Karstad Biodiversity Paintings: adventures in the colour of Canada

Outfall at Nuclear Beach (oil on birch panel 11x14 in.) 24 January 2024 finds me starting a plein air painting on the icy shore of Lake Ontario, near Pulaski, New York, looking east across Mexico Bay toward the cooling stack of the Nine Mile Point nuclear power station.  I have set myself up to paint on a low ice shelf close to the water, near a bank of amazing ice cobbles tumbled smooth in the waves of a recent storm. At my feet a creek is running free from beneath its silent sheets of ice, along a high barrier of storm-piled frozen wave-spray mixed with ice cobbles. The gentle swells moving in from Lake Ontario splash against ice covered boulders where it finally meets the lake. After I took my initial reference photos, cousin Delos who had guided me here to his favourite spot for photographing sunsets, departed to prepare supper.  By the time I had decided on a painting spot and arranged my plein air studio, the dark clouds on the horizon had lightened, spreading across Me...

"Little Marsh in Limerick" (Oil on birch panel, 6 x 6 in.) 26 December 2023 finds me capturing sunset colours through a tear in the clouds over a small Cattail marsh on Forsythe Rd, 2.3 km E of McRoberts Corner, in Limerick Forest, Grenville County, Ontario. It is 7C after rain, and the road is muddy. We’ve had a rainy Christmas with temperatures well above seasonal average. Cheryl is in the driver’s seat, watching me paint my annual birthday plein air in oils on a   6 x 6 inch cradled birch panel, trying to get it covered with paint before we lose the light and go home for supper.   This little marsh, only a few minutes from home, is a familiar scene. There are observations in Fred’s database over the course of 40 years from this spot, of Muskrat, Beaver, Snapping Turtle, Painted Turtle,  Green Frog, Great Blue Heron, and Red Squirrel. This is a few hundred metres from “Site F” where we listen each spring to monitor Wood Frogs, Gray Tree Frogs, and Spring Peepers....

  Cooper Marsh in Late August (oil on birch panel 8 x 10 in.) 28 August 2023 found me painting on the back deck of the Visitors Centre at the Cooper Marsh Conservation Area. It's a hot day, and I'm demonstrating plein air painting as part of a workshop hosted by the Raisin Region Conservation Authority and inspired by our mussels project with the River Institute.  It's a hot day, so we stayed in the building's shade rather than venturing out into the sunny marsh. Also, the deck offers a higher view across the marsh to the thin line of the pale blue St Lawrence and the deeper hazy blue of the north shore of New York State, visible between the Poplars and Willows. An Osprey calls loudly and insistently overhead. A Red Squirrel scolds chirrs every once in a while, in irritation that we are still here, and once a Bull Frog thrums unseen, from open water somewhere out there among the yellow-green Carex or the dark green Scirpus, this side of the strip of tall, pale-plumed...

      August 4, 2023 finds me on the bank of Bissett Creek, 16.2 km west of Stonecliffe Ontario, painting the alternate ribbons of white foam and silky dark water of a sloped waterfall. This is the week of DRAW (Dumoine River Artists for Wilderness) camp. John McDonnell of Canadian Parks & Wilderness Society - Ottawa Valley, writes:  "Only 18 km separate the Ottawa Valley's two largest protected areas, Algonquin Park in Ontario and the Dumoine River Aquatic Reserve in Quebec. CPAWS-OV is working to fill this 'gap' in protection to ensure that species like moose, bear and wolves can continue to thrive and migrate across this landscape. Almost all this area is publicly owned Crown Land, where there is currently little to no development. CPAWS-OV hopes to see this area protected before development forecloses the opportunity. Bissett and Grant Creeks, on the south side of the Ottawa River, embrace an area rich in forests and wetlands, and offer a direct connection...

  6 August 2021 found me exploring Robinson Lake on the Dumoine River by kayak. Taking it all in from the intimate position of just above water level was enchanting! It was difficult to be still enough to photograph the White Water Lilies Nymphaea odorata as I awkwardly circled a group of them, poising like dancers mirrored in the dark water. I was amazed at how, when my clumsy paddle brushed them, they closed to keep the water out of their delicate yellow inner parts, popping up dry and open on the other side of the kayak.  In the middle of the channel, I spotted a Painted Turtle on a deadhead, and bumped into it, approaching to take photos. One can’t simultaneously take photos and manoeuvre one’s craft. As the sky lowered and the wind roused the water into a chop I photographed some "Swamp Candles", Lysimachia terrestris, with twisted yellow petals, blooming along the shore, and then turned the tip of the island and into the wind. There were small waves in addition t...

The Cedars Snow Dance (8 x 10 oil on canvas) 26 December 2022 finds me plodding through the deep new snow among the Cedars behind our house in Bishops Mills, Ontario. It being my birthday, the order of the day was painting en plein air. A lovely sunny day of -4C with deep new snow - I invited Fred out in my search for a scene “out back”.  I took photos of several - the most inspiring being a clump of Cedars with curving blue-shadowed snow-mantled branches, with the warm bright open space glowing through from behind. Knowing the light would be better in the late afternoon, I did some errands in Kemptville, and was back out to the site with a sled load of gear by 4:00.  Insulated by a cushion in the seat of my folding chair, I had my booted feet in a cardboard box stuffed with a down vest, my lap wrapped with a small duvet, my hands in fingerless gloves, and a hat beneath my hood, I painted in a race with the sunset, not taking time to open my thermos for a sip of hot tea. by 5...