Musquash Woods

-
         oil on canvas 20 x 24 in.                                                                         

I've just completed a commission from reference photos, taken for my Shore Birch painting, on our hike along the Butler Beach trail near Musquash, New Brunswick in 2013. It is wonderful to have a large canvas for this painting - large enough to be able to make the curls and shreds of Birch bark crisp and smooth, and to even show the little horizontal lenticel marks.
Forest interiors are my favourite subjects, along with rocks with lichens & mosses, waterfalls... and of course, ancient trees. I felt as if I were living in this seaside forest while doing the painting (it might have had something to do with the size of the canvas). I chose the underpainting colour of medium-toned greyish purple, to support a sense of depth and distance through the forest.

Fred's field notes from this place are as follows: 30 June 2013 - Canada: New Brunswick: Saint John County: Butler Beach Trail, 6.8 km E Musquash. AIR TEMP: 13°C, foggy, drizzle, breezy. HABITAT: Young mixed seaside forest. 2013/119/e, Betula cordifolia (Mountain Paper Birch) (Plant). 1/common tree, specimen, photo. WAYPT/195, ca 20 cm DBH tree with draping bark. . . . forked just above breast-height, with Usnea and other lichens. Bark with moss & lichen sample taken, AKS photo. A bit N of here, Marigold the Dog chased a Red Squirrel Tamiascurus hudsonicus through the woods.

Aleta

Comments

  1. UnknownFebruary 26, 2016 at 10:38 AM

    Hello Aleta, once again, you have transported me to the location of your painting. WOW! It so realistic-looking; it's as if I'm standing there before that tree!
    Cheers,
    Naomi

    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