Karstad Biodiversity Paintings: adventures in the colour of Canada

oil on canvas 6 x 12 in.                                                                                                                  $450 30 October 2014  found us at the Sturgeon River, 16.3 km E Jellicoe,   Thunder Bay District, Ontario.   This is half a kilometre north of where the Energy East route crosses this rocky brownwater river. We'd turned off the Transcanada Hwy 11 along Camp 51 Road, and walked down to here, on the east bank just below an island. 

Oil on canvas 7 x 9 in.              $425 11 October 2014 found us 9.5 km east of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, approaching the north bank of the Moose Jaw River on foot. We forced a path through waist-high vegetation, downhill toward the riverbank. It seemed that everything was growing there, not mixed together, but in patches. Clumps of wild Asparagus, a band of American Licorice, Wolf Willow, and more. I wanted to pause and write descriptions of each change in vegetation

16 October 2014  found me astonished at the broad swath of cattail marsh that is Pipestone Creek, hemmed in by its forested valley wall, southwest of Broadview, Saskatchewan. The high sharp line of the flat prairie outside of this valley world is visible on the horizon though a gap in the trees. We are a little over a kilometre upstream of where the Transcanada pipeline crosses the Pipestone. We are past the places where we have the pipeline route mapped - so today we navigated by dead reckoning and were pleased to find signs for six parallel pipelines as they descend into the wide Pipestone valley, 17 kilometres southwest of

20 October 2014  found me painting in late afternoon sunshine on the north bank of the Assiniboine River at Long Plain First Nations Reserve, southwest of Edwin, Manitoba. I sit on a rock amidst short grassy  Carex , about 2 metres above the current water level, my feet making prints in the damp mud growing with scrambling Knotweed, at the edge of a small stand of reed-like Sandbar Willow.

18 October 2014  found me painting a bend in the Assiniboine River 5 km south of Miniota, Manitoba, 7.5km downstream of the planned Energy East pipeline crossing.  A Bald Eagle flies across the river and I paint it into the scene where it lands to sit briefly, high in one of the tall Ash trees that reach their split, scarred trunks through the tangle of the riverine forest on the far bank.

24 October 2014  finds me clambering down the steep embankment from Highway 17 beside the bridge over the Eagle River, a little over two kilometres north of the town of Eagle River, Ontario.  This is a broad, clay-bed river with boulders scattered along its edges and also emerging from the flat yellow-grassed clay and gravel shores.  A tall crest of Pines and Spruces reflects darkly from the far shore. I am searching for a scene.   The soft wet sandy shore looks like a highway for wildlife. Deer tracks predominate, large and small cloven hoof prints - added to them are fox mink and Racoon, duck and Heron. The water is not quite clear, and olive brown.  An overcast day with a light breeze that one would call quiet if it weren't for highway noise.  As I study the water to determine which way

26 December 2014  found me out painting on my birthday, on the east shore of the Rideau River at  Gideon Adams Park, 3.3 kilometres south of Osgoode, Ontario. This spot is a little over 1.5 kilometres downstream from where the Energy East pipeline route crosses the Rideau River. Having chosen my scene from the vantage point of a small boulder beside the boat launch ramp, I sat with my canvas on my knees and my boots in the sun-melted black muck. Its surface was covered with a felt of bleached and drifted Star Duckweed sprinkled with tiny white snail shells. To my right rose a winter-bleached screen of Narrow-leaved Cattails, and to my right bulged a shape rather like my boulder, but Fred identified it as a hump of old foam rubber with grass growing through it.  Fred moved along the shore as I scrubbed on the burnt sienna underpainting, collecting a "recycling bag" of the kind of litter humans leave, as well as carefully gathering handfuls of the most shell-rich d...

31 October 2014  found me watching rhythms in the rushing water of Aidie Creek at Highway 11, 9.5 km north north-west of Englehart. The air was calm and new snow clung to branches, whitening the leaf litter and melting on the rocks. In May of 2002 Fred and I stopped briefly here, taking note of the lovely rapids, but since we were hurrying up to cover our Cochrane area study site for the James Bay Expedition it was a short visit, with a shelly drift sample and photos of the low stepped falls. This time again our stop was brief, as we were headed south along Highway 11 to a meeting of the Ontario Rivers Alliance in North Bay. We pulled into the entrance to the picnic area just upstream of the Highway 11 bridge, and toured the extensive network of laneways among the rocks and trees, to find a spot to park near the river. We passed a lovely natural arrangement of Virgin's Bower ( Clematis virginiana ) sporting its ivory puff-balls among the

8 October 2014  finds me gazing at the castellate bluffs of eroded loess along the South Saskatchewan River upstream of Alberta Hwy 41, west of Burstall Saskatchewan. We could see that there were interesting bluffs as we gradually descended along the highway toward the bridge, but here at river level, they are much more impressive - and the river itself is clear and green, ruffled by the wind into wavelets that weave green and blue into a new intensity of colour that even in a narrow strip, balances the strange bold shapes and stark contrasts of the wind-carved bluffs. We drove from the bridge to a kilometre-long area of campsites to a broad rutted area at the river that serves as a boat-launch. The Transcanada Pipeline crosses the South Saskatchewan River 8.2 km upstream of here. I settle on a view of castle-like formations directly across the river and perch my folding chair on a low grassy bank just back from the cobbly shore, near a seepage that leaves the pebbles crusty wi...

7 October 2014  finds me sitting behind the guardrail in a camp chair, at the bridge over the Red Deer River, 3 kilometres northwest of Bindloss, Alberta. We came here past that village, a compact island of treed buildings in an oceanic expanse of prairie. There at the top of the bluffs, the prairie appears vast and slightly rolling, hiding its creeks and rivers in the creases of the landscape. Coming to the bridge we find the Red Deer River again, and I'm taken by the way the evening sun guilds the edges of the distant bluffs that wall this valley.

4 October 2014  finds me on a long, wood-plank bridge over the Red Deer River, 16.3 kilometres upstream of the Transcanada Pipeline crossing. The bridge is just north of a tiny place named Buffalo, near a smallish oil drilling operation, a couple of hours north of Medicine Hat, Alberta.  I am, again, enjoying sandbars, looking downriver with the prairie wind and the afternoon sun both at my back. I'm

20 September 2014  finds me looking over the Athabasca River from the "highload bypass" of the Thickwood exit from Highway 63 in Fort McMurray, Alberta.  We checked this site out yesterday evening at dusk, our first day in Fort McMurray, and found a good parking spot for me to paint from against the guardrail on the broad plateau of the ramp that curves high above the Sandbar Willows which line the river.

21 September 2014  finds me sitting against a towering cement pier, beneath what's been called the "the bridge to nowhere" south of Fort MacKay, Alberta, painting the long dark shadow of the bridge over the river flats. Just beyond the horizon, north, south, east, and west, are big tar sands operations. As each vehicle comes onto or drives off of this end of the bridge, there's a loud banging clatter. This din is repeated

9 September 2014  finds me in the bow of Scott Haig's canoe, exploring the perimeter of a small island in the Mattawa River, east of North Bay, Ontario. Scott has brought us through the eastern tip of the deep, spring-fed Trout Lake, to the Trans Canada Pipeline crossing at "The Narrows" of the Mattawa, where it flows into Turtle Lake.   The island is pictureque - a pyramid of rock and trees, backlit by the afternoon sun. Paddling over to visit it, we find Leatherleaf and Sweetgale, leaning out to their reflections from lichen patterned rocks. Golden green mosses flow down over the shoulders of the granite rocks at the feet of tall slim White Pines and Cedars. As we paddle along the shaded north east side of the island, I notice open mussel shells glimmering submerged among the rocks, some wedged between stones and some in deeper water.

Salmon River Cloudscape (oil on canvas 5 x 7 in.)  $310 15 August 2014 found me perched on a log at the waters edge below the steep forested bank of the Salmon River, 7 km southwest of Chipman, New Brunswick. I was enchanted by the sky reflection, and tried to capture it quickly on a small canvas, but the clouds moved rapidly, changing the complexion of the scene dramatically during the time it took me to apply my underpainting and rough in the far bank. First the sky filled with bright fluffy clouds,

21 August 2014  finds us at dusk looking across a marsh on Long Creek just above its confluence with the Canaan River, 13 km northeast of Cambridge Narrows, New Brunswick.  I have found my scene for a Fragile Crossings painting, just before the road enters the covered, wooden "Starkey's Bridge". We are looking out over soft green flats of what is apparently Wild Rice.

7 August  finds me painting from the back deck of a house overlooking the lovely Tobique River on "Reeds Island" near Plaster Rock, New Brunswick. I glance down to see our friend Lee's little red SUV push its way down through the long meadow grass below the house on a riverbank expedition with Fred to look for clams. They are following the presently invisible road to where his grandfather used to ford the river in the days when they used to cut hay on

4 August 2014  finds me looking out at the Rigaud River, from between two big old Willows at least 70 cm in diameter, with heavily ridged corky bark and moss-streaked bases. They are rooted in a jumble of granite rocks strewn with sticks and bark drifted there in spring floods. The left one has a felt of tiny rootlets over rock that it uses for feeding when the water is high.The right one elbows out near its base, leaning against a young Elm. These are not the native Black Willow, as their leaves

26 July 2014 finds me sitting on my painting caddy on the low grassy bank of the Jock River at the Trans Canada Pipeline crossing, south of the town of Richmond, Ontario. The setting sun glows through the boughs of an Ash tree across the river from me, and as I paint, the sky which this afternoon has been bright and cloudless but more white than blue, becomes more and more interesting now, with a few lavender clouds rising up from the west and drifting like scarves across the sun. Yesterday in Ottawa I first noticed the heavy haze smelling faintly of  woodsmoke which must be from forest fires far to the west and the south. On our hike in from Dobson Lane we heard a Gray Tree Frog call, and saw two adult Leopard Frogs along the grassy ATV-rutted track. Now at the river as I settle down to paint we hear the voices of three kinds of Ranid   frogs calling from where they are hidden along the water's edge - the "jugaroom" of a Bull Frog, a few banjo-string notes from hi...

3 June 2014  found us just downstream of where the Trans Canada Pipeline crosses the Madawaska River, starting a painting of the steep north shore with its rocky outcrops and White Pines tossing their branches against the sky. The buried pipeline goes steeply down into the river from the far shore just to the left of this scene and then comes up through the meadow-like rightofway beside me. We'd come in from Stewartville Road along the south shore of the river, and upstream of the pipeline right-of-way, we came through mixed woods to a sunny grove of large Aspen trees,