“When you live in the city and leave to go back around the bay to where you came from, like I did, you miss the old streets and how they bloomed with colour.
I can still smell autumn in the tree saps and feel the fall winds blowing silently between the old houses of downtown.
The friends I met over the years are still in my memories. It is so nice to take pallet knife and brush and to be able to create a symphony of it all.
Houses on both sides of the street reaching up to the clouds floating by, while birds chatter on the wires above and the sun winks at window panes and evening sky.
Like the song, “Our Town” by Iris DeMent:
‘Now I sit on the porch and watch the lightning bugs fly
But I can’t see too good, I got tears in my eyes
I’m leaving tomorrow but I don’t want to go.
I love you my town, you’ll always live in my soul.’”
—Clifford George, April 2025

Clifford George lives and works in Whiteway, Trinity Bay. He has actively painted and exhibited since 1970. While primarily self-taught, he received a formal art education at the College of Trades and Technology in St John’s where he graduated in 1972. His career post-education was as a sign painter. Clifford continued his art education by doing private study and workshops with some of the most important artists in Newfoundland like Gerald Squires, Frank LaPointe, and Don Wright. Later, his drawing ability led him to a job as a medical artist at the Health Science Centres associated with Memorial University, where his drawings were published in many international medical journals. The paintings of Clifford George are in both public and private collections around the world.

Clifford George: City Streets and Along the Shore continues at Christina Parker Gallery until June 7.

Images courtesy Christina Parker Gallery Revisiting Colonial Street (acrylic on canvas, 36in x 72in, 2025; Livingstone Street (acrylic on canvas, 36in x 72in, 2025; Little Wild Cove, Twillingate (oil on canvas, 48in x 60in, 2024)