The journal
Four winters
in the van.
From the fall of 2016 to the spring of 2020, I spent the cold months on the road with a van full of birch panels and a black dog named Charlie. I painted outside, from life, in one sitting, nearly every day I could. This is what that was like.
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Most painters I admire work in a studio, with a photo clipped to the easel. I wanted the other thing: to stand in the place, in the wind, and get it down before the light moves on. So when the Okanagan went grey, I went south. Not for a holiday. For the work.
What the four winters were for
The first years, I was learning to paint. It took me almost four years to be satisfied with mixing colour: to look at a patch of colour in nature and mix it pretty close on the first try. It’s surprising how hard that is to do quickly, before the sun sets or the scene changes.
The later years were about refining the process, and learning to paint not only what I saw, but what it made me feel. My feelings became my style.
Down the coast, and a dog from Playa Hawaii
The first winter was an experiment. Down through Washington and Oregon in the rain, then the California coast: the Golden Gate from Sausalito, Morro Bay, Santa Barbara. By Christmas we were in Baja, and by New Year I was painting sunrise at Playa Costa Azul.
Loreto stopped me cold. Coming from Canada, you don’t see colour like that on a working boat. Somebody bought my painting of those boats right off the easel, the first time that had ever happened to me.
On the way back north we stopped at a beach called Playa Hawaii. That’s where we got Charlie. Then Sedona, the Grand Canyon in the snow, Joshua Tree, Ojai, and the long drive home in the spring.
“This is where we got our dog Charlie from.”
On camera at Playa Hawaii, Baja, 2019
Across Canada to Algonquin, then the long way to the Keys
The second winter started by going the wrong way. Charlie and I drove east, right across the country: Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, then Georgian Bay and Algonquin Park in the fall. Just the two of us and the van. The maples were turning, the lakes were grey, and I painted every day I could. Geoff Butler caught some of it on camera.
Jayna met us later, and we turned south, all the way down to the Florida Keys, where the clouds stack up over Boca Chica and Geiger Key like nothing I’d seen. Then west through Texas and Arizona, into the red rock of Utah: Lake Powell, Zion, and the Natural Bridge at Bryce with snow still in the shadows.
I had never been to most of those states. Standing in them is different: the desert heat, the wind in your face, a painting that has to be finished before the light goes.
“Ending these last few weeks with the Chars, just as we started. She’s a good girl.”
Algonquin Park, fall 2017
Photos by Jayna
Manitoulin Island, November 2017
Wolf tracks, and the easel I left behind
I found a way into a closed-off stretch of shore on Manitoulin and stayed three days. One morning there were wolf tracks all around the van, right next to Charlie’s.
When we finally drove out, I forgot my easel was still set up. I had to go back after dusk and walk a couple of kilometres in with Charlie, and there it was, still standing, a wet painting on it. I hiked out with it.
North Channel Frost, the painting
Grand Bend, Lake Huron, December 2017
Painting from someone else’s photo
We stayed with friends in their house on Lake Huron and I got to paint a lot: the beach, the pier, the light going down over the lake.
I also did a commission there, Dunes at Sunset, from her photo. I didn’t like it. That’s when I learned I can’t paint from other people’s photos. Then it got very cold, and we headed south.
Huron Sunset, the painting
March 2018
A winter’s month on the table
Near the end of the winter I laid out a month of studies on a table: New Mexico to Utah, red rock, snow and big skies.
Verde Hot Springs, Arizona, March 2018
A hot spring on the Verde River
South of Utah we drove out to a natural hot spring on the Verde River: old concrete pools full of warm green water, painted rock walls, and the river running past.
We met a guy there who had been on the TV show Alone, twice. He didn’t win either time, but he had stories.
Kauai, the coast road, and the episodes
That November we flew to Kauai for five weeks: Hanalei in the rain, Poipu, the bluffs at Makawehi. Sixteen paintings, green on green. Christmas was on the Gulf coast at Pensacola.
Back on the Pacific side I bought a drone and started filming the sessions properly. That winter became the episodes: Devil’s Slide, Point Lobos, Big Sur, Ojai, then down the Baja peninsula again to Loreto, Cerritos and Cabo. Two years after that first sale, I painted the same fishing boats in Loreto.
On 22 February I painted twice: the arch in the morning, the waves off Camino Cabo Este until the sun went down. Both are films now.
“I’m pretty stoked on having this bit of technology to show you the spaces where I get to hang out and paint.”
On camera near Point Lobos, January 2019
Photos by Jayna
One more lap, and the long way home
The last winter started late, in January: Mount Baldy, Petaluma, Pescadero, Point Lobos in the mist, Laguna Beach. Then Cerritos again, where I painted the tidal rocks and went back a week later to paint them twice the size.
By March we were across the water in Mazatlán. Then the world shut down, and we drove home.
“It’s all about having fun and getting out here and learning.”
On camera in Cabo San Lucas, February 2019
Photos by Jayna
Mexico, 2020
The dog bite
Jayna was taking a pregnant street dog to a shelter to be fixed, and I was helping. The dog didn’t see it that way. Tetanus shots followed.
Between the winters
On the walls,
at home.
Back in the Okanagan the paintings went up on walls: a winery, two galleries in Penticton.
Covert Farms, Oliver
Early shows on the winery’s wood walls. I sold a few paintings from the first one.
Penticton
Early paintings at the Penticton Art Gallery, and a wall at the Martin Gallery. Lloyd’s Gallery had them up for about six months. Nothing sold there; that’s part of it too.
What the road teaches
Paint fast.
Talk to strangers.
You learn to paint fast, because the light won’t wait and neither will the tide. You learn that the wind is part of the painting. You learn to set up where people walk by, because they will stop and talk, and some of the best conversations I’ve had started with a stranger asking what I was painting.
I put out postcards. At a waterfall in Big Sur I think I went through about thirty. And you learn how much a van can hold, and where not to put the wet panels.
“When people see me, it gets a little weird, but I’m getting used to it.”
On camera in Loreto, Baja
