The great Michelangelo hated people watching him paint the Sistine Chapel. E. Robert Ross, who would laugh off any comparison to the famous Florentine, loves a crowd.

Ross, one of the area's leading landscape painters, has been exhibiting for more than 30 years. These days, the native of Hamilton is hard at work on a huge painting of Sherman Falls.

He's bringing the sunny scene to life in the main lobby of St. Joseph's Hospital, just to the right after you go in through the Charlton Avenue entrance.

"Everybody talks to me," Ross says. He doesn't mind the remarks about making sure he covers up all the numbers, or the cheeky reminder about missing a spot here and there.

"Talk about public art," he adds. "I'm getting a chance to meet the public."

Ross is the first artist in residence for St. Joseph's Healthcare, which operates the hospital. His gorgeous landscapes seem well-suited to healing. Three already hang at St. Joseph's and others can be seen at the Juravinski Cancer Centre and McMaster Health Sciences Centre.

Ross has clocked about seven weeks on this project and expects to be at it every weekday for another three months. He muses occasionally about someone building him a robot, but so far the work is totally hands-on.

After assembling the stretcher bars and pulling the cotton canvas tight over them, he primed the canvas and loaded his brushes with blue paint. Rocks, tree trunks and the outline of the waterfall took shape.

When the painting is finished, a shimmery waterfall will cascade down the escarpment. The falls will be flanked by leafy sunlit trees, their trunks extending beyond the top of the pictorial space, creating a sense of grandeur.

At 11-by-22 feet (nearly seven metres long), this is the largest piece Ross has done. But he's not fazed by the size because he has painted big before.

A large painting makes it easy for a viewer to enter the scene and get involved. This suits Ross just fine. He has always created landscapes that demand the viewer's emotional and spiritual participation.

We enter a Ross painting to enjoy the beauty and abundance of nature. Like all of Ross's paintings, this one appeals to the senses. We're encouraged to hear running water and the rustling of leaves and to feel the warmth of golden sunlight.

Ross says he chose a waterfall because such a scene is a natural soother.

"A health-care facility," he says, "needs a calm and peaceful type of scene." Water is a traditional symbol of life. He compares water rushing over the falls to "blood rushing through a body."

He calls Sherman Falls in Ancaster one of Hamilton's great waterfalls. Ross believes Hamiltonians have an emotional attachment to their waterfalls, and his depiction is intended to bring pleasure, hope and healing.

Speaking of healing, St. Joe's wants Ross as a painter, not a patient, so he completed a course on scaffold safety before starting work. Michelangelo might have felt more at ease if he'd had similar training.

Regina Haggo, a former professor of art history at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, teaches at the Dundas Valley School of Art. dhaggo@thespec.com