Commissioned Paintings
Return to home page
Return to
artwork index page
Update
2023: I am not painting any commissions until further notice.
Below is a selection of
commissions from the past 20 years – a commercial side of my work
that from time to time helps pay the bills ("crass commercialism"
indeed!). Although some are for corporate or institutional
clients, I have painted images for people who are leaving a
long-time home or garden, who are selling the family cottage or
want to be able to look at it during the winter, or who want a
memory to hand on to their children. Recent prices have ranged
from $1400 Canadian to $4000 Canadian, plus travelling expenses.
Contact me for
further information.
|
Wiltshire Street house, watercolour, 2022 (one of two) – the last one for
the foreseeable future.
House 2022, a birthday present, oil on canvas, 24 x 30 inches
Shaughnessy House, 2022, 30 x 30 inches, oil.
2022: a modest South Shaughnessy house – a keepsake for a daughter who
grew up there in the '50s & '60s, after the passing of her mother in
her nineties.
September, 2021: two Vancouver houses, the top one in oils and the bottom
in watercolour.
2021, the Kerrisdale Lawn Bowling Club, Vancouver – an opportunity to
paint trees!
A particularly nice house and garden in West Point Grey, Vancouver.
Watercolour, 2021
A curious one in oils, entirely from photos, of a Toronto house, 2020
A made-up forest scene with the stumps and trees of coastal British
Columbia for a woman who loves walking her dog in North Vancouver's
forest. Oil on canvas, 2019
A doomed farmhouse and blueberry farm near Westminster Highway and
Highway 99, beloved of a granddaughter. Watercolour.
A very ordinary, unprepossessing house, just sold and awaiting
demolition on Vancouver's west side, worth painting for its framing by
trees and garden in the low winter light, 2019.
A fine Shaughnessy house in October, 2018.
2018: A house high on a bank on Vancouver's West Side. In reality
from that angle, the house is more buried – the garden taller.
North Van house, 2018
Book cover illustration for La Ville des Autres by Marie-Laure
Chevier, 2017
Sproat Lake Cottage, 2017
A final commission for 2016 that worked out well (a demolished
Kerrisdale house, adapted from the client's favourite photo).
A couple of fairly standard watercolours in 2016, one in
West Vancouver and the other in Dunbar. Neither of them are in
response to an imminent move or demolition, but you always
wonder ....
|
A private school in West Vancouver, 2016. It ended up with a lot of
sky because the client wanted most of the school complex painted in a
standard rectangular format that could be used for cards and other
presentations.
Langley Farm, watercolour, 9 x 20 inches, 2015
Vancouver house, watercolour, about 14 x 20 inches, 2015
3657 West 23rd, Vancouver, watercolour, 11 x 14 inches, 2014
(a memory for its long-time owners who have moved away from a dying
neighbourhood)
Pleasantside Store (out on the Ioco Road west of Port Moody); one
of the few survivors from the cottage-country era.
Watercolour, 8 x 11 inches, 2014
Small Kerrisdale House, oil on canvas, 18 x 24 inches, 2014
(Interesting how my oils of simple subjects get an [Edward] Hopper-like
stillness and loneliness to them without me trying for any specific
effect)
Spring sunshine in rural Langley, watercolour, 12 x 18 inches, 2014
Portraits of Colonels Lungley and Toogood for the British Columbia
Regiment, oils on canvas, 20 x 24 inches, 2013
6-metre yachts racing in English Bay, 2 chiaroscuro (brush & ink)
drawings for prints given to the winners, 8 x 10 inches, 2013
View from Savary Island, diptych (2 watercolours 15 x 22 inches),
2013
Jeffs' Residence (a heritage rehab and townhouse development in
Vancouver), oil on canvas, 20x 30 inches, 2013
Langley property (a gift for the owner), watercolour, 16 x 20 inches,
2013
View from the former Elsa Townsite, Yukon, 2012, watercolour
(commissioned as a gift for a man who had started his working life there
as a hard-rock miner)
House and garden in Kerrisdale, 2012, watercolour, about 16 x 20
inches
Cottage near Gibson's Landing, 2011, oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches
Hycroft, 30 x 36 inches, for the
University Women's Club, 2011, oil on canvas
Reproduced as a "limited edition" as a fundraiser for the building's
ongoing maintenance/restoration
West Point Grey estate, 2010, oil on canvas 24 x 36
inches
A property near Fort Langley, BC, 2006,
watercolour, 18 x 22 inches.
Auberge
du
Pre at Pemberton BC, 2004, watercolour
|
Two small watercolours of a country property, 2000,
watercolour.
(After nearly 20 years on a property near Fort
Langley, British Columbia, a family decided to move on and
commissioned two views of their place, one for each of their
two children who had grown up there.)
|
|
|
Liu Centre for the Study of Global Issues
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
A watercolour for the major contributor to the new
centre, Dr. Jieh Jow Liou, an international businessman,
politician and philanthropist, commissioned for the official
opening of the Centre in September, 2000.
|
|
|
In the July/August 2000) issue of Cottage
Magazine, I wrote an article called Shuswap Summers,
reflecting on the decade in the 50s and 60s my family spent in
a little cabin at Pierre's Point on Shuswap Lake in the
British Columbia interior. This was the illustration for the
cover.
|
|
Toyota Brochures
Watercolours from Canada sketchbook, 1999-2000
Toyota Canada's 2000 brochures feature watercolours
first published in Canada A Journey of Discovery. Each
vehicle was featured with watercolours from a Canadian
province or territory. The campaign was created by Saatchi and
Saatchi in Toronto, account director Gerry Arnott, art
director Judy Hancock.
|
|
|
City Hall on a Winter Day
1999, watercolour, 12 x 16 inches
Commissioned by the City of Vancouver for Mayor Philip
Owen's Christmas card, the image shows an unusual view of City
Hall from Yukon Street, where it is visible through a screen
of boulevard trees and past an Edwardian-era Queen Anne-style
house. It has since been published as a postcard for the city
and as a high-quality reproduction for use as a civic gift.
|
|
|
Old and New Vancouver
1999, watercolour, 16 x 22 inches
Commissioned by the Lady Vancouver Club as a gift for
Tourism Vancouver. The idea was to find a real place that
showed the old city, the new city, and something of its
natural setting. After considerable exploration, I settled on
the corner of 8th and Birch in the Fairview Slopes area, with
Granville bridge and the city's West End in the distance.
|
 
|
 Ribbons
of
Life illustrations
For Canadian
Geographic magazine, watercolours
May-June 1999
Commissioned works demonstrating environmentally
friendly ways of living close to lakes and streams,
specifically aimed at cottagers.
|
|
|
View from a corner office
1999, watercolour, 20 x 28 inches
Commissioned by the Royal Bank of Canada as a gift for
an executive departing from Vancouver for Toronto. The view is
of English Bay from his corner office on a late-winter
day, and was framed with an engraved plaque reading
"Lotusland."
|
|
St. George's School
1999, watercolour, 20 x 30 inches
A prestigious private school in Vancouver, St. George's
uses a former convent for its junior grades. Situated on a
park-like property whose trees screen the view of it from the
road. I wanted to paint a portion of it in a way that showed
the relationship of the building to its landscape, rather than
just paint an architectural detail. The challenge was to
modify and position the trees so that the school was actually
visible. I chose an autumn palette to enliven what would
otherwise have been a duet of green and grey.
|
|
Crofton House School
1998, watercolour, 18 x 22 inches
For its centenary, Vancouver's most prestigious private
girls' school commissioned an image of the school's inner
courtyard and printed it as a poster by Benwell-Atkins, which
was sold during the school's anniversary celebrations.
|
|
|
|
University of British Columbia Campus
1997, watercolour, 22 x 35 inches
Commissioned for UBC President Dr. David Strangway's
President's Circle – donors who had given more than $250,000
to the University of British Columbia - this image is a large
"sketchbook page" of people, buildings and landscapes on the
campus in the springtime. It was printed as a high-quality
reproduction by Hazeldine Press of Vancouver, autographed and
numbered, and given to the members of the President's Circle.
|
Return to
artwork index page
Return to home page