Spring Pasture (oil on canvas 5 x 7 in.)

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For sale at Burlington Art Centre $425 framed


21 April finds me in the village of Mountain, Ontario, driving back from the organic grain mill on Pepperville Road.  It's about 16:00.  All afternoon I've been admiring the soft spring colours of new foliage on the trees, and the vivid green of the new grass.  The landscape is so soft and bright!  On the west side of County Road #1 in Mountain I slowed to soak up this pastoral scene with cows and their calves grazing at the back of a pasture, and distant forest hazed by tree flowers and new leaf.

Several large black birds forage in the watery, grassy ditch beside my van - Common Grackles with brilliant blue and green iridescence around their upper breasts.  One flies to the paige-wire fence, balancing for a moment and casting a startling white eye at me as it twiddles the long whisp of dry yellow grass in its sharp black beak.  I can tell it feels special, that it is on an important errand.  Before I can reach for my camera it is gone, leaving the others pecking in the ditch.

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