Paris

It is perhaps in Paris more than anywhere else that I feel a direct connection to the Impressionists. Their pursuit of the fleeting essence of time and place or an effect of the light which somehow seems to evoke a memory is what my landscape work strives to achieve. Their insistence that scenes from everyday life were fit subject for painting may have been ground-breaking at the time but it is interesting to see how everyday life, at least in Paris parks seems to have changed so little in the intervening years.

I almost feel Renoir looking over my shoulder when I see Parisians sitting listening to the band in the bandstand of the Jardin du Luxemburg on a sunny afternoon. The clothes and some of the music (from what turned out to be a Canadian Youth Brass Band) may have changed but the afternoon light filtering through the chestnut trees, the real subject of this painting, remains the same.