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DECEMBER 2011 | Acrylic on Canvas | 10″ x 10″ | View Larger »
This painting shows a detail view of a part of the courtyard area of Berkeley Castle, a historic building at the corner of the Esplanade and Berkeley Street in Toronto [map]. While not really a castle, this large and imposing building was built in the mid 1800s as a knitting mill, and then repurposed over the next century and a half for numerous other uses.

In the early 1980s, when the surrounding area was still mostly industrial, new owners completed a major overhaul of the building to modernize it and convert its many spaces into separate retail and office units. Since then, Berkeley Castle has been home to a variety of businesses such as design agencies, web development firms, architects, coffee shops, and a gym. A distinctive feature of the building is the beautiful inner courtyard, accessible during the day through two gated tunnels.

I’ve wanted to paint this for a long time, since its such an interesting and significant building only a few steps from my door, but it was hard to find a decent angle. I settled on this closeup of the view through the main gateway tunnel, taken from across the Esplanade at dusk a few weeks ago. It’s a risky composition but it turned out pretty much the way I envisioned it, for better or worse. It was good to finally start painting again after a break of more than 6 months, and this was a fairly quick painting (by my standards) completed in about four one-hour sessions.

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MAY 2011 | Acrylic on Canvas | 12″ x 16″ | View Larger »

This is a view south from the Queen Street Bridge in Toronto, showing the exit ramp from the Don Valley Parkway to Eastern Avenue [map]. To the right is the Don River. On the far bank of the river is a glimpse of the blue hoarding surrounding the current West Don Lands redevelopment, which will include the Athlete’s Village for the 2015 Pan Am Games.

I was attracted to this image because of the twisting ramps contrasted with the single bright yellow cab (unlike New York, each Toronto cab company has its own colours and the yellow ones are relatively rare.) I liked this painting a lot as I worked on it, but now that it’s done I’m not so sure how I feel. On to the next.

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MARCH 2011 | Acrylic on Canvas | 9″ x 12″ | View Larger »

This painting shows shoppers browsing the produce at Oxford Fruit at the corner of Nassau and Augusta in Toronto’s Kensington Market neighbourhood. The photo inspiration for this was taken late last summer, and I wish I could say that struggling with this sunny painting kept me warm through most of this miserable winter. It didn’t.

Unlike St. Lawrence Market, which consists of a trio of centrally managed public buildings, Kensington Market is an eclectic, gritty neighbourhood of small businesses. The area is located just west of Spadina Avenue between Dundas and College streets [map].

Over the past century Kensington has been transformed numerous times, often serving as the first stop for new immigrant communities. Until World War II the neighbourhood was primarily home to Jewish and Italian immigrants from Europe. As they moved uptown after the war, their businesses were taken over by new waves of arrivals from Portugal, Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia. During the Vietnam War the district became a gathering point for American draft dodgers and war resisters.

Evidence of all these communities remains today, and there has been fierce local resistance to gentrification attempts by corporations such as Nike and Starbucks. How long the counterculture vibe will last is unknown. Upscale businesses continue to nip at the perimeter even as hipster bars spring up in the core.

Kensington is my favourite place in Toronto to find authentic Mexican tacos, Latin American empanadas, Spanish tapas, stellar coffee, as well as produce and groceries that are hard to find elsewhere in the city. Where else could you eat at a Hungarian-Thai fusion restaurant, or smoke pot in a bring-your-own café called the Hot Box (subject to only occasional half-hearted police raids)? The chaotic vibe of the neighbourhood is unique to Toronto, especially in the summer when the market is crowded with an oddly inspiring mix of hippies, foodies, musicians, crack addicts and tourists.

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DECEMBER 2010 | Acrylic on Canvas | 12″ x 16″ | View Larger »

My first non-Toronto painting shows the Gray’s Papaya restaurant on the corner of Eighth Ave. and 37th St. West in New York City. I took the photo for this one back in October when my wife and I visited for a weekend getaway over Canadian Thanksgiving, which this year coincided with US Columbus Day.

After three full days of perfect clear weather, the skies suddenly opened up on our last night and poured down hail and rain so severe that the gutters overflowed within minutes. I thought this was an interesting image with the many coloured lights reflecting off all the glistening wet surfaces. The glare obscured many of the usual details and was fun to paint because I was able to focus on capturing the energy of the city instead of the brickwork. This area of Manhattan is especially chaotic, a sea of gridlock, pedestrians and honking horns that is hard to get used to even though I live downtown in another large city. Everything in NYC operates on a different intensity level. [map]

Gray’s Papaya itself is a NYC fast food institution. There are three bare-bones takeout locations in Manhattan, selling only hot dogs and creamy fruit drinks of various flavours including the namesake papaya. Gray’s is also famous for their “Recession Special” combo of two small hot dogs and a drink. Oddly enough, even though we ate at many great places in NYC it is these cheap little hot dogs with sauerkraut my wife and I have craved most since we returned home.

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SEPTEMBER 2010 | Acrylic on Canvas | 16″ x 20″ | View Larger »

This is a view looking east along King Street West towards York Street in the heart of Toronto’s financial district. On the left is the Exchange Tower building, and on the right is the York Centre. Two streetcars are passing, with the closer one moving away from the viewer. Also shown is a taxi and a cyclist. Somewhat surprisingly, there are no pedestrians or regular cars in sight.

This painting breaks new ground for me for a few reasons. First, it is my largest painting to date at 16 by 20 inches. Working on a larger surface with quick-drying acrylics brought some new challenges because the paint in one area would often dry before I could blend it into the next. I tried using a retarding medium to slow the drying speed but found that it gave the paint a waxy and blotchy texture, so I abandoned that idea early on and replaced it with simple persistence and layering. On the other hand, I did like the way the larger canvas made it easier to add detail without resorting to the use of a microscopic brush.

The second reason this painting breaks new ground is that it’s the first time I’ve painted from a photo I did not take myself. The original view for this image is actually cropped from a Google Map street view landscape. I’d prefer to take my own photos, but I doubt that as a pedestrian I would have been able to stand in the middle of the busy street to take this photo and also survive long enough to paint it!

Since this painting took me over a month, I snapped some photos of the progress as I went along. Below are a couple much earlier images of the painting. I painted everything first in neutral grays before layering on the colour near the end. I was trying to avoid the cartoonishly bright colours of some of my other paintings, but I think I only marginally succeeded with that goal — those vibrant TTC reds are just too tempting. That said, I am mostly happy with the final result of this painting.

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AUGUST 2010 | Acrylic on Canvas | 9″ x 12″ | View Larger »

Bright Street is probably my favourite street in Toronto. It’s so small and quiet you can easily miss it. I only discovered it by accident a few years ago while cutting north from King Street to Queen Street in the Corktown neighbourhood. The old Victorian row houses on the west side of the street (a few of which are shown in this painting) are the most interesting, as they lean back from the road at an almost alarming slant. [Map]

My attempts to photograph the street from a wider angle didn’t work out due to the obstructions of parked cars and hydro poles: because of the age of the homes, almost all the wires are strapped to the outside, and you can see some of that old-meets-new effect in this painting as well.

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AUGUST 2010 | Acrylic on Canvas | 9″ x 12″ | View Larger »

This painting shows the view along Queen’s Quay East looking westward from Jarvis Street on the Toronto waterfront. The railway tracks are abandoned, fading into gravel alongside the paved street. On the left of the painting is the Redpath Sugar Refinery, painted with an aqua blue dolphin mural (no doubt representing all the dolphins that live in Lake Ontario!) In the distance on the right is the yellow-grey bunker of the Toronto Star building, located at the foot of Yonge Street, which is (depending on who you trust) either the longest street in the city, the region, the province, the country, or the world. [map]

This street is rapidly developing. Just out of view to the south is the shiny new Sugar Beach, a colourful sandy beach that has been welcoming Torontonians since earlier this summer. Just to the west is the newly constructed Corus Entertainment building, and beside that a new George Brown College building is currently under construction. This once dreary and derelict area is suddenly springing to life.

In a few short years the abandoned railroad tracks shown in this painting will be gone, replaced with a wide leafy boulevard, sidewalks, trees, bike lanes, and walking trails. I can’t wait: as much as I enjoy documenting the history of Toronto, I also enjoy seeing progress.

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