“Paint what’s in front of you,” my dad once said. Not wild fantasies and big statements. Just there. Before me. No, no, that has already been done. I wanted to chart new territory. Say something interesting and profound. Until he died. There was nothing more to say. The world, my world was just the stuff in front of me.

The view from my window, from my eyes. The city. The woods. The near details and faraway horizons mixed with vague memories. A mess of steel and concrete, rows and rows of windows where inside a life is lived and passes. A meeting, a cup of coffee with colleagues, someone secretly crying, secretly alone, looking out the window at his and her horizon. In these crystalline boxes, a community of souls gathers and parts, window by window, street by street. On the face of it.

I started the city view from the CN Tower based on photos I took in 2012, followed by a series of small Streetview paintings taken from Google map snapshots of intersections in Toronto. Along the same lines are my depictions of the countryside of my youth, the long rides to provincial parks with my family, campsites, anticipation. Life flashing by, as it always does. You barely get a glimpse. But you’re in there deep anyway.