HOME - ALETAKARSTAD.COM

RETURN TO ALETA'S HOME SITE, ALETAKARSTAD.COM

Comments

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

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

Fragile Inheritance Calendar 2025

Image
...featuring illustrations and text from our as yet unpublished book " Fragile Inheritance, a painter's ecology of glaciated North America."   We are really pleased with the quality, printed by CoBa Studios in our neighbouring town of Merrickville. The calendar is standard size, spiral-bound, and printed on high quality smooth paper which splendidly presents the glowing colour and crisp detail of my watercolours. The spacious calendar squares are marked with Canadian holidays and notes from our seasonal observations across several decades, to which you can compare your own sightings of the first dandelion or the last frog call - as well as quirky anniversaries of interest to nature lovers, like Rock-flipping Day, and Darwin's Birthday. The 13th month, January 2026, tells the story of the making of the book - our cross-Canada travels, how I painted in the field, and why the book, started in 1984, is even more important now, in the face of increasing climate change. He...
Read more