Outside the Eaton Centre, near the intersection of Yonge and Dundas, street artists use the sidewalk as a canvas to create works of art from chalk. Often, the artists - some from the city, some travelling through on their way somewhere else - put out a hat for donations from the crowd of shoppers and pedestrians who are inevitably attracted to watch the work as it progresses.
On a recent night, Globe and Mail photographer Peter Power came across this version of Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer's Girl With a Pearl Earring. But because of the street and traffic lights glaring off a layer of rain, he didn't notice it at first. "I was out on assignment in the freezing rain, and I looked down and realized I was standing on a painting," he recalls. He stepped back to capture it with his camera.
"Chalk drawings usually look like muted chalk colours, but with the rain, the colours were wet and not washed out. It looked a lot richer, more saturated and more alive."
Micah Toub