St Lawrence Picnic Table (oil on canvas 5 x 7 in.) Sold

3 July finds us spending a day in the field, on a summer Saturday evening in Glengarry Park, east of Cornwall, Ontario.  The air is filled with the voices of picnickers talking and laughing, and swimmers shouting to each other - an interesting mix of languages, rich in the Spanish tongue of seasonal farm workers.

A stately old Ash tree stands on the edge of the lawn a few feet above the windy, choppy St. Lawrence River. The top of a picnic table is almost awash a little way off shore and I sit by the tree to paint.

The wind blows wisps of my hair against my cheeks, the westering sun is shining into the side of my right eye, and it's hard to keep the canvas in the shade of my shoulder, so today painting is not easy.  Adam is sitting on the grass beside me, making a fine ink drawing of an Eregion aster whose yellow centres are haloed with hair-thin magenta petals.  Fred walks the sandy beach, picking up drift and searching for evidence of Crayfish.  Reporting for supper, he announces he's found one - the recently shed skin of a male Orconectes virilis - proof that if the invading O. limosus is here, it hasn't yet wiped out the natives.

As I move from tree trunk to water, and from water to the distant horizon, I'm delighted to see it purple with mountain shapes - the Adirondacks of New York State.