White Lake Spring Melt (oil on canvas 5 x 7 in.)

-
21 March finds me an hour after sunrise on the shore of White Lake, near Renfrew, Ontario. Mist lies over the frozen part of the lake, sometimes receding to reveal the darkness and detail of the trees on the little point - overhanging Cedar, Pine, and Spruce - and sometimes moving in to white them out entirely. Vehicle tracks crisscross the ice, melting it in interesting patterns. Two pairs of Common Mergansers swish down for a landing on the open water, and after
swimming in a line and looking at me from a distance, they leave in a throbbing rush across the surface. Canada Geese land farther out, standing around on the ice and calling to another family who had landed in open water nearby.

The stubble along the shore gleams gold in the morning sun, and I decide to underpaint a pale indian red. A morning serenade is going on all around me as I stand at my easel, a cacaphony of blackbirds, but I'm too concentrated on getting the right colours and manipulating my brushes into the right strokes to pay attention to what kind of blackbirds.

Fred pulls on his waders to search the grassy shore and sandy bottom for snails and mussels, finding mostly Viviparus and Elliptio shells, as well as one live Pyganodon clam. The water is crystal clear and 5C near the shore. Fred says that the air over the distant ice is wavering with temperature difference, and I look to the west across the lake ice and see twisting ribbons of light streaming across the surface.

I started painting at 8:00 and I'm finishing up at noon, taking off my down jacket and my boots and long underwear to pack up and wash my brushes. It's shaping up to be another unseasonably hot early spring day and we must be off to hear where the Chorus Frogs are calling.

Comments

  1. Fred SchuelerMarch 25, 2012 at 9:43 PM

    White Lake in Candle Ice

    Every moment is a pot-boiler
    As the low Sun pushes into the fog,
    Coming and going on the lake-sweeping Pines and Cedars.
    Megansers barely ripple the open water.
    A Phoebe vociferates his return
    to the black velvet painting
    Of waterside springtime in Ontario.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

What do you think of this painting, and what do you know about the subject that I have painted?

Popular posts from this blog

Sturgeon Chute, Upper Rapids (oil on canvas, 12 x 16 in.) Sold

-
Image
1 October finds me painting at the upstream rapids of Sturgeon Chute on the Wanapite River, 6.7 kilometres northwest of Hartley Bay. To get just the right angle on the rapids, screened by flaming leaves of an overhanging Red Maple, I'm standing on a narrow grassy ledge, the small of my back leaning against a cold wall of smooth granite, with the feet of my easel only a few centimetres from the edge. About two metres below, courses the fast deep water,
Read more

Outfall at Nuclear Beach

-
Image
Outfall at Nuclear Beach (oil on birch panel 11x14 in.) 24 January 2024 finds me starting a plein air painting on the icy shore of Lake Ontario, near Pulaski, New York, looking east across Mexico Bay toward the cooling stack of the Nine Mile Point nuclear power station.  I have set myself up to paint on a low ice shelf close to the water, near a bank of amazing ice cobbles tumbled smooth in the waves of a recent storm. At my feet a creek is running free from beneath its silent sheets of ice, along a high barrier of storm-piled frozen wave-spray mixed with ice cobbles. The gentle swells moving in from Lake Ontario splash against ice covered boulders where it finally meets the lake. After I took my initial reference photos, cousin Delos who had guided me here to his favourite spot for photographing sunsets, departed to prepare supper.  By the time I had decided on a painting spot and arranged my plein air studio, the dark clouds on the horizon had lightened, spreading across Me...
Read more

Little Marsh in Limerick

-
Image
"Little Marsh in Limerick" (Oil on birch panel, 6 x 6 in.) 26 December 2023 finds me capturing sunset colours through a tear in the clouds over a small Cattail marsh on Forsythe Rd, 2.3 km E of McRoberts Corner, in Limerick Forest, Grenville County, Ontario. It is 7C after rain, and the road is muddy. We’ve had a rainy Christmas with temperatures well above seasonal average. Cheryl is in the driver’s seat, watching me paint my annual birthday plein air in oils on a   6 x 6 inch cradled birch panel, trying to get it covered with paint before we lose the light and go home for supper.   This little marsh, only a few minutes from home, is a familiar scene. There are observations in Fred’s database over the course of 40 years from this spot, of Muskrat, Beaver, Snapping Turtle, Painted Turtle,  Green Frog, Great Blue Heron, and Red Squirrel. This is a few hundred metres from “Site F” where we listen each spring to monitor Wood Frogs, Gray Tree Frogs, and Spring Peepers....
Read more