The White Canoe

-

4 x 6 oil on canvas

12 September 2009

Canada: Quebec: Outaouais Region: Doran's dock, Lac St-Joseph, 2.1 km NNW Aumond. 31J/5, UTM 18TVG 304.3 480.4 46.48430N 75.90597W. TIME: 1515-1800. AIR TEMP: 22 ca, sunny, calm. HABITAT: steep forested shore of small, indirectly impounded lake. OBSERVER: Aleta Karstad Schueler, Adam Zieleman. 2008/227/-, visit paintings of the scene across the lake. Adam is joining me to paint, down the rickety steps from the yard to a deck at the base of the floating dock. We sit facing different directions -- me looking westward to the Maples glowing red against a green hillside across the water, and Adam interested in the looming ghost of the paper mill rising up a forested hillside like a cumulus cloud from another world -- this scene, bracketed by sky and its reflection and screened by the stark silhouette of branches.

I began my painting with a medium-dark dull purple underpainting to support the forest and provide a good contrast for glowing yellow-green shoreline and blushing Maples. A white canoe paddled into my scene, poising like a swan as it turned its bow this way. Cheryl's eldest daughter Julie joins us, to paint very tiny miniatures on wooden stretcher wedges.

At 18:15 Fred comes down and points out that there's no Purple Loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) visible here, where we collected 2008/176/b last year, from a "nearly submerged plant with Decodon-like corky rooting stems. " Springs of water flow out from the shore here, in diverse & elegant swirls of rusty algae. There's just a few fish, and the minnow trap left at the dock caught only a couple of small Lepomis macrochirus (Bluegill) through the day. We complete our paintings. One Gavia immer (Common Loon) and 1 female Mergus (Merganser) on the quiet flat lake.

At 19h00, Cheryl brings me back down here and teaches me paddling technique and sends me out in the Kayak. Ondatra zibethicus (Muskrat) swimming in the dusk around tree branches fallen against the shore. At 19h30 I'm back at the dock.

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

Sturgeon Chute, Upper Rapids (oil on canvas, 12 x 16 in.) Sold

-
Image
1 October finds me painting at the upstream rapids of Sturgeon Chute on the Wanapite River, 6.7 kilometres northwest of Hartley Bay. To get just the right angle on the rapids, screened by flaming leaves of an overhanging Red Maple, I'm standing on a narrow grassy ledge, the small of my back leaning against a cold wall of smooth granite, with the feet of my easel only a few centimetres from the edge. About two metres below, courses the fast deep water,
Read more

Cooper Marsh Late August

-
Image
  Cooper Marsh in Late August (oil on birch panel 8 x 10 in.) 28 August 2023 found me painting on the back deck of the Visitors Centre at the Cooper Marsh Conservation Area. It's a hot day, and I'm demonstrating plein air painting as part of a workshop hosted by the Raisin Region Conservation Authority and inspired by our mussels project with the River Institute.  It's a hot day, so we stayed in the building's shade rather than venturing out into the sunny marsh. Also, the deck offers a higher view across the marsh to the thin line of the pale blue St Lawrence and the deeper hazy blue of the north shore of New York State, visible between the Poplars and Willows. An Osprey calls loudly and insistently overhead. A Red Squirrel scolds chirrs every once in a while, in irritation that we are still here, and once a Bull Frog thrums unseen, from open water somewhere out there among the yellow-green Carex or the dark green Scirpus, this side of the strip of tall, pale-plumed Ph
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.  Unti
Read more