With his oil paints at his feet, and his canvas strapped to a traffic light standard, a London-based artist has been standing at a downtown street corner, turning an urban streetscape into a work of art.
Brush stroke by brush stroke, Radek Vizina has been recreating the southeast corner of Dundas and Wellington streets in the realism style on canvas, a process he says could take another two to three years to complete.
“That’s just a rough guess, right?” he told CBC News on Tuesday as people and vehicles whizzed by. “Once I start getting into all the little details in the windows, I could spend three hours… putting in the fluorescent bulbs inside.”
“It’s gonna sound flaky, but it’s done when it’s imbued with a certain energy. Just after working, reworking, working, working, reworking. It just takes on a life of its own.”
The main inspiration for, and focus of, Vizina’s painting is City Centre, the two TD-branded concrete towers which have been a mainstay of London’s skyline since the mid-1970s.
Brush stroke by brush stroke, Radek Vizina has been recreating a downtown London corner, and two of its most well-known buildings, on canvas. Having already spent several months working on it, he says finishing it could take several years.
The former kitchen manager of a nearby restaurant, Vizina spent years walking by the buildings and says he was always struck by their geometry, and how they appeared in the mid-afternoon sunlight.
“Every day, just seeing it, thinking, ‘I’m gonna paint that one day.’ I guess that day’s come,” he said.
It’s the latest urban landscape to be painted by Vizina, whose works are featured at the Jonathan Bancroft-Snell Gallery.
In the case of the City Centre, Vizina says he enjoys the geometrical complexity of the buildings and the surrounding area, especially since he’s working without an established vanishing point.
“You have to be very precise… there’s very little room for interpretation,” he said.
“It’s the challenge of making it look like what it is while relying solely on your eyes, and constantly reevaluating your first guess.”
Born in the Czech Republic, Vizina came to Canada as a child and developed an affinity for painting at a young age. After taking culinary in college, he later studied at O.C.A.D and the Art Students League of New York, he said.
Painting at a downtown street corner does come with some challenges, and being comfortable working in front of strangers was something that only came gradually with time, he said.
“You’ve got to be aware of what’s going on around you…. today’s windy, so you’re trying to put a straight line in, and the canvas is doing this,” he said, making a wobbly motion with his hands.
“You’re always chasing changing weather. The environment is always changing. It keeps it interesting, right? It keeps you engaged.”
Asked what he planned to do with the painting once he’s finally finished, Vizina said if it was “garbage,” he would burn it, or wrap it up and put it away. If he liked it, he may put it in the gallery or put it up for sale and “see what happens.”
“We’ll see, we’ll see.”