The Winter Series (1999) is a body of approximately ten paintings — mostly large scale, 40×60 and 48×36 inches — exhibited at the three-year anniversary celebration of the Mercury Lounge in Ottawa. The models were friends, Mercury Lounge staff, a former fling, and two children — a step-niece and nephew — placed into a landscape MarQuis built from photographs taken on a solo snowshoeing expedition into the winter woods.

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The snow shadows are the real protagonist. Photographed on that outing and painted with meticulous care, they dominate every canvas — long blue stripes rippling across white ground in rhythmic waves, giving the landscape an almost hallucinatory quality. The figures stand in them, move through them, are partially consumed by them.

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Red appears against the white like an alarm.
A woman in a red dress crucified between two trees, halo glowing.
A man in a red suit and top hat standing among cemetery crosses — titled Death in a Red Suit.
A woman in red aiming a pistol at her companion as both walk through the forest carrying suitcases. Going somewhere. Or leaving.

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The weapons are quiet but persistent.
A naked boy holding a rifle — titled 13 Years Old.
A girl in a white dress, pistol at her side, gazing upward.

Violence and innocence share the same cold air.

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The series has no single narrative. It has something better: a mood. The eerie stillness of a Canadian winter pushed just far enough into the uncanny to make you uneasy about what happens next.