Stairway

Kim Ondaatje relocated to London, Ontario in 1967, where she traded oil paints for acrylics and began her second series, "House on Piccadilly Street", featuring her new home as the subject. Influenced by hard-edge painting, she used masking tape to create simple, linear detail when forming particular elements in her composition - a technique she would later employ to a greater degree. Some works in her "Piccadilly" series contain examples of paintings from a previous series. The small, green painting at the bottom of the stairway is likely a reference to an early painting of hers entitled "Wales #2" (1966). Ondaatje produced a limited number of works for this series, but, uniquely, she did paint this stairway twice. Continuing her interest in architecture, Ondaatje shifted from painting to photography and published three books on the subject.