Artist on the Dumoine
"Artist on the Dumoine" (oil on birch panel 6 x 12 in) 3 August 2019 finds me on the river bank a few minutes' walk from this year's DRAW (Dumoine River Artists for Wilderness) camp. Bonnie McQuillan is sitting near a magnificent Red Pine, painting the a downstream scene on a small canvas. On her easel is a larger painting, which she'd been working on in the morning - and I am painting her. The water is clear but rich with tannins from being fed through leaf litter and peat over a vast forested watershed of 1,776 square kilometres drained by tributaries into the Dumoine. Its channel is so deep here that it soon descends from bright golden over cobbles to black. A bright sand bar and another of cobbles make brilliant streaks along the far bank, where an eddy makes the river flow back against itself. Mark and Phil are playing in the current, letting the strong flow in the centre convey them quickly past us to the right, about 200 metres down till their head