Artist David Haughton doesn’t consciously seek out objects to paint. Rather, he responds to things that he sees, sometimes while strolling the shoreline along Burrard Inlet or on trips to Tofino with his wife.

In a recent phone interview with the Straight, he said that he has particularly fond memories of when he lived within walking distance of Jericho Beach. He had just moved to Vancouver from the United States in 1991 and was working as a pediatrician and painting part-time.

“It was exhilarating any time of the day or night that you went there with all the windsurfers, all the huge boats, and the light hitting the mountains or hitting the boats,” Haughton said.

He would marvel over how the snow looked on the mountains and how the view would be transformed by changes in the seasons. “Any time I went, it was something visual, at least, that triggered in my mind: ‘Jeez, I want to paint that.’ ”

Haughton painted ships, massive cranes, windsurfers, sailboats, and many, many sunsets. He hoped to convey the emotions and the wonder that he felt to anyone who looked at his art.

“I do tend to do a lot of dawns and sunsets because it evokes the most nostalgia in me,” Haughton said.

On Thursday (September 23), Haughton will include more than 50 of his paintings in an exhibition called Ships, Mountains & the Sea V at VisualSpace Gallery in the Dunbar-Southlands neighbourhood.

He said that he liked the title because of its rhythm, which reminded him of a Greek poem. Plus, it’s a broad enough title to enable him to include a wide range of images, including kite-surfing at Nitinaht Lake on the western side of Vancouver Island.

When asked how he describes himself as a painter, Haughton paused for a moment.

Then he pointed out that most of his paintings nowadays are acrylic on multimedia artboard. He likened it to watercolour paper, with rag fibres and some plastic resin mixed in, which makes these works of art hold together well.

“Purportedly, it’s archival, so we could meet in 500 years and find it if it really worked,” he said.

His approach involves painting colours, scraping some of it off, and placing a layer of glaze on top, then repeating this several times. By doing this, he said, the colours resemble pastels as he layers on the paint. As he covers some parts with acrylic, he leaves spaces in between as it dries.

“Those interstices are relatively random and I leave some in the large open sections—like the water or the sky,” Haughton explained.

According to him, these little openings cause people to become more curious about the paintings.

“It presents a problem for them to solve,” he said. “There is one missing window. There’s a gap in the wall. There’s a gap in the sky. It grabs you and you have to look at it for a beat or two longer.”