Artist’s thoughts take flight after visiting France
Michael Dumas has a painting in a new exhibit this fall in October
“Thoughts Take Flight” is the title of Michael Dumas’ latest painting. When you look at that image the first time your thoughts may take flight — What is the young girl thinking? Are her thoughts serious thoughts like a bird may have when considering where to nest or maybe her thoughts are just hopping from one branch to another … from books to friends to her favourite ice cream?
When Dumas explains how he composed this work his thoughts take flight. He uses a paintbrush to put thoughts about colour, tone, posture, placement together into a balanced composition, and to quote Dumas, so that the whole thing appears harmonious and effortlessly done.
A few years ago Ellen and Michael were vacationing in the south of France enjoying the charms of a small town. Many scenes caught Dumas’ attention. He noticed two elderly men in conversation as they sat at a small bistro table, a weathered doorway in various degrees of shadow and a young girl who looked lost in thought while she waited for her mother to return from an outside ice cream stand.
Those scenes stayed with him. Years later, he was invited to participate in an exhibition featuring the human figure. He remembered the French girl and thought her posture and facial expression alone would make a good painting. He started. After completing the final underdrawing Dumas was thinking of something more. The panel with the drawing on it sat in his studio for a couple of years. Occasionally, Dumas wondered how he could emphasize the notion that she was lost in thought. Sometimes he wrote a phrase or two that he thought related to that idea. One day he wrote, “Her thoughts took flight.”
That thought worked for Dumas and his skills. Birds fly. Which would be the right bird in the right fight posture placed strategically within the composition to communicate that her thoughts were in flight? No easy job!
And then there was a colour scheme to consider which turned out to be red, yellow and blue, with black setting them off. The first bird placed in the composition was the Wilson’s bird-of-Paradise seen at the bottom left of the painting with all three of the primary colours. One by one the other birds were placed or moved or taken out with some having been thought about but never making it.
Dumas continued working for five months on the painting with more than half of that taken up by research, developing sketches to studies, and studies to final drawings.
Dumas points out that as he viewed the girl her left arm was bent with a sweater draped over it, and the “fingers of the left hand were oddly bunched together.” Dumas wondered why. One morning, when the painting was about 80 per cent completed, Dumas came in to work and the thought of having that hand hold a feather came to him in a flash. Dumas says that small item added to the cohesiveness.
All those thoughts which could have become obstacles were overcome and a composition took flight. “Thoughts Take Flight” has been accepted into the 2020 Artists For Conservation International Exhibition of Nature in Art, which is scheduled to open in Vancouver this October.
Sandy Lake Cemetery Day
Due to COVID-19, The Municipality of Trent Lakes is cancelling the Sandy Lake Cemetery Decoration Day service and potluck dinner scheduled for June 28. The Sandy Lake Cemetery remains open for individuals wishing to access. Please continue to follow social distancing measures and proper hygiene if visiting the cemetery. Please contact the following information for any questions: Municipality of Trent Lakes, (705) 738-3800, info@trentlakes.ca
BCC Activities
Judy at the BCC is buzzy. Check out the website for the “Get Moving Challenge.”