identified that the painting was of bean harvesters, they were able to find a corresponding title in exhibition records in Canada and the UK. The painting had been listed as lost. The National Gallery of Canada is exhibiting a touring show of McNicoll’s work later this spring. To learn more about McNicoll and see some of her work, click here.

Want to see more of my work? Click here.
Listed buildings, a new book and a really dumb marketing strategy.

March 20, 2026

When I was young I briefly toyed with the idea of as a career as an architect. Then I laughed when someone told me about the level of math I would need. I never knew if that was true or not, especially when I look at the scribbling of somebody like the late Frank Gehry. I sometimes think I am way too undisciplined anyway to bring the order a career in architecture requires. But it doesn’t mean I don’t know a good building when I see one.

This commercial building on Portland Street in Troon, Scotland, looks like it has seen some better days. It doesn’t help when the tide goes out on the economy and some stores and services shut down.

Curiously, I did check out a real estate listing for one of the upstairs offices. Inside you would have no idea that this was a turn of the century (20th) building. The offices were all efficiently drywalled, all the interesting stuff smoothed out. That was a bit of a surprise given the building is listed (C-designation), which is supposed to afford a degree of heritage protection. To read the full heritage designation, click here.

The red sandstone building is circa 1905 (hence my title) done in an Edwardian Baroque Art Nouveau style. Of special note are the decorative cast iron shopfronts, which was tricky to capture on the small canvas.

I was happy with both the level of detail and the loose rendering on this painting. Working small, surprisingly, has given me the opportunity to be much more free with my brushstrokes — not what I would have anticipated. Maybe I should be working with bigger brushes on my larger canvases? I also liked how the light catches the building and the warm tones from the sandstone exterior.

1905 (2026) 12″ x 12″ Oil on Canvas

I posted this recently on the Landscape Artist of the Year Facebook page and it appears to be generating both controversy (is it really a landscape?) and “likes” and “hearts”. A lot of people seem to find beauty in it even if it doesn’t depict an idealized sylvan forest or a rolling farm field or handsome looking coos.

The painting is another of the “smalls” that I have been prepping for the Scugog Studio Tour, which is about six weeks out.

With the studio tour approaching, and a call for entry in the Annual Oshawa Art Association show at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, it has been a bit hectic lately. And on top of it all, we had the grandchildren out for part of March Break. I am tired.

Somehow All This Pertains To Me

One of my objectives is to have my first Monograph of my work complete in time for the tour. Yesterday I shipped the files off to a printer in Montreal minus its ISBN number. When I applied for the number February 7, I got a quick email reply telling me to expect it within the next 30 days. Um, its March 19 and no ISBN yet. I do wonder if all the layoffs in the federal public service may be impacting this function? Funny how that works when you layoff people? After asking about it, I did get another form email that said they are still processing ISBN requests from January. Oh-Oh! The printer is supposed to send me a draft copy of the assembled book within about a week, so there is a bit of time to add the ISBN. If the ISBN is still lost in the process by then, I may have to add it as a sticker later on (at my own time and expense). The best laid plans… For those who are unfamiliar, an ISBN is an International Standard Book Number. Every edition of a book has a unique number, so a softcover and hardcover editions could have different ISBN numbers. If I revise this book for a second edition, it too would need its own ISBN. The ISBN is usually found on the barcode at the back of the book. The code helps retailers scan your item and price it.

The book is called “Somehow This All Pertains To Me.” It is softcover, 144 pages, trimmed to A5-paper size (a bit smaller than a typical coffee table book), and has 93 colour images, most of them of my painting and drawing work. For those already familiar with my work, they will likely see new art that has never been displayed before, including one piece that has never left my studio. At present the book is priced at $25 (CDN), but I will be offering a very good deal on it for those who show up in person during the studio tour. I will likely eat some of the retail profit on delivery costs too, but until I get my draft copy, I won’t be able to calculate shipping. Stay tuned. My hope is to break even, or at least come close.

Worst Marketing Plan Ever

Meanwhile I also ordered a retractable banner for the studio tour. I calculated that if people are walking in to the shared studio space (I am a guest in another artist’s studio) they may want to know who I am. Who is that old scruffy guy? I went to VistaPrint, given I have been happy with the quality of the work in the past. Their turnover is also very fast. However, the day I ordered the banner I got an email saying that I forgot something. The email had a link that took me back to the website, of which there was a message that I hadn’t completed my transaction. I thought that odd given they had already sent me an email with the receipt for the job. As the day went on the notification kept popping up again, but when I did return to the site I could find nothing I had left undone. Eventually I went to the chat function, and they confirmed that my banner was already in production (it has already shipped as of this writing). So why the emails? The person on the other end of the chat asked if I wanted to opt out from further marketing emails? WHAT! I had spent at least an hour searching for what I had done wrong, and all this was is more marketing. Basically, it was a lie to their customers to try and get them back and order something else. I was furious. Given the relationship with the printers I have engaged with is typically one of trust, I found this very disturbing. The marketing team at VistaPrint should understand that blowing up that trust is not helpful in generating more business. I have already started looking at other companies for materials I may need in the future. Sorry Vista, that was really dumb.

The next day the banner did arrive, and looks great.

As usual, if you want to avoid the palaver and just look at pictures, click here.

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