Tobermory Ladyslipper (watercolour 5 x 7 in) Sold

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.
As I paint, a Robin moves along the fencerow, "chuck"ing assertively, and boat motors idle down by the docks. People talk beside their cars in front of the hotel, and the baleful horn of the Chicheemaun ferry sounds just across the harbour.  Eventually Fred brings my supper to me, but I'm just finished the portrait of the "yellow lady" and am ready to unkink my legs and straighten my back, and carry my plate back to eat with our friends.

We're not sure which species name to use for these little yellow Ladyslippers, and over dinner it turns out that nobody is particularly sure. After supper we struggled, not quite successfully, to make the digital scan show the gradations of yellow and shadow that are in the painting. You'll have to see the original...