In Seafood on Dundas, Peter Harris captures a restaurant in Toronto’s Chinatown. The neon signs are glowing, the lights are on, and everything seems ready for business. Yet there’s not a soul in sight.

Harris has a way of making us notice the ordinary places we usually pass without a second thought. Here, it’s the handwritten signs, the potted plants and the warm glow of a restaurant on a quiet street.

There’s something intriguing about a place so clearly shaped by people, yet completely devoid of them. We don’t see the people who work or eat here, but their presence is felt everywhere.

Perhaps that’s what makes Harris’s paintings so compelling. They’re as much about the people we don’t see as the places we do.