Karstad Biodiversity Paintings: adventures in the colour of Canada

7 July found me photographing shaggy Birches along the Five Fathom Hole Trail near Prince of Wales, New Brunswick, returning from the spot where I'd painted "High Lookout From the Trail", and before my view of the tributary to Butler's Creek. It was the evening of a very hot day. Mosquitoes were rising as the light was mellowing, with splashes of sunlight here and there through the forest. The air was calm. The lilting fronds of ferns were motionless, and so were the sheets of bright needles flung out into the

7 July found me lagging behind on the trail, with my camera, trying again to find a paintable view of one of the little brownwater brooks crossed by footbridges on the Five Fathom Hole Trail near Prince of Wales, New Brunswick. We were returning from where I'd been painting "High Lookout From the Trail," tired after a hot day which started with having Fred briefly in hospital for diabetic shock, and then my teaching the plein air painting workshop on the wharf. With only a few days more before we had to head home to Ontario I knew I must take reference photos for finishing this series of paintings. This lovely brook collects rain water that has been steeped in the forest - dripped from leaves, trickled down bark, soaked through

5 July finds me in a grove of old White Cedar, discovering what must be Mabel Fitzrandolph's favorite pond, in land she had donated to the Nature Conservancy of Canada. We had driven in on Gooseberry Road, east of Musquash, New Brunswick, in search of this pond earlier in the day, but first we found a soggy spot with Sundews and tadpoles, screened from the road by a tangle of young Fir and Birches.  Real ponds are rare in places with rugged topography and few Beavers. Then we went farther along the road to hike down to the Hepburn Basin at low tide. On our return along Gooseberry Road late in the afternoon, carefully straddling the van's wheels over rocks and avoiding ruts, creeping down slopes and scrambling up them, we stopped at the Cedars which I'd noticed on our way in. There is not much White Cedar hereabouts, and this grove of mature wet-loving trees may indicate the  pond we'd hoped to find. We weren't out of the van and into the woods for very long befo...

      6 July finds me, after our Open House in the Musquash Recreation Centre, holding up my skirt to wade into the marsh of the Musquash Estuary. Crossing the dry thatch of the Broadleaf Cattails with Owen after me, I feel for firmer footing through the wetter bed of grass, sedges and rushes, and head for the bank of the red  clay channel for a view toward the landmark Norway Spruces in the forest that stretches

7 July finds me painting from a lookout on the Five Fathom Hole Trail, south of Prince of Wales, New Brunswick. Coming down from the forest trail through a solid patch of Bunchberry with tiny green fruit, i pushed through a tangle of Blueberry and Sheep Laurel, with little Balsam Fir trying themselves out as replacements for their relations that were cut a few years ago to open this high view of the estuary. Now I'm perched on a slope of prickly dry lichens and roots beside a hoary-twigged spruce stump at the brink of the cliff, looking across a forested granite headland toward a distant island in the 

7 July finds me teaching a plein air painting workshop on the fishing wharf at Five Fathom Hole, near Prince of Wales, New Brunswick. This is my demonstration piece, painted on a ground or underpainting of dark brown. Six people turned out in spite of the scorching sun and record high temperatures, and here we are, beamed down on by the noonday sun, the weathered boards of the wharf becoming hotter by the minute. The end of the wharf, large and square so that vehicles can drive out and turn around, works well as an outdoor classroom. There is a diversity of subject matter for painting in every direction and we are all within speaking distance of each other.

3 July finds me standing at a bridge northeast of Musquash, New Brunswick, painting a falls beyond which the tide does not reach.  The Fundy tides are such a huge part of the estuary that when I saw the river plunging vertically into the tidal zone, I knew that I just had to paint this falls. Local folk tell me that after the heavy rainfall a couple of weeks ago it was much more spectacular - churning white water literally exploding out of the slot between the rock shoulders. But I like the way it looks now, foamy tresses braided over its boulders, and demurely showing golden hints of the clear tea coloured water filtered from the forests and bogs above the estuary. I can see the white spots of Dobsonfly egg cases on the flanks of rock above the high tide line. As I paint here, balancing my palette on the cement wall beneath the steel railing of the bridge, Fred ranges about collecting drift and stealing small snails from the tops of ant hills.

2 July finds me painting a high view over the Musquash Estuary at low tide. My half tent is set among low conifer branches at a spot on the Five Fathom Hole trail where the Firs seem to step aside to reveal a breathtaking vista high above the estuary. Ten meters below, the clear brown water chatters it's way among seaweed-bearded rocks to join in a grand curve in a bowl of pale rusty clay. The green, pelt-like sod of the marsh curls softly over the edges of the steep clay banks. An

30 June finds me sitting at the edge of the marsh to paint a channel of the Musquash Estuary, on the Five Fathom Hole trail, 6.8 km east of Musquash, New Brunswick. The tide has turned, according to the pen that Fred has stuck in the marsh mud. We have trampled a swath of marsh grass in our gradual retreat from the tea brown water as it wets our toes. Every few minutes of determined painting found me retreating again, moving the daddy which is my seat,

28 June finds me painting the Succineid snails that we collected from a patch of Agelica and grass beside Highway 105 in the Grand Lake Meadows Protected Natural Area, New Brunswick. This was on 25 June as we left the Bio-blitz, heading for Ayers Lake. We stopped the van a little east of the Sunbury County line so that we could be sure that we were in one of the the narrow slices of land that make up the Grand Lake Meadows Protected Natural Area along Highway 105. I walked across the road to investigate a lush patch of Angelica. There they were, about twenty little amber snails less than two centimetres long, crawling on the leaves and stems, and also on blades of grass, in the shade of the Angelica in the mid-afternoon of a very hot day. These jewel-like land snails are very difficult to identify. We used to think that we could tell the species apart, but now that we know how many taxonomic problems have been found among them, including hybridization, without dissection I can...