Berkeley Castle Courtyard
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.