Art Downtown

I spent a good four hours outside in the sun a couple of weeks ago painting this fire hydrant beside the Safeway Gas Bar in Terrace, B.C. as part of the 1st Annual Summer Arts Festival. This festival was put on by the Terrace and District Arts Council (TDAC). It was fun painting in public, especially because I had company and live music provided by a friend and talented musician Mykee Laird. There are many newly painted fire hydrants around town, so if you are in the area, be sure to check them all out! 
     I'll talk a bit about the design for my fire hydrant. As you can imagine, painting on the irregular, curved surface of the fire hydrant was a different experience than painting on a flat canvas, paper, or board, as I usually do. So as I decided what to paint ahead of time, I knew I wanted to create an overall design rather than a scene or image that used the form of the hydrant as part of the design. 

     I started with my favourite shape -- the circle -- and created different sizes that overlapped covering the hydrant so they look somewhat like bubbles or water droplets. In a way, they refer to what's inside! I recently developed a fun style of drawing trees in a one-line irregular zig-zag kind of way, so I included these trees and parts of these trees inside some of the bubbles. Of course having fun with the paint I added a few more lines and they ended up looking a bit like snow-laden trees. In the end, despite my original sketch having a few more colours, the fire hydrant looks very wintery to me. Perhaps this represents the long winter we all just endured or my longing for some cooler weather while I was outside sweating all day soaking in the sun. Either way, it represents to me a part of Northern BC in all its freshness and beauty. However, if your dogs mark it as their territory I won't be offended.

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