Can a painting actually make you happy?

For 8 years I've painted superheroes, sports legends and pop culture icons. Lately I've been trying something completely different: landscapes. This one is my second.

It's a classic landscape at heart, with rolling fields, mountains, fluffy clouds and a big sun. Then I turned the volume all the way up. The sun glows, the fields become rainbow stripes, and every shape gets a bold black outline.

I painted this landscape and one more for Couleurs en folie at Le Balcon d'Art in Saint-Lambert, the gallery that has been showing my paintings for a while now. The event runs October 24 to 31, so come see them both in person (or take one home).

Thank you to everyone who came to see me at my booth on October 24 and 25! It was a real pleasure to meet you in person and put faces to the names in my inbox. Here are a few photos from the weekend.

The show's official artwork, my way

For the occasion, I repainted the original artwork from this year's show poster in my own pop art style:

500 prints of my painting were produced for the show, and I signed them on Sunday, October 25. Thank you again to everyone who came to pick one up!

Ask people what they actually want on their walls, and landscapes win almost every time. A survey of collectors, gallerists and artists by Art Business Today ranked traditional landscapes as the most saleable painting theme of all.

But in the 1600s, the French Royal Academy ranked landscapes second from the bottom of all painting subjects, beating only still life. In 1770, Sir Joshua Reynolds, president of the Royal Academy in London, called landscape and still life the "meaner walks of painting." Ouch.

The public never listened. And I'm glad.

In the 1990s, artists Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid polled people in countries around the world about what they wanted in a painting, then painted each country's "Most Wanted Painting." Almost everyone wanted a landscape. The one exception? The Dutch, who preferred abstract art. 🤷‍♀️

A lot of contemporary landscapes live in soft greys, muted greens and fog. Pop art takes the very same hills and sky and makes them sing. It's hard to walk past a pink sunbeam without smiling.

I'm in good company, too. Roy Lichtenstein, one of the fathers of pop art, made a series of landscapes in 1967 and another in 1985, with his famous bold colours, sharp lines and dots.

Every original painting and limited edition print leaves my studio with a signed Certificate of Authenticity and a thank-you card from me. It's my way of saying that your painting is one of a kind, and that I'm grateful it's going home with you.

Your cottage, your hometown, the view from your back porch: I'd love to paint it for you in full pop art colour. Just hit reply and tell me about it. 😉