This is four-year-old Blythe – “Blythey,” as her dad calls her. She’s the youngest daughter
of friends Sean and Patty from Vancouver. We’re on the Pender Islands, camping at
Beaumont Marine Park with friends and their families for the Canada Day long weekend.
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I’ve painted Blythe a number of times; she’s a favourite subject of mine. On this trip,
she was one of the youngest children. There are seven other kids with us, ranging from
five to nine years old.
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Watching Blythe play, I notice a subtle difference in her behavior from that of the other
kids. The others, including my own, are all precocious and loud, posturing for each other,
claiming their place in the hierarchy of this temporary “pack.” Blythe moves more slowly.
She’s quiet and cautious. It’s partly her personality, but more than that, she appears to
be a bit overwhelmed with the combination of this new, interesting and perhaps
dangerous environment and the pack dynamic. There’s so much going on that she
seems a bit dazed by sensory overload. I think she moves slowly to avoid making political
or physical mistakes that might draw the ridicule of the pack.
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In a pack, the youngest feeds last and is master of no other (except perhaps of dad).
That’s just Darwinian.
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In this painting, I was interested in Blythe’s stillness. I’ve tried to emphasize that with the
composition. Her placement, to one side and facing off the canvas, speaks of her
demeanour and the situation. I was also playing with colours here. The sunlight hitting
her face, in contrast to the complement (opposite) of the violet of the water set up a
discord in which they worked to intensify each other. The balance of visual weight is
achieved with the weight of strong violet colour, bottom left, in balance with the figure
and the perception of the rest of the figure we can’t see, at the bottom right.   Mark Heine