I enjoyed quite a long conversation with John Ross Matheson yesterday. For those of you who might not know about John, may I suggest this link on the Heritage Canada website - The National Flag of Canada - for a brief background. I was updating John on the progress of applying pigment to the 4x6 foot canvas. We talked about the 1965 steps to design the flag and pick the colours. John was too polite to say it but I sensed he was uneasy about the shape of the maple leaf. In my design the flag was softly rippled and that distorted the dimensions of the leaf - hmmm. The bungled insertion of a Norway maple leaf on the new plastic twenty dollar bill was added incentive for me to make no mistake in this painting. My Dad taught me to identify trees and I know a Norway maple leaf when I see it regardless what the spokesperson for the mint says. The image below has a Norway maple leaf on the left and a sugar maple leaf on the right.
This painting was not going to be prone to any errors that I could prevent. I decided to flatten out the central portion of the flag in the "50 Years of Our Flag" painting and then I gridded the stylized sugar maple leaf of the Canadian flag precisely into place. I think it was worth the effort... The red colour is still not deep enough but I will get there with time and paint. I will keep updating the progress as I continue to work on this project.
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