Melanie has beautiful blue eyes and a refreshing wintery face. It was inevitable that the painting was going to reflect a cool theme. It is for this reason that I asked her to wear her blue tuque and placed her in front of St-Henri station's blue brick wall. Melanie has french-canadian and german roots. It's the strangest thing, but when she smiles, it brings out her "joie de vivre" french-canadian face, and when she doesn't smile, it brings out her more serious german face. I like both faces, they're equally beautiful. For the painting, I leaned towards the serious face.

This painting will always hold a unique place among my subway series paintings because it was completed in the windows of a large department store in Montreal. As part of a month long campaign to promote the arts, The Hudson's Bay Company Department Store approached a broad range of artists to express themselves, one at a time, for several days, inside the store windows. I was asked to work on a painting on an allotted weekend. With the store windows open, people were able to stop, take a look, and talk with me as I worked on the painting. People loved the idea. I loved the idea. It was an unforgettable experience. I wished it could have lasted longer.