Slippery Elm (oil on canvas 24 x 30 in.)
7 April 2014 found me visiting a large Slippery Elm in a front yard about 8 km northwest of Aylmer, Quebec. As I stood back to photograph it with my back to the house it seemed to dance with the sky. The icy Ottawa River twinkled through a row of trees just beyond the snowy field across the highway. In my painting I didn't include that screen of near trees, because I wanted you to have a clear view of the river and across it, the hills north of Shirley's Bay on the Ontario side. I was rather disoriented here as I have always related to the Ottawa River running from west to east through Ottawa - but here it runs southeast to its big bend at Aylmer before flowing east to Ottawa.