Karstad Biodiversity Paintings: adventures in the colour of Canada

I was presented with the Robert Bateman Award for 2018 by the Canadian Wildlife Federation, at their AGM in Regina on 16 June. This was my acceptance speech, with the slides I showed to illustrate it: This is a picture of me, this morning, sitting in my hotel room, planning what I would say this evening - I looked up about the Robert Bateman Award, and it seems to be about inspiring people toward nature conservation, through Art. So I thought about INSPIRATION. When I was finishing High School, I chose my vocation -  I wanted a lifetime of learning, exploring nature, and being a naturalist.  I decided that I would look for a job - perhaps as an assistant or technician, and there might be opportunities to do biological illustration.  The CV I sent to Herpetology at the National Museum in Ottawa was so full of art that it was forwarded to the design and display department, and I became a museum illustrator. Then I married University of Toronto bio...

Forsyth Road Sunset (oil on canvas 5 x 8 in.)   $275 Sold 26 December, 2017 found me driving through Limerick  Forest, in search of a scene for my annual "Birthday painting". I had started east on Limerick Rd from County Rd 18, just south of Bishops Mills, and turned south onto Cooper Road, and then south on Forsythe Rd, driving slowly and looking into the snowy woods on both sides of the road, through the rolled-down windows. We are in the midst of a lengthy "Polar Vortex" and are grateful for the foot of snow that came to blanket the ground before the deep freeze arrived. I found my scene after turning around and driving back north past "The Pit" where a mini-van was loading up with rosy-cheeked boys and their sleds, just before sunset. Cresting a low hill, my eyes were met by a familiar sight - the wetland between this morraine and the one where the road takes a "Y", was flooded with late afternoon sunglow. I paused to take photos, wit...

River Otter Portrait (watercolour 8 x 5 in.)  Available as print I have always loved Otters. I love everything about them, but I have not been privileged to have close contact with them except as elusive neighbours of the Kemptville Creek Watershed in Grenville County, Ontario. At Mudpuppy Night in Oxford Mills we often find pairs of leaping prints with tail drag marks in the snow, and belly tracks where they've slid down the bank. We've followed their tracks to and from holes in the ice above the dam  - and once we found the gnawed shell of a Painted Turtle that they'd evidently been playing with on the icy bank below the dam. But then there was this one, found on 12 April of 2013, 2.8 km northeast of our place in Bishops Mills, on the shoulder of County Rd 18, where she had miscalculated the speed of a car. We brought the body home, took many photos of it as reference for a painting, as the eye was still fresh and bright, and then prepared it as a museum specime...

My art calendar for 2018 shares full pages of my illustrated nature journals for the first time - twelve pages selected from the years 1984-1998, when I painted and wrote in a horizontal, loose-leaf format. My journals speak for themselves, but the process is a labour of love. As I draw, paint, and describe nature, I pursue reality as if it were a vein of gold - if I depart from the details, I may lose the essence. That eye, that scale, that bract or petal, is unique to its time and place - and we become one, the observer and the observed. Spiral bound, and printed on smooth, heavy stock, this is a quality calendar, one that I hope you'll want to add to your library of art books after its months are finished on your wall. You can see all 12 months in the preview on its page at Lulu.com - and a 13th month as well, with my essay on illustrated nature journaling. Order the calendar online by clicking on this link for $19.95 plus taxes and shipping,  ....or contact me ...

Dumoine Partners (9 x 12 in. oil on birch panel) $750  3 August 2017 found me on the rocky riverbank of the Dumoine below the bridge at La Grande Chute, beside thundering whitewater in the company of three other painters, on the first full day of the art camp.  DRAW2017 (Dumoine River Art for Wilderness) was the first annual artists' retreat of the Ottawa Valley Chapter of Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society,  and I looked forward to four more days, relating to the spectacular Dumoine River, and enjoying the company of fellow artists. The others were up on the higher rocks just behind me, inspired by the tremendous energy of the spectacular first falls of the long, straight, natural chute, which I had painted last year . To reach my ledge, one has to step carefully on smooth, snakelike roots, through a kind of doorway between trees. Just to the right as you pass through, and facing the river, there is a small inuk of stacked rocks, and a carved wooden sign, sayin...

5 August 2017 found me painting on a mossy ledge about 30 metres downstream from the canoe landing at Red Pine Rapids, on the Dumoine River. Red Pine is a long series of five rapids coming out of Robinson Lake, where our CPAWS art camp pitched our base for 6 days. Behind me are White Cedars, and among the mosses are Blueberries, just finishing their blooming. A Pine and a Cedar share the rocky island that separates, like the bow of a canoe, the straight channel along the far bank, from the slower water on this side. I set up my umbrella for

Dumoine Interface (oil on canvas 14x18 in.) 4 August, 2017 found me at Red Pine Rapids, the south end of Robinson Lake on the Dumoine River, where Vic Dohar and I were taken by canoe in search of subjects to paint. Facing upstream from the landing spot, I was fascinated by the play of shapes in the rocks and water, along the shore. On 23 October, this painting will be part of a silent auction at the annual CPAWS gala , of the donated works of the  art camp participants.