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Showing posts from April, 2010

Canada Plum Blossoms (watercolour 4 x 6 in.) SOLD!

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28 April finds me checking the Canada Plums behind Pipers House in Bishops Mills, the day after our snow storm.  The petals that had looked like damp tissue paper, peeking out from under big pillows of heavy wet snow are all dry and intact now, every flower accounted for, and light green leaves edged with burnt sienna are opening at the tips of the twigs.  The grass below their overhanging boughs is embroidered lavishly with purple-flowered Gill-over-the-ground, and Dandelions complement the purple with bright yellow pompoms. Spring has certainly bounced back from the surprise snow day.  The Violets are in full blossom, having untangled their long flower stems and rearranged their leaves since yesterday. These are a European violet, with large white and purple blossoms, and the patch grows larger every year.  The Honesty which was bowed down by snow are all up straight now, most with deep magenta 4-petalled flowers, and some with white.  Black flies hover in front of my glasses and

Violets in Snow (watercolour 4 x 6 in) SOLD!

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27 April  finds us waking to large flakes of snow falling thickly all over our green spring landscape.  By 09:00 there are 4 or 5 centimetres of heavy snow on the ground and large clumps of it clinging to twigs and branches.  Along the path beneath the Manitoba Maples behind our house, I find blobs of wet snow bowing the newly opened magenta blossoms of the Honesty right to the ground, and the large patch of white and purple Violets are all touselled and untidy, having been pelted from above by lumps of wet snow falling from the trees.  Flowers in chaos with incursions of white - a great subject for watercolour! It continues to snow all day, so I take my subject indoors via digital photograph, and keep a fire going in the cookstove as I paint my watercolour by the kitchen window.

Early Fiddleheads (oil on canvas 5 x 7 in.)

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26 April finds me checking out the patch of Ostrich Fern fiddleheads at the bridge on Actons Corners Road, east of Burritts Rapids, Ontario.  I made my way down the wooded bank, through the muck left from the spring flooding, and onto the creekside flats, skirting the prickly arching canes of Raspberry and watching for last year's Ostrich Fern fertile fronds, tall, narrow blackish clubs that always flag a  fiddlehead patch.  At first I thought that I was too early, that I would find no green knobs curling up from their shaggy nests in the crowns of the raised cones that are their old accumulation of each year's leaf bases.  I stepped on a few of these firm lumps, hidden under dry frond stems and sprouting Nettles, lurched to regain my footing, winced, and apologized to the ferns in case I'd damaged their embryonic fiddleheads. Nothing showing fern green until I finally spot one.  I squat down to examine it to see if I can find a good composition, and once I get down to

Breezy Heights Xerolenta (oil on canvas 5 x 7 in.) Sold

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23 April finds us on a seldom-used but well-paved stretch of Breezy Heights Road, by the big quarry south of Antrim Ontario.  A thriving population of the introduced snail Xerolenta leaves its empty shells littered so abundantly in the roadside ditch and on the dry lichened and mosssy ground between sprawling Juniper bushes, that the shells appear to be a part of the gravel substrate. From a slow moving vehicle we can see constellations of shells on the grey crushed limestone of the road shoulders, and where the off-road habitat was similar among spreading Junipers. We walk slowly back and forth on both sides of the road, scanning the  littered shells for an hour and a quarter, finding each cluster somehow defective in composition, or with not enough fresh, shells which show the brown stripe.  I was amazed that Fred's patience matched my own in this endeavour, as the afternoon sun dropped toward the horizon and my painting time became seriously shortened.  We finally came upon t

Old Maple's Spring Song (oil on canvas 5 x 7 in.) SOLD!

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22 April finds me admiring the four "crones" in an old pasture north of Brockville on North Augusta Road. In winter their gestures appear stark and grotesque, but as each spring coaxes the little leaves from their twigs they look to be dancing.  This one, with a gaping hole near the top of the broken main trunk seems to me to be singing. I've been contemplating these Sugar Maples for thirty years as subjects for painting, and I'm happy to be  finally getting around to it. The trees are more ancient, and perhaps more nutrient-stressed, than they were, and it seems Cattle aren't pastured in this field any more. The one spreading tree, the northern neighbour of the one that I am painting, looks like it once may have been attractive for Cattle to rest under. It is more flourishing than the others, but there's such a dense growth of invasive Cathartic Buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica) growing up among its lower branches, that Cattle couldn't rest there now. We

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 i

Sugarbush Trout Lily (oil on canvas 5 x 7 in.) SOLD!

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20 April finds me in the Cooks' sugarbush, west of Bishops Mills Ontario, trying to decide which of the hundreds of blooming Trout Lilies to paint.  The potential compositions are thick on the ground here, among fallen Maple leaves, fallen branches, wrinkle-barked trunks, and mossy patches.  I followed a Honey Bee from flower to flower with my camera, resulting in one blurry photo that had focused past the subject. I'm settled down to paint this Trout Lily at 17:30, and it's a good thing I began with the blossom - because by 18:00 it is closing early for the night, along with all of the other Trout Lilies as far as I can see across the forest floor.  A great tall old snag rears its ghost-like profile vaguely above the delicate green mist of opening leaves, and looking higher I notice the moon curving pale in the baby blue sky. A Gray Tree Frog calls a few times at 18:10, and a Barred Owl hoots "Who cooks for you-all" from the swampy Cedar woods to the west at

Looking Down at Scotts' Pond (oil on canvas 5 x 7 in.) Sold

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19 April finds us admiring Coltsfoot in bloom on the steep bank of the dugout pond on the farm of our neighbours, the Scott family.  Matt Scott sat above me and watches the progress of today's painting, as I sit against the trunk of the Manitoba Maple with my canvas propped in the folding stool at my knees. I'm fascinated with the reflection of the trunks of the bushes that overhang the water, and the aquatic moss that covers the submerged trunks like heavy shaggy sleeves.  The bank itself, which would be shaded by the Manitoba Maple in summer, is littered with curled, dry leaves over bare clay.  Down near the edge the Coltsfoot, which will leaf out later, is sending up single yellow blooms on velvety pale stems.  As the afternoon aged, the flowers closed up to rest for the night. Viewed from an unusual angle, this scene presents a challenge, especially as the sun peeked in and out among the clouds, the reflections changed and the bottom became more and less visible by

Gill-over-the-ground (watercolour 4 x 7 in.) SOLD!

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16 April finds me out between rain showers, behind the Canada Plum thicket at our place in Bishops Mills, examining the flower buds in search of candidates for a painting.  They rise in loose clusters of three or four, each on a longish petiole, and all tightly clenched like pale babys' fists emerging from scalloped reddish cuffs.  As I was moving along the bushes, pulling down branch-tips to see the buds close up, I glanced down to adjust my footing, and my eye caught a wink of intense purple among the new blades of grass where we mowed the lawn near the tent last summer.  Ahah!  I have found the next-to-bloom wildflower (after our early Dandelion) - Gill-over-the-ground! This has been a very demanding painting, as Gill-over-the-ground turns out to be jam-packed with details!  I didn't want to do it without the running stem, as it is so much a part of the character of the plant, running "over-the-ground".  Notice that the stem is square, giving away that it is a mi

Red Maple Flowers (watercolour 4 x 6 in.) SOLD!

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15 April finds me watching the Nuthatches climbing around on the Red Maple branches from my computer station at the upstairs window. Their presence is a blessing for the tree. I wonder if their movements in foraging, the scratchy little claws, and the pecking and prying and poking, is felt by the tree just as the attentions of a Cowbird hunting for ticks is soothing to the cattlebeast. I've also been noting, from day to day, the expanding of the Red Maple's flowers from little bright red knobs to pompoms, to tassels. Now on all but the lowest flowers, the leaf buds are emerging like pale green candle flames at the top of each tassel.  I shouldn't wait any longer to paint the flowers, or they'll all be finished. Fred has broken off a twig from a reachable branch, at my request for tree flowers to paint. In this one,  the leaf bud is still closed tightly within its glossy brown scales. I am doing all the watercolours of my daily painting series on the same paper, Cot

Spencerville Heron (oil on canvas 5 x 7 in.)

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14 April finds me in Spencerville in the late afternoon of a pleasant sunny day, so I clambered down on my favorite side of the bridge, downstream from the Mill and the weir.  We waded to catch Mudpuppies here in the summer of 1996. Today a Great Blue Heron is fishing, beside a rock quite far downstream.  It stretches its neck very straight and tall,and points its beak inone direction for a few minutes, and then in the other, holding the beak horizontal and casting a sharp eye into the water.  Suddenly in one motion it turns, crouches, and strikes.  When it stands again the small prey is already swallowed.  I watch it for several minutes, magnified through the camera which I steady on my painting stool, and then it spread grey blanket-like wings and lifts up, circling once before heading farther downstream. My concentration is released from the Heron and now I hear Robins laughing and Redwings singing "burgalee". The breeze has freshened, but it is still soft and warm.  

Track To The Marsh (oil on canvas 5 x 7 in.) SOLD

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13 April  finds Fred and me, glad of our hipwaders, walking along the track into Fairmile Wetland, north of the Rideau River, off the old Highway 16. Our mission is to collect Leopard Frog eggs, and find a painting spot, of course. We went in here in 2004 to find breeding Leopard Frogs. This time, once we got past the deeply trenched and flooded right of way and all the devastation wrought by machines clearing roadways for a planned housing development, everything was much the same. Nature keeps things the way they should be. The old ATV track is there, where the hunters go in deer season, the tracks filled with clear water and fallen leaves. A ground beetle swims across a flooded rut. The water is clear and the untouched bottom is lined with last year's fallen leaves.  The ferns push up from mossy beds and the trees stand in the wet places with water-soaked, mossy bottoms to their trunks.  Some of them are still arched like bows from the ice storm of 1997. Deer tracks in a muddy

Invasive Honesty (watercolour 4 x 6 in.) Sold

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12 April - Honesty, or Moneyplant, Lunaria annua has always grown along the path beneath the Manitoba Maples behind our house in Bishops Mills - at least since we first moved into the village in 1978.  Its magenta (or less often white) blossoms are showy in late summer and its seeds spend the winter between moon-shaped layers of thin parchment, the "money" in one of its names.  Over the past few years we've noticed it spreading farther into the tangle of Manitoba Maples, Buckthorn, and Canada Plum, and we've begun a campaign of harvesting as much of it as we can find for salads, steamed greens, and to feed our caged Rabbits.  Fred and I haven't noticed this European plant spreading invasively in any other place, though I remember it as a child in Guelph.  It is a mustard and seems to now be spreading like the invasive Garlic Mustard.  For the past three years we've been trying to eradicate it entirely here so that it doesn't become invasive elsewhere!

Cedar By The Spillway (oil on canvas 5 x 7 in) SOLD

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9 April finds us in Eden Mills Ontario at my dear friend Elizabeth's house beside a dam on the Eramosa River.  The ruins of an old mill on the other side has been stabilized and partially retrofitted as a very nice house, but Elizabeth's house, which was built as a residence, has an old wooden waterwheel beside it and a spillway running behind it.  This White Cedar with interesting roots stands with its "toes" just above the water at the head of the spillway. Pike go over the waterfall and then come up the spillway and congregate just below the back yard.  So many kinds of fish come and it's lovely to look down at them.  There are clusters of Catfish that gather just under the footbridge, and there are many other fish, including Chub, Sunfish, and Bass. This is a very complex painting, all full of interlocking shapes, and took longer than I'd expected - but I like the way the composition has so many triangles.  The clear golden water is a contrast to yest

Willows in Spring Floodwater (oil on canvas 5 x 7 in.) SOLD

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April 8 on Cataract Road, just north of Seburn Rd, a claywater creek flows bankfull among huge willow treees in a valley of green grass and Ash trees, Sumac, and grapevines, north of Fonthill near St.Catharines, Ontario. The eastward, downstream side tof he creek is straight, and the Willow trees that stand with their roots in it are dark and gothic looking, their blackness in contrast with the milky tan, clay-filled water. On the upstream side the creek is shallower, winding between tongues of bright spring grass.  I clamber down the steep bank on that side, Teasel with old burrs spaced so that I can pass between them, still snagging my skirt on red, prickly arching raspberry canes.  I photograph the willows from all angles, getting my shoes muddy on the new-grassed floodflats. A Muskrat like a diving beetle, flagellum-propelled on the surface, swims on the opaque water into the culvert but doesn't emerge from the upstream side.  The sun peeks out from the clouds that have gr

First Dandelion (oil on canvas 5 x 7in.)

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7 April is cloudy and damp, with temperatures in the low teens.  We are finally geting our April showers after a very dry March.  Fred announced this afternoon that he'd found the first non-cultivated flowers blooming, and he led me to a curb on Mill Street close to Bishops Mills' main intersection.  Two bright yellow blossoms are opening on one of the Dandelion plants that root in the crack between cement and asphalt.  Some of the plants have broader leaves, but those with narrow, deeply incised leaves all show tight knobs of flower buds.  Taraxacum palustre blooms earlier than the common T. officinale, and here it is, blooming!  Palustre means marshy, but we also have them out in the limestone barrens of our "outback" old field, where conditions alternates between soggy and parched. I decided that there being so much green to this subject, I'd balance it with either a purple or red underpainting.  The red stems decided my colour choice, and the result is

Wood Frog breeding pond (watercolour, 4 x 6 in.) Sold

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1 April finds us in a Wood Frog breeding pond which Fred calls "Site F" along Forsyth Road in Limerick Forest, Grenville County, Ontario.  I pushed through willow bushes and past dry spruce boughs which caught at my sweater, stepping on mossy logs in the shallow pond edge, until I paused at one of the last two remnants of melting ice.  The frogs quietened as I came out into the open, but resumed their chorus gradually as I stood still and got out my paints. Most of them are calling from the dead cattails on the north side.  Individually each Wood Frog call sounds like "duck, duck, duck" but as I made my preliminary pencil sketch, all together they sounded jubilant - a clamour like children in a playground.  Later I noticed chuckling, and still later it seemed to me to have changed to laughing. I painted the patch of ice first, but when it was time to leave  I noticed that it had further melted to half the size!  Fred took the water temperature over near th

First Dandelion (oil on canvas 5 x 7in.)

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7 April is cloudy and damp, with temperatures in the low teens.  We are finally geting our April showers after a very dry March.  Fred announced this afternoon that he'd found the first non-cultivated flowers blooming, and he led me to a curb on Mill Street close to Bishops Mills' main intersection.  Two bright yellow blossoms are opening on one of the Dandelion plants that root in the crack between cement and asphalt.  Some of the plants have broader leaves, but those with narrow, deeply incised leaves all show tight knobs of flower buds.  Taraxacum palustre blooms earlier than the common T. officinale, and here it is, blooming!  Palustre means marshy, but we also have them out in the limestone barrens of our "outback" old field, where conditions alternates between soggy and parched. I decided that there being so much green to this subject, I'd balance it with either a purple or red underpainting.  The red stems decided my colour choice, and the result is electr

Mississippi Reflection (oil on canvas, 5 x 7 in.)

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6 April , the evening of a beautiful spring day, finds Corey and me driving County Road 29 home from Arnprior.  Just south of Pakenham where the Mississippi River runs close along the highway, the reflections catch my eye again, just like they did this afternoon.  The repeated triangles of the steep, gullied bank, accented by Cedars and bare tree trunks all faithfully reflected in the polished black diamond of the Mississippi River. We stopped just south of the last trailers of the "Riverbend" trailer park, and as was I was taking some photos in the rapidly falling dusk, Corey noticed a large turtle in the flooded end of the narrow field between the river and the road.  It's front end was tilted up out of the water, but its head was down.  It seemed to be mounted on something about its own size - Snapping Turtles mating!  As I took photos and notes, successive flocks of Canada Geese flew north along the route of the river as if they were following an aerial highway.

Kelly's Inukshuk (oil on canvas 5 x 7 in.) SOLD

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5 April , warm, sunny, and windy, finds us revisiting the larger of the two ponds at Lakeland Estates in the south end of Ottawa.  This is the third year that we have been monitoring the health of these urban lakes for Larry Pegg, a friend of ours who has been resident there since the mid-eighties when the "Estate" was established around two retired gravel pits. Its developer stipulated that the lakes be managed on ecologically responsible principles by the residents, and this was very important to Larry and Angela's daughter Kelly, who made this inukshuk on the lawn behind their house. Larry commissioned this painting in memory of Kelly.  I feel as if I am visiting with her as I sit in the sun beside her lively arrangement of stones.  The lake glitters in the sun, and there are two other stones, one standing nearby, and one crouching a little farther away.  Sometimes the inukshuk looks like a little person, standing stalwart and gesturing to the right.  Sometimes the

The Egg Mass (oil on canvas 5 x 7 in) SOLD!

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A very warm early spring day, 2 April dawns on the road killed frogs of last night along Limerick Road.  This female Wood Frog was not crushed, but was hit in such away that her egg mass all spilled out.  The eggs are all dark, pigmented to resist damage from sunlight, and each has a thin coating that would have expanded to clear jelly if she had survived her road crossing to arrive at the pond and lay them in the water in the tight clasp of a male. Rudyard Kipling had the wolves who adopted the baby Mowgli call him "little frog" in his Jungle Book story.  I believe that people have a soft spot for frogs because they have bodies resembling our own, with arms, and legs with knees.  The frogs, being amphibians, are naked - and so are we, unusual among other mammals. This scene for me, is not so much about the vulnerability of the little naked frog body, as it is about the spilling of her eggs on the road.  The tragedy for me is about the waste of all those potential Wood F

Rhubarb Ruffles (oil on canvas 5 x 7 in)

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31 March finds me crouched over another scene of spring vigour in the Rhubarb patch.  The weather is much improved, with warm sunshine and hardly any breeze - and the Mosquitoes think so too.  They were coming up below the hand which held the canvas, near to the ground, and biting where I could not see them.  The Starlings are boasting their skills of mimicry.  I heard a Gray Tree Frog call four times, and I know it was a bird. The ruffled leaves are gleaming with the energy of unfolding, and my whole being is drawn into the intricacies of their convolutions.  This is the only way, because approximations only result in mess.  The brain is always asking questions that the brush must answer. I remember learning that handwriting analysts judge a tendency to end each line higher than it began on an unlined page is evidence of an optimistic personality.  Just so, spring is pushing the upper limit of my canvas.