On The Road (oil on canvas 5 x 7 in.) SOLD!

-
15 May finds us on Highway 101, north of Temiskaming, Quebec.  Fred has just marked the waypoint # 248 on the GPS, and Adam glances at me in the rear view mirror.  I am actually doing this painting in the back seat as we drive, knowing that there will be no time to stop to paint today - we're on our way home. I have to raise my brush when the road gets too bumpy, but for the most part I've developed a technique of bracing the corner of the canvas on my lap board and one of the fingers of my painting hand on the edge of the canvas while holding the back of the stretcher firmly with my left hand - and applying paint between the bumps!  I am referring both to the real scene and to a photo I've downloaded to my laptop.

We have been making regular stops, however, to take specimens and mark the locations of stands of the tall reed Phragmites whenever we see them along the roadsides.  Fred hits the "mark" button, Adam stops the van, Fred gets out to collect a sample and Adam follows him with the camera while I write the habitat description.  Most of them appear to be the native type, with dark reddish nodes or joints along a smooth stem and a smaller, thinner banner of seed "glumes" than the rough stemmed invasive kind.  Some day the natives may be recognized as separate species, but for now they are all called Phragmites australis.  Despite the invasive having been in Canada for over 100 years they are only considered subspecies although they don't seem to hybridize.  When we went west in 2000 before the difference between the natives and the invasives was formally recognized we saw differences among the natives which may require taxonomic recognition, and it's going to be one of the goals of our summer travels to gather specimens so this situation can be studied.

There is no Phragmites in my scene - just a pleasantly curving, ordinary-looking stretch of road.  It was exciting to pass from the clay belt onto the shield. The first sign of that were peoples' houses.  Some were built with round granite stones shaped by the glaciers, and some with flat broken pieces.  As I was still wondering where they had brought the stones from we passed over a height of land and there were granite outcroppings and erratics by the roadside.  More than enough rock for everyones' houses!

It was also exciting as we came far enough south for the Sugar Maples to survive and saw hillsides pink and fluffy with flowers and young leaves.  I haven't yet painted them, but their stout trunks and gnarly character made them worthy subjects for the Group of Seven.

Comments

  1. Fred SchuelerMay 18, 2010 at 7:17 PM

    Actually I'm shown as rather more tranquil than I would have been at that point in the trip. I knew from reviewing previous records that there was a great density of stands of the native-type Phragmites on that stretch of highway, north of Riv. Gordon, and I was waypointing and writing notes on more than one stand per minute all along there. On this trip we got a continuous record of Phragmites stands from Opasatika, west of Kapuscasing, to Burritts Rapids, on the banks of the Rideau, so we'll be able to compare the status of the native and invasive forms now with waht it was in the 1990s and 2000.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

What do you think of this painting, and what do you know about the subject that I have painted?

Popular posts from this blog

Sturgeon Chute, Upper Rapids (oil on canvas, 12 x 16 in.) Sold

-
Image
1 October finds me painting at the upstream rapids of Sturgeon Chute on the Wanapite River, 6.7 kilometres northwest of Hartley Bay. To get just the right angle on the rapids, screened by flaming leaves of an overhanging Red Maple, I'm standing on a narrow grassy ledge, the small of my back leaning against a cold wall of smooth granite, with the feet of my easel only a few centimetres from the edge. About two metres below, courses the fast deep water,
Read more

Outfall at Nuclear Beach

-
Image
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...
Read more

Little Marsh in Limerick

-
Image
"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....
Read more