Shenkman Centre Trees, Oil on Gallery Canvas, 30x48 inches, circa 2022

I had painted over my original brightly coloured oil pastel painting with which I was unsatisfied. The new black background gave me a chance to start out by paying attention to negative space first, before giving attention to the positive space.

I was searching for a subject to paint that was close to home. I walked around in front of the Shenkman Centre, admiring the bronze piano; I caught a glimpse of the light coming through the birch and pine trees westward of the building. I took a photo.

In my painting, I included two spheres to represent suns and moons; at the bottom right is the internet signal. For me, the painting commemorates the creative forces at work at the Shenkman Centre–artists like me, or theatre actors, musicians and dancers who have often connected through in-person events and also online. The bright colours represent hope after a negative period; the dark shades represent the darkness of the Covid era. The intermingling of the bright and dark shades create an interplay that shows the back and forth fluctuation of the creative spirit coming out of Covid restrictions. At the heart of the painting is the ever-present internet–a connection tool that saved a lot of artists from the alienation they experienced because they were devoid of an audience.