This column is intended to present my paintings that have been inspired by my travels over the last thirty-five years. Both the images and the text are totally personal, some might say eccentric. I am not telling the reader how to get there or what to do once a destination is reached. The views are often small bits of trivia that have caught my eye and delighted me. Some of the pieces I have painted from photos that I have taken on my journeys, while other things have been produced on the spot, often in a public space.

My early years of painting demonstrations in shopping malls in Canada and the U.S. have prepared me for hazards and delights of these public efforts. People's responses to my public workings span a wide spectrum. One lady in the U.S. informed me that if she could paint, she could paint much better than I do. In France this fall, I was stunned to watch a well-dressed, middle-aged woman take her lacquered fingernail to try to scratch something from my nearly finished painting that she did not like. I've had many compliments as well, even the delivery of fried chicken to my easel. I have dodged small children waving ice cream cones and teenagers twirling attitude.