Karstad Biodiversity Paintings: adventures in the colour of Canada

18 January found me standing on the bridge at the dam in Oxford Mills, Ontario, admiring the wonderful diversity of forms and textures of ice and water during a mid-winter breakup. Most of our visits to Kemptville Creek at the Oxford Mills dam are nocturnal, as each Friday night through the winter we monitor a population of giant aquatic salamanders, Necturus nebulosus the Mudpuppy. We have been doing this for 15 years, and invite the public to join us in the count . The diversity of forms and textures of ice have always excited me, and I'm pleased with the idea of painting ice and water as a subject in itself, with no view of the surrounding scene. This allows the painting to approach the abstract while maintaining enough realism to engage the mind in exploring the lights and textures as real. My eyes and brushes play about the swirling foam over the brown and golden depths and shallows, and distinguish between golden submerged ice and milky translucent old ice, and the pi...

14 August 2013 found me at dusk on the crest of a splendid granite cliff above Wolf Lake, Temagami District. Painters, photographers, poets, artists in wool, wood, and clay, as well as visionaries and guides, were talking quietly, hands wrapped around our mugs of after-supper tea. The youngest participant in the art camp was still at work, inspired by the high view of the Wolf Lake wilderness, drawing the head of a Raven. Going through my photos from Wolf Lake to choose the next image for a studio painting, stretching the experience of old growth Red Pine forest, pristine lakes and wild waterfalls of Wolf and Silvester Lakes into my winter indoor studio, I lingered again on the image of this young artist. His stillness blends with the scene, his form as lithe and youthful as the young pines that cling to the cliff. His legs hug the curve of the rock and his distant gaze expands the landscape far beyond the borders of my painting. With my eyes and my brush

16 August 2013 found me canoeing south on Sylvester Lake from the art camp on the shore of Wolf Lake, Temagami District. The mood of open water is entirely influenced by wind and sky. Today it's like a fairy tale. The lake is smooth and the reflections exquisite. Looking behind us at the old growth forest on the western shore, I was entranced by a cloud shadow making an arrow shape with its reflection, and inserted in its tip was the sharp bright sliver of a granite island, glowing pink in the sun.