A TALE OF TWO CITIES (with a nod to Leonardo)

Where are you from? Can you tell your story just with reference to the city of your birth... the city of your death? My cities: Montreal, Minneapolis, Calgary.... now Saskatoon. My towns... St Donat, Inuvik, Crowsnest Pass, Pincher Creek, Lethbridge, Placencia, High River. Write now... sit me down... I will tell you the story of each of these places. They are as much a part of me as my shoulders, my kneecaps, my ear lobes. Katmandu, my traveling companion, the love of my life.... my Goddess comes from Toronto and lives in Saskatoon. Hence the two cities in my painting. An allusion to the cities as if they were dream cities not the real YONGE and BLOOR or SPADINA CRESCENT. My challenge in this work.... create aerial perspective... the great lesson my Italian Godfather Leonardo taught me. The colour of a landscape adopts the colour of the sky as it disappears into the distance. Life is short. “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?” to quote my born-to-be-wild friend Paul Gauguin adrift in Tahiti after Paris and a season with my sad brother Vincent in Arles. Read “Invisible Cities” by that other Italian... Italo Calvino. Then you will know exactly what it means to come from a city.