Starry Night at BC Place

About the Work

Starry Night at BC Place borrows the restless energy of a Van Gogh sky and sets it loose over Vancouver's great stadium. The white cables and luminous ring of BC Place burn warm gold against an indigo night, while overhead the heavens churn with spiralling strokes of violet, blue and starlight — part fireworks, part aurora, wholly celebration. On the lamplit plaza below, supporters linger in twos and threes, a child chases a ball along the promenade, and tournament banners catch the night breeze.

Pius paints the hour after the final whistle, when the roar has faded but nobody wants to leave. The stadium is treated almost as a living thing, its glowing roofline echoed by the whorls of the sky, so that architecture and atmosphere seem to celebrate together. It is a nocturne for a host city — quiet underfoot, ecstatic overhead.

Process & Technique

Painted in acrylic on coarse-toothed canvas, the night sky is built from long, curling palette-knife ribbons of ultramarine, violet and white laid wet-into-wet, while the stadium's glow is scumbled in thin layers of gold so light appears to seep outward. The weave of the canvas is left exposed in the darkest passages, letting the surface itself flicker like night air.