Going Somewhere?

Although we haven't been in each others' studio for many years, it is curious that my friend Loraine Stephanson and I are both putting roads in our paintings. Roads are something I used to ignore because they seemed hard to integrate into the composition and also because they are man-made, uninteresting.  Now roads are almost central to the painting.  Here are two small paintings from a few years ago, while the two bigger ones that you can't see properly are from this year. Sorry that they are upside down and partially out of the picture.

Happy Friends

Jane Crow took this photo at the opening of my exhibition in Calgary on Saturday.  I met both these two good friends many years ago at Emma Lake, the professional artists workshop in northern Saskatchewan.  Barbara Ballachey, when she is not voyaging around the world, lives and paints in Calgary;  she and I have travelled many times together to attend exhibitions in New York and London.  Michael Matthews hales originally from Calgary, but he and his partner Jane, also a painter, do their creating part of the year in Harrogate, B. C. and the other part in Syracuse, New York.  They both also travel extensively, and took the time to join us last fall to see the Matisse Cut-Outs Show at the Museum of Modern Art.