Karstad Biodiversity Paintings: adventures in the colour of Canada

oil on canvas 5 x 7 in.                                 $275 27 September finds me on the bank of a brook near Ellershouse, Nova Scotia, gazing across a dark pool formed as the brook turns at a massive wrinkled and water carved bedrock wall. The rock is a greenish grey metamorphic, stained rusty-pink in places, with four little "caves" along a bedding fault, which reflect ripples on their ceilings.  From the water to its forested crest, the nearly vertical wall is 15-20 metres high. I look straight up to Pines of half a century or more waving long arms of sunlit needles against the cobalt sky. The forest has crept half way down the rock face. Spruces, Maples and Pines perch on ledges and find roothold in crevices. To my right a large Maple with lichen-whitened bark leans over the pool to reflect its 'fluorescent' leaves from lime at the bottom to crimson at the top.  It is matched by a Red Ma...

26 September finds us parked along Highway 102 so that I can paint the blooming willowherb that Fred picked about 15 minutes ago where we'd stopped at the Highway 101 interchange to check a patch of tall Spartina grass which might have been  Phragmites.  We are now parked on the shoulder of Highway 102, just southeast of the Sackville River, at a real Phragmites stand that looks to be of the invasive kind. I decide that I must paint the willowherb right away, rather than waiting until we arrive at our next camp, because it may wilt. The flowers are larger and showier than those of Fireweed, to which it is closely related, and i remember that i'd had a difficult time painting Fireweed in 1984 because it wilted so easily.   Choosing the tip that gives me flowers in all stages, and popping it directly into the hole in an electronics bubble pack with a dribble of water, I'm very pleased to see the flowers which had begun to droop perking up noticeably, and so I begin to ...

25 September finds me in the Halifax Public Gardens with three participants of my plein air painting workshop. Shaded by a Robur Oak tree planted by King George and Queen Elizabeth in 1939, a statue of Ceres, goddess of grain stands poised with hand out as if she were once holding a sheaf of grain, and attracts my attention as her slight form is an understatement in all the diversity of shapes and colours in the garden. Diana and Flora complete the set of three statues which were bequeathed by Chief Justice Sir William young in 1887. It is a mild misty grey day with a few drops of rain that had us packing our paintings away temporarily in an attempt to shelter in the large Victorian bandstand, but its gate was locked. The afternoon is lightening somewhat and the sun comes out for a while, pleasing the wedding parties that have come here to have photos taken. Every time I notice a group of people it is a different wedding party, with brides maids in a different colour than the gr...

23 September finds us having new tires installed on both van and trailer at Miller Tirecraft in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. While we wait I sit on a pile of cement curbing at the back of the lot to paint the bridge to Halifax past a pile of big old tractor tires at the brink of a steep slope above more industrial park and the harbour. I can see vehicles crossing the bridge with their windsheilds twinkling in the sun. My eyes are shaded by a hat and everything is brightly backlit. The surface of the harbour glares brightly to the right of my view.

21 September finds us looking up into the crown of a 400 year old Hemlock tree in Kejimkujik National Park, Nova Scotia.  Lying on my back with my head propped against the railing of the boardwalk, this is the first time I've painted up into a tree. The top of the trunk fades into a blur of grey branches in the halo of soft sunlit needles against a blue sky. I am guessing that the tree may be 40-50m tall. Its branches are stout, curved and twisted more like an Oak than a Hemlock, Higher twigs are whispy with Usnea  lichen, moving with the breeze like downy feathers. Lower on the trunk the bark is 'painted' in patches and splashes with softly weathered grey-green crustose lichen. There is none of the frilly Lobaria lichen that festoons the trunks of some of the other trees. Most of the lower branches are broken, and a section of broken branch as thick as my leg hangs in crotch of another branch and sways in the breeze. A Blue Jay flies soundlessly overhead to one of the...

oil on canvas 5 x 7 in.                          $275 19 September finds us enjoying the panoramic view from the viewpoint on Nova Scotia Highway 358 that is locally named the "Blomidon Look-off".  The road climbs fairly steeply and without switchbacks, along the south east side of the backward-hooked Blomidon Penninsula jutting into the Minas Channel, and now we look over a flat patchwork of woods, fields, roads and buildings as evening darkens the landscape and the  moon rises, nearly full.  The nearest fields and farms are almost directly below us, then the patchwork of woods, fields, roads and buildings stretches out, all in miniature to the arm of the Bay, and in the distance the main Bay. On the near shore to the north, a Fundy-red low-tide meanders down to the Bay through a patch of marsh at the mouth of Pereaux Creek, which I can see by leaning over to see past the Alders growing up b...

15 September finds me admiring a lush meadow of autumn wildflowers and a Hawthorn bush that overhangs the east side of the brook  downstream from Bev's place near Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. This is a Bailey bridge of steel girder-style railings, and the thin asphalt paving is cracking over the diagonal boards of the roadbed. The brook is wide here, slow flowing as the high tide in the Annapolis River pushes back against it. It's as still as a mirror - only under the bridge can we see the water move. The forest on the west bank is mostly deciduous, the Ash,  Maple, Cherries, and Birch crowding down the bank as if to view their reflections.