King Edward and Rideau at 4 am.
Oil on linen. 36 x 46 inches. April 17 - 18th 2005.

I was very turned off painting this location due to the large amount of traffic. The constant cars and it's overwhelming busy nature. The location or should I say the composition had so many elements that triggered my interest. The positive elements out weighted the negative. The church cross, the telephone wires, the road, pavement, the painted marks on the street, the signs, street lights, the emptiness of the centre space.

I wanted to paint this location for what it is. Not to make it fake, not to subtract the negative elements to decorate your living room. There are no flowers, no green grass, no open fields…

(Before) - I intended to paint this location Sunday night. I will start very late in the day and continue until the dead of night. Sunday night tends to be the most silent night. Also it will give me enough time in the week to rest and mentally prepare myself.

I set out on my bike at 7 pm. Along my way to the location I stopped off at the Subway to get a meal combo, 12 inch Italian BMT. The night was the first of spring, warm but still a little cold under current in the wind.

Getting to the location is a really meditative process. The mind and body really connect and I get in the zone. While biking up to this location my insides turned and I started to get butteries. The kind of energy that ran through my body was like how a boxer feels when approaching the ring before a major fight, or how a runner feels before racing the one hundred meter dash and the gun is shot. But once I got set up and centered myself in a block focus manner. I was ready and already painting. I tried a new color combination for the pavement that pleased me. So things were rolling. With the changes in the seasons… no snow, no ice, the dust of the winter gravel, and the pavement was a little dusty.

Being in down town on a main intersection, I did not know how the sky would fall in darkness. So I started working on the buildings and refrained from the top portion of the canvas for several hours.

A week or so earlier I had purchased a head lamp from Mountain Equipment Co-op. I felt a bit crazy putting it on, but really…? I had to laugh at myself and smile. Take a deep breathe. It's all crazy. Much to my amazement the head lamp really helped to clarify the detail of the brush work.

Late in the night a drunken guy started talking to me. He was very in my face and obnoxious. He was telling me to paint this and paint that. He insisted that I painted the traffic light signal red. So to please him I painted the center one read and late I took a snap shoot of how all the other lights were at that moment in time.

It was not until past 3 am that the streets were completely empty. I really started to fall into the night at this time.

The street lights made it so that I could not see the church in the distance. It fell into the darkness of the night sky, but I added it into my painting… rather artificial perception, but it was one of the deciding factors as to why I had selected this location. So I painted the church in as reduced as possible.

It was 5:53 am when my head touched the pillow. It was such a beautiful night. I had no organs, no heart, no bones… just energy beating in my soul. As I went to sleep it was the break of day and the birds were chirping for breakfast.