Completed in 2002, Forest Landscape is the most recent work in the artist’s Bridgetown Series. It is also the only mixed media piece in the Bridgetown Series. The underpainting is watercolour, which produces the subtly blended tones of the forest in the background and the rock and the water in the foreground. Inspired by the success of his earlier mixed media experiment, Fountain at Aix, the artist decided to complete the painting in alkyd to enhance its three-dimensionality. He used white alkyd for the highlights and black alkyd to deepen the shadows of the water; detailing on the branches has also been added in alkyd. The artist thus achieves a greater contrast in texture than would be possible with pure watercolour. Although the cooler tone and rural subject of Forest Landscape make a diametrically opposite statement from the bright colours of Fountain’s city square, their combination of insubstantial form with solid texture makes these paintings technically similar. Both strive for resonance rather than initial impact, drawing the viewer in regardless of the perspective from which they are viewed. Mixed media experiments such as this one encouraged the artist to turn definitively to oils in the most recent Window Series paintings, for example Clocks: Window on Queen Street, Toronto.

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