Thursday, February 5, 2009

Skaters & Purple Skies

Lantern Skaters by Paul Landry, Greenwich Workshop

My Uncle Paul is an artist and a few of his paintings has been licensed and turned into books, calendars and puzzles. This past Christmas I was given a "Lantern Skaters" puzzle. As I sorted out what seemed like the 7,000th piece of purple, I was forced to consider all the mauve he used in the painting. A few evenings ago I was reminded of his painting. I was out walking the Jigser along the seawall and the dusky light was a purple glow against the snow. The lights across the Northwest Arm were cheering and cosy. The water here is salt and it rarely freezes solid so there isn't much skating in this particular spot. But I had spent the afternoon skating at our neighbourhood pond and could see what he was trying to capture with his gliding skaters and their swirling skirts. Little wonder that my Uncle chooses to create such nostalgic scenes.


The foot of South Street and the tower of the A&A Building


Skaters on a very snowy Frog Pond

1 comment:

Cadence said...

Wow, he is your uncle? I have some calendars put out by the Alzheimer's Association with a bunch of his paintings in them, and I really like them. This one that you posted "Lantern Skaters" is one of my favorites of his that I have seen so far. I love the colors he used in the snow, sky and pond. I tried to do a painting of skaters on a pond recently, and it didn't come out nearly as evocative as this. I was just examining this painting (the print of it in the calendar, that is)to see how he did it. I decided to Google his name, and that's how I came to your blog.