Daniel Gagnon
Luminous Realism
Québec

Luminous Realism

My marketing persona was tossing and turning one night, trying to come up with a catchphrase to describe my painting style. Luminous Realism is what eventually won out, as I feel it is an apt description of what I do. Watercolor is the perfect medium in which to pursue the capture of light in all of its moods and manifestations, and capturing light is what my paintings are all about.

In view of this, I need to point out that there are a few types of subjects that don’t mesh well with my painting style. Extremely monochromatic scenes, for instance,  will generally wind up the same in watercolors as on a photograph - well, in my watercolors at any rate! Unless there is an interesting angle that can be worked on in terms of contrast and so on, such scenes would result in fairly mediocre paintings and I won’t do them – for my own as well as my clients’ sake.

Portraits is another type of work that I steer clear away from. I’m just not very good at them.