Musselscape

"Musselscape" (oil on birch panel 12 x 24 in.)

29 January 2020 finds me finally putting my signature on this oil painting of a scattering of native mussel shells on the shore of the St Lawrence River near Montreal. This commission has been dragging on through various events and illnesses since I painted most of it in October at my parents' place in Westbank, British Columbia.

My client tells me that he has always been impressed with how brightly coloured the mussels are at this location. Fred and I have often found the same kinds of variants expressed (in shape, thickness, or colour) within the mussel community at a site. The extreme expressed in this community is the intensity of colour in the 'nacre', or pearly inner shell.

It was useful to be able to refer to the shells that he sent to me, but the scene was painted mainly from his photos. The water was still in the photo, but the more I worked on it, the more it moved under my brush - so here you the scene after a wavelet has sloshed up and is trickling back through the rocks and shells. The leaves are stranded, their fall finished. But the shells, though trapped motionless among the rocks, I see as if they are stopped in one rhythmic movement of a waltz, in which they'd been flaunting glowing silks and satins, flaring tartans and glossy leather. I never know when a dance is going to break out in one of my paintings.

Dear supporters and patrons of my art,

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