Karstad Biodiversity Paintings: adventures in the colour of Canada

26 January 2011 finds me stopping again to admire Wild Turkeys in a snowy field. Today is not as cold, so their shapes are not as round. The corn stubble no longer shows above the snow, and they must dig deeper to find stray kernels and old fallen cobs. Wild Turkeys are native to Canada, but disappeared in the early 1900's due to over-hunting and deforestation.

I have just finished this commissioned painting of the Gray Tree Frog, Hyla versicolor , resting in a Manitoba Maple stump behind our house in Bishops Mills. Oil on canvas, 8 x 10 inches, this one has been very complex to paint - as Fred said this evening, "like a spilled jig-saw puzzle". I wanted the frog to blend with the lichened bark as well as showing distinctly against the rich rusty coloured soft rotted wood of the stump, so the conflict is there, accented by the stems of vines and a spiral tendril that actively gestures to the motionless frog.

Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches, Commissioned re-mastering of the 5 x 7 inch miniature, "Waves Before the Hurricane" My client requested two figures in the surf, rather than the single figure in the miniature, painted when Hurricane Earl was headed toward Nova Scotia. The two figures in the larger painting are a couple who were engaged to be married while watching the same waves I painted, on the evening before the hurricane. A very romantic subject and a very energetic one - I enjoyed painting this one, tremendously!