My latest book featuring over 150 sketches and photographes  is available for $20.00 including taxes. This collection of  sketches comes directly from the numerous sketch books I have filled over many years.

It also contains many notes and blank pages to inspire you to sketch.

Contact me to order your copies

(905)987-5218 or gagnon@interlog.com 

As a painter and retired architect I gain my strongest inspiration from within the zones where manmade structures and the environment collide. I react to simplicity, directness, the off kilter, places that are aged, broken, used, handmade, that present shocks of colour, textures, are silent, and distant.

I begin the creative process by  trying to understand what I feel about a subject and why. Sketching is my greatest tool for understanding. I sketch quickly, analytically, make notations, never erase and keep sketching away until I think I understand the essence of my subject.

I plan the mechanics of executing the paintings: washes, brushstrokes, colours, textures, and lighting. I begin the paintings by sketching again, however it is on the canvas or water colour paper using broad strokes and loose colour mixing. I scratch away with big brushes, rub with a rag, scrape with a knife; I am a part of a totally new event. I refer less and less to my early sketches, I need to look, feel, evaluate, chase a line, silence an edge, drown a patch of blue, thicken the reds, slow down, pull away. Often I feel as if I am a spectator just watching what is going on. The final painting phase is slow, quiet, long,  reflective, dangerously close to doubt and yet always points to the next painting.

Welcome to my web site, here you will find images of my acrylic and water colour paintings, workshop schedule, exhibition dates and  locations as well as contact information for the galleries that carry my paintings; enjoy.

MARC L. GAGNON  B.E.S, B.ARCH, O.A.A., C.S.P.W.C.