Karstad Biodiversity Paintings: adventures in the colour of Canada

25 November brings us news of the death of my teacher Doris McCarthy at the ripe old age of 100. Her passing was announced on CBC Radio's national news, a fitting tribute to her place and influence in Canadian Art. Miss McCartthy, my painting teacher at Toronto's Central Technical School, taught me how to see colour in the world around me, and how to paint light, shadow, and reflected light.  This painting is done with her voice in my head - her advice on colour and composition.... Yesterday we stopped at a bridge on County Road 20 northeast of Bishops Mills Ontario at an Ash tree, lichened and twisted, deformed by the ice storm of 1997. Beyond it is a view of the wetland to the south, where the South Branch of the Rideau River joins Kemptville Creek. Sunset was fast approaching, so I took a photo as the last ruddy beams of the setting sun painted the distant swamp maples and highlighted patches of yellow lichen on the Ash's dark trunk.

19 November finds me at the Red Maple swamp on North Augusta Road, north of the Brockville Fairgrounds, admiring the fallen-leaf splendor of the Winterberry Holly, Ilex verticillata . Nobody ever sees the male plants of this wetland shrub, but every fall, spectacularly in some years, more modestly in others, such as this year, the female bushes bear this brilliant crop of berries.  It's a challenge to paint in its linearity, but the berries are prominent enough in their intensity of colour to hold their own in the busy linearity of stems and reflections. This is the time when we pick the berry-laden twigs to bring them indoors for winter decoration. I don't put them in water, so the berries dry, wrinkled and spongy, and stay on the twigs, as bright as they were when fresh. We've observed so much here since we moved to this area in 1978. We've heard Wood Frogs, Peepers, Woodcock, Barred Owls, Snipe, Leopard Frogs, Grey Treefrogs, and, in 2003 & 2005, Chorus Frog

13 November finds us sorting, clearing, shifting, carrying, dumping, and storing in preparation for listing for sale the old General Store building that has been the home of Bishops Mills Natural History Centre since 2002 (this is a photo taken a few years ago when the sign was still up). In stead of all this moving I would rather paint the Winterberry Holly that I saw yesterday glowing crimson against the dark water of the Red Maple swamp north of Brockville, but I must postpone that painting - indeed, all painting - until next week and I hope the berries won't drop or be eaten by birds before I have time to paint them.

9 November finds us hunting for Bittersweet fruit in various spots where we've previously seen the vines around Bishops Mills, Ontario.  In 2008 we found one that we'd thought was the invasive Celastrus orbiculatus at the edge of a Jack Pine plantation along South Bolton Road, but today it looks as if those vines may have been included in the roadside clearing that was done by chipping machine this spring. 

8 November finds me peering into the bell mouth of the seed capsule of Prickly Cucumber the size of a small chicken egg, one of thousands on their stringy vines with twirly tendrils, matting the long grass into an Echinocystis blanket over a fence along the west side of Mill Street in Bishops Mills, Ontario. A few of the Prickly Cucumber fruits are still green and fleshy, having recently exploded their bottom ends in the act of ejecting their two large flat oval seeds. The dry capsules are pale golden bells with spines, each bell lined with the lacy double skeletons of the empty seed chambers. At one end of the fence some of the vines decorate an Eastern White Cedar, and standing close beside it I hear the wind hissing through dry vines, its thin continuum accompanied by mysterious small clicking, ticking - a wonderful tiny percussion of Prickly Cucumber spines tickling against the scaly Cedar leaves!

5 November finds me painting under an umbrella in the Milkweed patch behind our house in Bishops Mills, Ontario. It is a light rain with not much wind, and my blue and white beach umbrella is enough to keep my canvas and palette dry. A blanket over my lap and a touque on my head keep me warm. I photographed the Milkweed yesterday - but when I tried to paint from the photos I missed the richness of colour, and the subject got mixed with the background. So there is nothing for it but to get out there and paint, with rain clotting the silky fluff and dripping from the tip of one of the pods. Wetness also brings out the strong black silhouettes of the Milkweed stems. It looks like they're wearing black stockings. The upper surfaces of the pods are also blackish where they've gotten wet so often this autumn. I think it may be a mildew type fungus like the blackish stain that grows on old grey barn boards. It makes a striking contrast with the glowing tawny gold inside the pods.

3 November finds me still fascinated by the flat satiny pockets of Honesty's seed pods. Lunaria annua , or the "Money Plant" of my childhood. This one has only one of its pods unopened, with the seed shadows showing through the translucent membrane. The others have opened and dispersed their seeds, leaving the thin   tissues of one side of each pod still attached, to vibrate in the light autumn breeze, sending sun reflections flickering through the Canada Plum thicket behind our house in Bishops Mills. Beside it I have painted a seed head of Allium tricoccum , called Ramps in the Appalachians and Wild Leek in Ontario. We've transplanted them here from various places through the years as we bring home our woodsy harvests, and we pick a few garlicky flavoured leaves each spring for our salads, leaving the bulbs to continue to grow. This spring for the first time, we had clumps that were large enough to disperse through the grove, encouraging this edible na

2 November finds me sitting in the "forever wild" thicket behind our house in Bishops Mills, painting the translucent parchment disks of Honesty (or Money Plant) Lunaria annua .  The basal leaves of the first year plants of this biennial make bright notes of green among the dry fallen leaves. The sun is warm and I'm sheltered from the light wind, only a few degrees above freezing. Manitoba Maples have long shaded this spot, making it cool and mossy in the summer. For more than 30 years we've watched the wild plums and buckthorn growing up and the Honesty spreading underneath them. At first this European introduction was just a curiosity to us because it had such nice seed pods, bright magenta blooms, and it was edible in the spring. About the time it was discovered that Garlic Mustard, also introduced from Europe, breaks down fungal symbiosis in Ontario forests, we began to suspect that Honesty, which is also a shady woods mustard, may have the same effec