Karstad Biodiversity Paintings: adventures in the colour of Canada

28 June finds me sitting in front of a Moose skull above the pond at the "Old Homestead" of Caledonia Gorge Protected Natural Area, New Brunswick. The woods here show signs of heavy use by Moose, both browse and droppings, and today we have been given a tour of the spring, the old house site which is now a grassy clearing, and the pond. One strange feature of the place appears to be an old dying ground for Moose, perhaps in years when it was used as a winter yarding area. In a 20 metre radius on the gentle slope above the pond among Fir, Spruce, and Maple trees, we found several deposits of Moose bones - single ribs, groups of vertebrae, jaw bones, and here, a skull with vertebrae.

27 June finds us looking out over the Caledonia Gorge Natural Protected Area from the viewpoint just north of the village of Riverside-Albert, New Brunswick. The falls on Crooked Creek can be seen where the sun glints on it. The high wall of the gorge is visible there too. The sun coming through clouds makes a golden necklace just before Caledonia Mountain, and stays there just long enough for me to paint it in. The New New Brunswick Museum's web page says that "The Caledonia Gorge Protected Natural Area (CG PNA), at 2,832 ha is the smallest of New Brunswick's 10 largest PNAs and representative of the Central Uplands Ecoregion.  Situated in the southeast corner of New Brunswick, this PNA captures the steeply-sloping Crooked Creek Gorge and tributaries where they cut into the Fundy Plateau, before flowing into the Bay of Fundy".   The Museum's Facebook page shows photos of Bio-blitz activities so far. There will be an open house here at the lab on Tuesday ne...

25 June finds us in New Brunswick - in the Protected Natural Area called Caledonia Gorge PNA, for a two-week Bio-blitz organized by the New Brunswick Museum. We have driven in on an old logging road along Crooked Creek, to the washed-out bridge, and I'm sitting on a stone beside the old wooden bridge footings, looking across the creek to a graceful spruce which leans from its high perch, its red-barked roots entwined with its neighbour. This is our first foray into the PNA. Fred has found three Red-backed Salamanders, one of them in a drift of twiggy debris from spring floods up at bridge-level. As I paint, four of the many orange and brown slugs that are so plentiful here crawl on the rocks near my feet, and I reach down to collect them. In addition to my role as visiting artist at the Bio-blitz, I am the "slug expert." Sophie and Mary have forded the creek and walked farther up the road to check for other places of easy access to the creek for algae and fish sampli...

15 June finds me sitting on a rock beside the track through the alvar on the Georgian Bay shore of the Bruce Penninsula that we used to call "Dyers Bay Campsite". Flooded in the spring, baked dry in late summer, this natural open area of shallow soil over limestone is now resplendent with Blue-eyed Grass, yellow Senecio, and fiery Indian Paintbrush. We have never seen Blue-eyed Grass so abundant in any other year, and at first we thought that it was invasive flax! It is no more a campsite, as vehicle access isn't easy and the owners patrol it often. That is good, because some people who camped here before left litter strewn around and did not replace the rocks they turned in search of snakes. I have a photo of myself at 19 years of age, on elbows and knees, watching a snail crawl on one of the flat limestone rocks that seem to litter the ground but which are shelter for many creatures, including Massassauga Rattlesnakes. Fred was pleased to encounter one basking near...

14 June finds me sitting on dry Cedar twigs and leaves, crouching to paint a  Yellow Ladyslipper which stands by a shady path sloping down toward Little Tub Harbour in Tobermory, Ontario.  There are several here. growing in ones, twos and threes in little nooks among the Cedars.  This one tilts its blossom demurely and I like the way it holds its corkscrewed 'wings'.  I spend a long time sculpting the flower parts in yellow and green with brassy shadows, admiring the red dots and strokes that run in rows like fancy top-stitching.

12 June finds me on Highway 553 north of Massey, Ontario, painting a marsh in evening light through the open window of the van, with mosquito repellant smeared on my face and hands and an insect coil burning beside me. The sun is to my right, not quite set, glowing on the tops of the maples on the near hillside. A dead spruce or tamarack stretches its long bare fingers across the sky, and others in the marsh are also dead, spaced about like the standing skeletons of gnomes.

24 May finds me commemorating the recent first birthday of a dear little friend - with a portrait in watercolour. This painting is not for sale because it was done as a birthday present. This portrait is my second try. Both reference photos were taken by me, but the first one was 3/4 view of the face. I worked first in pencil but never got to painting it. The finished pencil portrait is a good likeness of the photo, but not instantly recognizable as the person!  This is often a problem in portraiture - the angle chosen does not adequately present the character. So I began again from my front view photo, which had not been chosen initially because of its very solemn expression.  I was finished in only a couple of hours and am pleased to recognize my little friend at a glance!