My daughter was leaving our Toronto home to study at the Sorbonne. My Ex was Parisian and she was given dual citizenship.

It was a big step for both of us, for so long it was just the two of us, now she was leaving home, and the country. To help with the transition, I stayed in Paris for her first month.

I stayed in Montparnasse, in a servant’s old garret room on the 6^th floor with no elevators – 89 steps up. There was a Twin bed, a sink, and a small narrow window with weathered, broken shutters. If you stretched at far enough and twisted, you could get a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower. I felt like I was Picasso in the early days.

Every day I’d go out and help my daughter set up, get supplies, get settled. Every night I’d drink scotch smoke a skinny cigarette and paint.

The work is a reflection of the feelings and experiences in Paris on the day it was created. By using the number of the day in Paris, the work counted time as memory using visual language. The work is comprised of 30 individual and distinctive paintings, with time and place forming a common thread. The completed series is a visual narrative.

It’s about letting go and creating something new in the process, and in many ways it is a love story to my daughter.