Karstad Biodiversity Paintings: adventures in the colour of Canada

      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 t

  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 to th

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 5:00 the e

"Dumoine Moose Marsh" (6 x 6 inch oil on birch panel) 7 August 2021 finds me carrying my painting supplies along a twisted well-trampled path through a stand of Firs, to a small marshy lake or large pond. A recently built viewing platform stands back a few feet from the waterline, well shaded by the forest edge. There's plenty of room for three standing easels, but I decide to paint a lower view of the left end of the lake, and sit on the floor to look between the railings with my legs dangling out the front. Catherine Orfald and Ruth Tait are painting with me on this fifth day of the week-long DRAW artists retreat - Dumoine River Artists for Conservation, hosted by CPAWS-OV, the Ottawa Valley chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. A few Pickerel Weed are blooming here, and one candy-pink spike of Spirea tomentosa (Steeplebush). Small floating Water Lily leaves pattern the surface through an opening in the rushes and bushes, and dapple the open water. A p

  "Dumoine Evening" (6 x 6 in. oil on birch panel)  4 August, 2021 finds me standing on the path just in front of my "meditation log", with my toes in the black, loamy saturated soil at the edge of the water, looking down the Dumoine River toward towering pink clouds of a humid-hazy early evening.  I love my private stretch of the Dumoine and all its lovely scenes, up-river to the east, especially in the mornings - down-river to the west in the evenings, and any time of day across to the bright grassy islands and the forested far shore.  There are three other tents pitched under the trees here along the river, but we all come and go as quietly as deer and I never see the others this side of the road to the cabin.  My tent is pitched in the shade of tall pines and spruces, and although it is cooler here than in the sunny yard of the cabin where most of the artists of the DRAW art camp have pitched their tents, the weather has been so humid that the damp cuffs of the

"Dumoine Serenity" (8 x 8 in. oil on canvas) 5 August 2021 started out foggy just as yesterday. I stepped carefully barefoot down my little trail to the river edge just before 08:00 to see if I could see a misty morning scene to paint. Everything was blurry except foreground Sweet Gale and Alder bushes, and the bright flecks of foam floating lazily down from the mouth of a creek, or the churning canyon of La Grande Chute. I took a few photos and went up to breakfast, during which the sun burned through, heralding another hot day. Now at 09:30 all the mist is gone, leaving a blue haze on the forested hills and a white haze in the sky, with a faintest tint of blue overhead and a brassy glare to the east… and that’s my morning scene, to the east. My focal point will be the glossy black river where it snakes past the far end of a narrow island, between a leaning White Pine and a golden-tipped stand of grasses, backed by the blue forest and it’s downswept skyline against the brig