When My Paintings Become Larger Than Life

There is something extraordinary about seeing one of my paintings take over a 40-foot-high LED screen in the heart of Toronto – paintings larger than life.

A painting that began in my studio, created with paint on canvas, suddenly becomes something entirely different. It is no longer confined by the edges of the canvas. It fills an architectural space, towers over the viewer, and demands attention.

Over the past couple of years, several of my paintings have been licensed by Toronto-based art agency Highness Global Inc. for presentation on the enormous LED screens at 2 Bloor West in Toronto. Seeing my work presented at this scale has been one of the most unexpected and exciting experiences of my career.

From Canvas to City

I make paintings to be experienced in person. I love the physicality of paint, the surface of canvas, the marks, layers and details that reveal themselves when you stand in front of an original. But something happens when that same image is enlarged to an almost architectural scale. The paintings become larger than life.

The colours become more immersive. The compositions become more commanding. Details that might be subtle on a canvas suddenly become enormous. The imagery takes over the room and changes the relationship between the viewer and the artwork. I love that. There is something almost otherworldly about watching a painting transform from a physical object into a monumental digital presence.

When Art Takes Over the Room: Paintings Larger Than Life

One of the things I find most interesting about these presentations is the way they alter the viewer’s experience. In a gallery, we generally choose to approach a painting. We walk toward it, stand in front of it and decide how long we want to look. A 40-foot-high digital painting has a different kind of presence. It takes over the space.

You might be walking through the building, looking at your phone, thinking about where you are headed, and suddenly a familiar image from my studio is towering above you. You have to look. That interruption is part of what makes these presentations so powerful to me. The work isn’t quietly waiting on a gallery wall. It is entering a public environment and asking people to engage with it in an entirely different way. And because my paintings often explore Canadian identity, iconography, landscape and the stories we attach to familiar symbols, seeing them at this monumental scale amplifies those ideas.

The Digital Life of a Painting

I don’t see these enormous digital presentations as replacing the original paintings. Quite the opposite, they give the work another life. Every painting I make begins as a physical object. It has a particular surface, scale and presence. When an image is licensed for a digital presentation, it can travel somewhere the original canvas cannot.

A painting can move from my studio on Vancouver Island to a private collection in another country, to a gallery, to an exhibition, and then, through digital technology, onto a 40-foot-high screen in downtown Toronto. The painting keeps travelling. Only now, it has become something much bigger than itself.

Art in Unexpected Places

This is one of the things I love most about being an artist today. Art doesn’t always have to stay inside a gallery.

It can appear on a billboard, on a screen, in a public space, in a hotel, on a wall in someone’s home or halfway across the country. The original painting may be sitting quietly in a collection while its digital image is having an entirely different adventure somewhere else.

For an artist whose work is so connected to Canadian places, people and symbols, there is something especially satisfying about seeing these images out in the world. And seeing them 40 feet high? Well, that’s pretty hard to beat. I love the surreal quality of it. These paintings, which began as ideas in my head and marks on a canvas, suddenly become monumental, luminous and almost otherworldly.

They take over the room and force us to look. And for a painter, what could be better than giving someone a reason to stop and really see?

Want to see where my paintings are travelling next? Visit my website and explore the available originals. You might just find one you’d like to bring home.