Blog

I never tire of painting the weather... this is the characteristic view from the east shore of Singleton Lake. I have painted it a few times before :>))

The northeasterly wind of the cold conveyor belt feeding into the approaching storm was still howling - so I remained in the lee of a tall stand of white pine trees. It was raining down white pine needles and seeds and several will stay mixed with the oil paint forever. The needles came down assembled in groups of five and there are indeed five letters in the word "white". Red pine needles come in clusters of three. Apparently trees can spell as well as lock carbon and help to purify the air.

This view is looking southwest across Lake Solitaire through a curtain of pines and thin white cedars. The cliff of Echo Rock is barely discernible on the extreme right side of the canvas.

The title is after the "Bamboo Curtain" which was the Cold War expression for the political demarcation between the Communist states of East Asia, particularly the People's Republic of China, and the capitalist and non-Communist states of the region. People in Asian Communist nations were said to be "behind the Bamboo Curtain." The term was derived from "Iron Curtain", a term used widely in Europe from the late 1940s to the early '90s to refer to that region's Communist boundaries. Being behind the "Pine Curtain" in Canada is a very good thing.

I had number #0610 "Wild Life" hung beside my studio easel. I wanted to see if I could still breath life into the subject matter on a much larger format. I froze my hands doing the original and that stopped me from over-working the plein air sketch... one of my favourites but still not quite the match of #523.

Sometimes the best place to paint is from the canoe - you are definitely en plein air... you can't even dream about capturing detail and the probability of biting insects (POB) is much lower than on terra firma. Life is good.

They say that you can't go back again... things change. They could be right. I revisited what used to be steep trek down to the path that lead to where you launched a canoe to access McCrae Lake. There had to be 100 cars along a paved road access, off-ramp. I can only imagine what the "wilderness" campsites where like now from just a decade ago. I hope they are still as clean as we left them but I have some sad doubts.

Sometimes the environment controls the success of a painting. Typically the weather forces one to work faster than your comfort zone would normally allow. Sometimes that is very good. Don't think too much!

Some paintings have to wait for that special person. Other paintings go home with the first people who see them. It is impossible to forecast which category a painting will fall in. A painting still in the studio has yet to meet the right set of eyes.

The first stroke is the deepest... the best opportunity to gt the colour, tone and location right. If you do, leave that stroke alone. Resist the urge to touch it again and to try to make it better. You will likely make it worse... I am just sayin'...

One never knows in advance when you pick up a brush and fresh canvas. Will you hit it out of the park or will you fan the breeze. The important thing is probably just to keep swinging. Even if you miss the ball, you will still learn something to help the next time you step up to the plate.

People tend to like and understand photographic realism... I get it. It is just more fun to paint impressionistically and not labour over each brush stroke and how the paint falls on the canvas. When you paint en plein air, you need to let the paint fly. It is fun and nothing stands between you and your subject.