A City in motion. 36″ x 60″

Hi Kevin and Linda

Finally, here we are. “A City in Motion” is complete

After the time that we shared during our walk through the City of North Vancouver, the recurring themes that dominated my thoughts were those of families. growth, change, potential, pride, preservation, and confidence. These themes had reoccurring images attached to them such as strollers, bikes, new homes, old homes, industrial buildings, secret areas, buses, small businesses, and community areas. After my numerous walks through the city, these themes and images grew louder and the goal was to find something that could be used as a platform or a foil to incorporate theme and the dynamism of the urban core of the city.

One of the most impactful moments during my exploration was the realization of the irrelevance of the skyline of Vancouver. The Vancouver skyline is such a dominant feature when one visits the North Shore that it is often where one’s attention is distracted as it makes an impression and a great photo. The more time that I spent wandering through the city, the less I noticed the skyline and the more impactful the life on the streets was. It suddenly hit me that being intimate with the City of North Vancouver was to use the Vancouver skyline as a foil as opposed to the City of North Vancouver as a foil to the skyline. This shift was the shift in my relationship with the city and I realized that only a visitor to North Vancouver would be finding importance in the view of the other city across the way. It was with this in mind that I chose to completely steer away from including any views of Vancouver as they were irrelevant to our story.

Instead, I came across a building site at the bottom of Ridgeway ave at 2nd and found the first image that I have included below.

Immediately I was struck by how many of the themes were caught up in this single moment. The foundation work, the supporting structures, the intricate and complicated wiring, the stuff that forms the foundation of what will become a community but will never be seen in its totality. The humans that were working together under a vision, to develop this seeming confusion of elements into a whole. The optimism of this investment and labour.

I was not able to extricate myself from the image and it became the foundation for the painting, however, I was aware that in itself it would not elevate to include the normal human enjoyment and life of the City of North Vancouver and as a single image it posed the compositional issue of how to handle the Vancouver skyline as the choice had already been made to ignore it.

The second image is a moment walking south along Londsdale ave at Jack Lonsdale’s public house. The moment caught the life of the street with the red umbrellas, people walking, post boxes and the boulevard feel. I particularly enjoyed the orange barriers that created patios as it was a subtle reminder of the times as well as more punctuation on the importance of the city being for humans.

With these 2 images and a couple of other little street life snippets, ‘ A City in Motion’ was woven together with thoughts of the environment where she may live.

Photographing her has proven to be a little tough as the colour balance and exposure has been challenging but I feel that the image below is a good representation of what you can expect when you see her in person.

A City in motion. 36″ x 60″

Urban oil painting that is a composite of 2 images that are woven together.
A City in Motion. 36" x 60" (91.44 cm x 152.40 cm) PRIVATE COLLECTION