Karstad Biodiversity Paintings: adventures in the colour of Canada

La Grande Chute From the Bridge (oil on birch panel, 5 x 7 in.) 5 August 2018 found me painting from the bridge, looking at the west bank of the Dumoine River as it rushes down La Grande Chute, on the last painting day of the DRAW artists retreat. The day began in fog, and I was out early to see the river in a different light. I investigated the shore upstream of the bridge on the west side, where the rising sun was burning through the mist above the glassy surface of a slower part of the river as it passes a small treed island. No painting, just photos for a potential painting... Then I took some photos looking upstream from the bridge on the east side, where a majestic Cedar sweeps its branches over whitewater beginning its rush to the Chute... then turned to look downstream as the pearly light of early morning tinted the river and the sky in subtle pinks and blues - a subject more suited to a larger painting, and I had only a few small panels to choose from. Phil Chadwick ...

La Grande Chute Gorge (oil on birch panel, 4x4 in.) 4 August 2018 finds me looking down into the gorge, part way down La Grande Chute on the Dumoine Rive in Quebec. I have hiked the east side trail downriver with Jennifer, one of the DRAW retreat artists, until it ends at a lookout, just at the narrowest part of the gorge.  Here all of the leaping churning water of the Dumoine, frothing white and twisting golden like pulled taffy, plunges deep and black into the gorge. The cliffs on either side are swallowing the river - and far to my left, I see were it emerges, broad, blue, and gleaming in the sun.  I’m sitting on the springy trunk of a recently broken young Pine, the rest of which extends out over the chasm. The view I've chosen, straight down into the gorge, noisy with the Chute’s millions of watery voices, includes a gnarly dwarf cedar, perched on the brink just beyond a puffy mat of Cladonia lichen bristly with Pine needles.  Clinging to the ro...

"Dumoine Aspen With Lichen" (9 x 12 in.) 2 August 2018 found me painting Lobaria pulmonaria , the Lung Lichen, growing on the trunk of a tall Aspen near Robinson Lake on the Dumoine River, Quebec. A bird somewhere off in the dripping woods insistently cries “tree, tree, tree” or perhaps it’s a baby Robin begging “me, me, me”. The Lobaria caught my attention, being lime green in its wetness, and veiny, reticulated brown and White - a network of brown with white in the spaces. The Trembling Aspen is black-lumpy all the way up to its crown of little heart shaped leaves and the lower two- thirds of the trunk is striped with dark splits. Some of the lower lumps are velvety with fine mosses. The woods are solemn and still, savouring the rain and expecting more.  This morning’s clouds have lifted from the crest of the forest across the lake, and the sun and light breeze are gently drying the wet foliage that I’ve been stepping over and pushing through to set up ...