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Imagine that you are in Algonquin paddling on a quiet lake with your paint box looking for something to paint in the spring of 1913. You hear the roar of a jet plane as it taxis for lift off – a real problem in 1913! What do you decide to paint? Some decisions are easy - especially if you are Tom Thomson.

I started doing presentations about the art and science of Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven in the mid 1980s. I started with overhead slides and quickly embraced PowerPoint (PPT) - a fine piece of software well ahead of its time. I did not keep count but the number of presentations certainly number in the hundreds. That mountain of material grew into a book that nobody wanted.

What I propose to do now is to publish portions of that book, a blog at a time. The subject matter fits nicely into "Naturally Curious". In a couple of years of Science Tuesdays, also now known as Naturally Curious Tuesdays, the result will be an on-line book of sorts. The information that I have spent a lifetime gathering and writing about will not be totally lost.

Liana Voia from Paris, France reached out for an interview with a plein air artist. The connection came like lightning out of the blue with some guidance from the International Plein Air Painters. This is what Liana put together from our candid conversation. It is intended to be an honest observation of art, science and the natural world that we need to protect. Art is a way of life and one must live that with integrity and lots of humour too.

The paddle into this painting is north from Restoule through Stormy Lake and a portage into Bass Lake... I would like to do that one more time:>)

Looking west from Schomberg in December 1989 at a bank of stratocumulus. The distant horizon just gets lost in the clouds!

Stratocumulus clouds are intrinsically linked to the earth. Interchanges of heat and moisture and momentum between the atmosphere and the soil are further complicated by terrain induced upslope and downslope effects. Heating from the sun over a variable surface further complicates the lowly stratocumulus clouds. One meteorologist I know referred to stratocumulus as garbage cloud unable to grasp the information available from the various cloud shapes. In fact there is much to be learned from observing this lowly but beautiful cloud. One just needs to keep an inquiring mind open to all of the possibilities.

There were no housing developments in 1989.

Oils on stretched canvas - 10x12 - April 11th, 1990

Give me an hour and I could explain the conveyor belt conceptual model to you.. It explains a lot of what you see in the various ups and downs of the clouds. You could see clouds from both sides now...

I am always thinking about the science of the scene when I paint. The thoughts do not prevent me from getting into the zone and it keeps the experience and memories very interesting... that's life! (sounds like a Sinatra song)

There do not seem to be as many classes in oils anymore - and even fewer in plein air. There are exceptions though. Plein air appears to be exploding in the US but that could be just from the selective material that I read. I am admittedly biased.

Sunset skies don't last long... and then it is dark...

The inspiration for each painting is probably the most important ingredient... some artists spend there time searching for that special scene. Time is tight so typically I let the inspiration and the scene find me. You never know what might happen.

The weather encourages a plein air painter to work fast - don't even look for the nigglely details. The Devil may in the details but the Angel can be found in the bigger picture...Paint on... and use lots of it.

The wind can change everything. Without the wind the freezing temperatures and the sun on my back, made for a nearly perfect plein air session - the day after my 55th birthday. I guess this was my Freedom 55. There were no biting insects and the sounds of spring philled the air. I did hear a ruffed grouse drumming. I got absorbed into the scene. I had paddled Jones Creek a lot as a kid.

I set up in the middle of a thicket :>))

I keep a great storehouse of stories behind my art. Even after only eight years, some of these memories are lost only to be rekindled by a few words and pictures recorded from that day. These memories explain why I paint....

Every canvas starts off blank... one never knows how it will turn out but you always hope for the best. In any event, it is a great memory in oils...

When I head out for a day of painting, I have no real idea just where I am going. I try not to spend too much time travelling - I would rather be painting. The subject is vital for the success of any art but I think the practice and the person behind the brush is more important.

Hopefully you do not need to travel too far to find inspiration. The time spent walking is time taken away from playing with the paint.

In plein air art... always paint the things that are changing first. The trees and terrain are always going to be there for you but the clouds and lighting can change in a heart beat.

The weather was mild enough of February 4th, 2016 to paint on the shoreline of Jim Day Rapids. The water levels had gone down over the winter... there was still a long way to go to reach those of the spring melt.

This male blue bird kept a watchful eye on me as I painted. The seemingly cheerful chatter between the pair of blue birds filled the February silence. Every plein air day brings another experience and memory.

I tried my new snow shoes out to paint en plein air. With more than 50 centimetres of snow on the ground, it was the only way to get around. It wasn't overly cold at minus 9 Celsius but the paint still got stiff.

The radar gave a good overview of where these white out conditions were coming from. These Lake Ontario snowsqualls rarely get as far north as Singleton Lake.

Necessity is the mother of invention. The steering wheel easel comes in very handy when the elements are just to nasty to get the paint to stick the the surface.

In February, the mild days are more than comfortable enough to start plein air painting again... there are no biting insects. You do have to be very careful about the ice conditions - especially for an El Nino year.

This is painting number 1713... after retirement from meteorology, I paint between 100 and 200 paintings a year so the numbers are steadily increasing. This 8x10 inch panel flowed like I hoped it might.

Tom Thomson painted from this same location in July 1914. He had spent the early summer at the Go Home Bay cottage of his patron Dr. James MacCallum. In a July 8th letter to Fred Varley, Tom wrote "This place is getting too much like north Rosedale to suit me — all birthday cakes and water ice etc. Will be over in Algonquin Park from about a week from today-couldn’t you and Mrs. Varley come up and camp for a month or two." Tom painted his "Parry Sound Harbour" in the week after he left Go Home Bay, on his way back top Algonquin.

For me life is all about learning... curiosity might have killed the cat but for me, it makes everyday events somewhat exciting. Perhaps I have a low thrill threshold. Perhaps medical science can fix that but I won't let them.

This painting is an attempt to establish my style... I write about it in my Niume post. There is nothing really special or unique about using this particular painting to illustrate my style. It was simply the next one in my list to publish. Artists are continually in search of who they are. They are never sure. Even when they get there, they may still not be sure. I am not sure either but I am still on my artistic journey to find out.

As one of the the founding members and CEO of The Group of One, solitary painting has evolved into a unique style over the years. With no one else nearby, there is no one to emulate. I paint like me, myself and eye. Style is certainly a product of the paint surface, the media, the brush selection, the colour palette, the painting environment and certainly the subject matter. However, there is also the wild card of personality that creeps into the art to make it truly unique. It is great to admire the style and art of others but more important to be happy with your own uniqueness no matter how flawed that might be.

Nothing can quite replace the experience of out standing in the center of a forest... if you are in the zone, the tree get into the paint and pigment....

Spring is an excellent time to paint outside... the rush and roar of the water drowns out all sounds and it is easier to get into the right head space and zone out.

I was standing on the edge of a waterfall. The sound of the cataract muffled everything else and I tried to get into the zone...

When painting en plein air, start with the things that are changing quickly or even moving out of the scene. In this case, the clouds were streaking away to the northeast with the warm conveyor belt.

The midday light tends to be plat - no shadows. Sometimes though the scene itself can be all that you need in whatever lighting. A friend of mine said "You have liberated the spirit of the scene. Grand work." That's why I paint...

Spring is a favourite time to paint en plein air. The wildlife are out and active. The sounds of spring carry long distances in the stable atmosphere. The drumming of roughed grouse does not have to compete with the drone of mosquitoes and other biting insects. Life is good.

Lawrence Nickle was a fine friend and an excellent artist. I have certainly missed those spring-time paint outs in the western sections of Algonquin Park and around Burk's Falls.

The weather is a constant source of inspiration... it is always changing. The precipitation, wind and clouds are all you really need to understand what the atmosphere is doing in three and even four dimensions - including time.
This is a Peterson Blue Bird house that I built... the blue birds have used it every year.

I like to paint with the snow on the ground. The threat of ticks and other biting insects is minimal. We never used to have ticks but now they are everywhere. The cat is a tick-magnet.

I enjoyed those clear and cold days of winter.. no biting insects or ticks. My ... how the weather has changed! The El Nino is certainly a factor but the integral of weather is climate and both have changed.

The composition is a bit unusual but I think that it worked... it was a beautiful April day in late winter 2015.

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.

When doing plein air painting, always start with the subject material that is going to change or even go away. The stationary stuff can wait as long as you allow for those subject elements.

The Frontenac Arch Biosphere is a special place. I was lucky enough to grow up in it. There is always something interesting to find - and typically they are right in from of you...

My style has evolved with plein air. I see more colours and I make decisions faster. I have found that the style of the painting is more driven by the speed of evolution of the subject, the texture and tooth of the surface and my palette... every creation is a bit different. Art is not created in a factory.

I could be a great hermit... simply staying home and painting whatever comes across the horizon. There is always something interesting to record in oil.

Every canvas is a "blank canvas" - so to speak. One never knows how it will end up. Hopefully it will be your next favourite piece of art.

The colours of a plein air painting at least have the chance to be accurate...this was painted starting 2 pm on Tuesday August 5th, 2014 - Tom Thomson's birthday (1877) - 127 years ago plus or minus.... Painting Place the front yard looking northwest from N44.52281 W76.10492

The names for the paintings normally come to me while I am painting. My mind may wander/wonder and the reason for the painting and the name fuse. That was certainly the case with "Multicell Thunderstorms".
The family cat was becoming more like my former painting partner, the wonderful Maine Coon Cat. She still whines a lot and doesn't use her "big-cat" voice enough. Notice that I do not paint with my glasses on... I left them on the red table. I just need glasses to read :>))

Plein air painting forces an artist to forget the details. Include only the important stuff - shapes and colours. The other details do not matter anyway. Use a bigger brush and lots of paint :>))

Plein air painting forces an artist to forget the details. Include only the important stuff - shapes and colours. The other details do not matter anyway. Use a bigger brush and lots of paint :>))

I like the early more light the best... it is cleaner. There is a meteorological reason for that :>))

I tapped the closer of the two sugar maples this past spring... the sap was very sweet and tasted especially excellent.

I struggle with finding the balance between detail and merely the suggestion of detail. If you stay with a big brush, the coarseness of the hog's hair, solves that problem for you. To quote the Ice Queen, you just have to "let it go..ooooo..oooo".

People are like clouds - they don't pose for you while you attempt to do their portrait. To paint people and clouds in a plein air setting is very unusual for me but one that the participants wanted me to do... so I did!

It really doesn't take that much practice to better understand what the cloud shapes and patterns reveal... everyday, the sky is a book waiting to be read.

I could become a hermit... everything I need is at the lake... Most times when I leave the lake, I come home grumpy from the push and shove of city traffic or the grocery store with a big bill to pay in my pocket.

The conceptual model of an inactive cold front really needs to be improved - something that I had wanted to get done before I retired. The notes to do so are still on file in Boulder, Colorado but it might never happen...

I mix most of my own "greens". The subtle differences in shade don't readily come out of a tube while my arsenal which is very heavy to the blue spectrum, allows me to capture strange shades of green. It's not easy being green... at least according to Kermit.

Cumulus are positively buoyant ... happy clouds but maybe a bit unstable. Meteorological humour may not be good enough for the late show.

I usually have no idea what I will paint when I head out the door. I try not to wonder, wander along for too long as even the most subtle scene can be something to record and cherish - a memory.

The weather always provides something interesting to record... and to understand better than you did when you started...

One can never predict what piece of art might connect with a viewer. I give a lot of effort to each work but sometimes I am very surprised which one will make that real connection.

Typically virga is comprised of larger ice crystals or snow flakes that have accreted to a large size and start their fall at one meter per second toward the ground. The smaller of these flakes start to either melt or sublimate as they fall into warmer temperatures. If they melt into tiny water droplets, they occupy less of the volume of the air and become less visible to the eye. If they sublimate directly into water vapour, these tiny flakes simply vanish. Should the tiny water droplets collide and grow into larger droplets of rain, they fall faster at speeds up to ten metres per second or so. These larger and faster rain drops also occupy less space per volume of air.

The same processes occur to the larger snow flakes leaving the cloud base but it take more time to exchange the energy required for the change of states. This delay makes for interesting shapes in the wispy tails of cloud spiraling earth bound.

Regardless which process dominates, the dark virga comprised of snow flakes leaving the cloud base simply disappear before they get to the ground. Sometimes some of the larger rain drops actually do make it to the ground and you might be struck by a large, convective rain drop out of the blue. In this case, the virga is no longer "virga" but has evolved into a shower.

These clouds are frontlit, so you know where the sun must be even if it is not in the painting :>))

Painting with good people is always inspirational! We are all in this together and we each have something to teach and to learn. Life is good!

The sky is always there for inspiration...

I was on the prowl for more places to paint and it was a beautiful spring day!

Inspiration most often comes from outside your own door. Mark Twain penned something like "write what you know about". Maybe it is best to also "paint what you know about".

When is a painting done? You can stroke a painting to death with kindness ... striving to make it better. Am I done? Ragged Falls has given me four paintings... Tom Thomson likely fished the pool at the bottom of this falls although the photo or evidence to prove it doesn't exist like it does for Tea Lake Dam. I used a bit of cobalt blue to paint Tom's canoe into the top of Ragged Falls - the same colour Tom used to mix the proper colour for his canoe. Tom's dove gray canoe wasn't really in the scene but it likely was at one time and should have been. In any event, it is Artistic Licence, a "piece of paper that I carry at all times. I wonder if I had turned around really fast, whether I might have caught a glimpse of Tom flicking a spinner bait into the deeper eddies of the pool. Maybe a few more strokes... but not many!

The morning is the best time to paint... the world is just waking up. These sights and sounds are lost later in the day. On a good plein air day, these subtle experiences manage to find their way into the paint.

The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is right now... We have planted lots of trees in or lives and they all bring back great memories.

I normally shy away from architectural, man-made things - except if they are really old and can tell a modern story... the people who built this land knew how to work.

For me, inspiration begins with nature - it is only natural. The human world is too transient. This channel of water probably looked like this 1000 years ogo or even when the Pyramids were still an architectural drawing.

I painted some faces - a cast of characters into the cascade of water. If you find one don't expect to be able to point it out to others. It is very much like finding figures in clouds. Not everyone see the same things. Just like the tumbling water and clouds, we are all different and see things differently. I will point one or two out to get you started. They are not all oriented the same way. I had fun... and that is the main thing about art. Do you see the mustached menace to the right of the old man? There are many more to find and maybe some I didn't intend.

I am reminded of the Gordon Lightfoot song... "Ode to Big Blue". This song tells the legend of a great whale who lost his whole family to hunters, but died a natural death. It also makes a statement about whaling: "They've been taken by the men for the money they can spend; and the killing never ends, it just goes on." Some things have not changed enough since 1972. Linda and I watched him preform this song at Queens in 1972. Gordon started to talk about the threat to the whale population but some jerk from the stands screamed "just sing". Gordon immediately complied. Sad...

“The egg doesn’t fall very far from the tree...” I had to write this somewhere. Our daughter was looking for the expression that the nut doesn't fall very far from the tree but I like this version better!

I like to paint old things before they are gone. Sometimes only the painting remains to show what was once a fine structure. Nostalgic? You bet.

I try to be very prudent on what I call a plein air painting. For me, I allow just a few brush strokes - maybe some highlights or low lights and the signing of my name in the studio. Any more than that and I call the painting a "studio" work. Any more than that tends to kill the spontaneity of the natural, outside inspiration anyway - so it is best left alone.

This is another of those small panels with an abundance of tooth. Any detail has to be included on top of a thick layer of paint. These toothy panels are a lot of fun!

The biting bugs were still not quite out but the wind was way to strong for plein air. Any canvas would have become a sail. The extremely rough tooth of the panel really grabbed the paint.

Plein air painting encourages the observation of the real colours without the distraction of details... who needs photos?

Dandelions are a part of spring. Let them live. They are the first source of nourishment for the bees and the birds... I found one empty dandelion blossom completely stripped of its seeds. Something enjoyed a fresh meal after a long winter.

Spring is a great time to paint en plein air until the biting insects come out. Even my avian air force is unable to stop the hoard.

I just drew the geese in with my brush - no sketch. I positioned them in the upper right to accentuate the feeling that they were escaping "out of Dodge" - which they were.

I like painting plein air in the spring before the biting insects emerge in force. My Avian Air Force of insect eating birds does a great job but can't eat them all.

This is the third in the series of small skyscapes looking over the west basin of Singleton Lake. They were fun. I plan to do more.

The high horizon is a contradiction in this little painting. It is really a skyscape that focuses on the shaping of the cloud at a stable interface in the atmosphere. The cloud was the first thing that I painted...

Another toothy panel with a lot of paint... fun! There was still some ice in the west basin of the lake.

The tooth of this panel was really aggressive in grabbing the oils... you can still see the "weave" of the panel under the thick paint.

The coarse panel had a lot of tooth which is ideal if you have a lot of paint to use... skyscapes are fun... and the sky really did look like this but only flr a fleeting moment.

I used a lot of paint and had an equal amount of fun. There is no snow or ice in this painting - the first of the 2015 plein air season.

I enjoy reading the tracks left in the snow. They tell a story - who, why, where ... and many more questions that I can't always answer.

After clearing a portion of the land of its thick deciduous forest, the pioneers would have had to actually start to grow food. The paddocks were a necessity to keep whatever animals they had, safe and sound. They would not have had to worry about dieting.

I still have a couple of more late winter paintings to publish... I had to paint this in the studio because of the bitter late winter weather. I also am cautious about staring into the sun for too long. The horses in the image would have stayed in this paddock.

I draw with the brush... I try to stay loose as I create the composition. Nature is not always perfect and needs to be moved around a bit.

A spring storm was on the way... and the cold easterly conveyor belt feeding into the approaching storm was indeed chilly.

This is from April 15th, 2015 - just a few days ago. Spring has arrived and nature is in a hurry to get started after the long winter. There is something special about standing out in a swamp... no biting insects yet...

A mated pair of Canada geese on the shores of Singleton Lake, March 2015... sketched with the brush and refined with the thicker oils...

There is something special about a spring sunrise... everything comes alive. Personally I really enjoyed the winter - a real Canadian winter - but spring is nice too!

Same view-two artists- more than two paintings ... everyone sees things a bit differently and that is good.

Sometimes the cheapest solution is not the best. Let's hope that the school bus can always make that sharp, downhill turn.

When I first starting to present satellite meteorology at Training Branch for Environment Canada, I wanted to create the acronym for a term that I knew would be used a lot. "DZ" for the much longer term "deformation zone" was not allowed. I was not able to explain to the power that be how important this concept was or should be. The concepts are still struggling to be embraced by meteorologists bombarded by computer simulations of the atmosphere...

Jim Day Rapids is on an historic waterway that connects the Rideau and the lakes around Delta to the St Lawrence. It was considered for a canal system prior to selecting the Rideau route. It was felt that the Gananonque to Kingston portion of the St Lawrence River was too vulnerable to attack from our neighbours to the south - those were different times.

Clouds are not as complicated as you might think. They are really just tracers for the atmospheric motions and the atmosphere is just another fluid. When you have some understanding of how a fluid moves then you are ready to understand clouds.

There was still a lot of ice just two weeks ago, Spring has come in like a tidal wave. The lake levels have surged up almost three feet. That is a lot of water! Almost all of the migrants have returned. We are just waiting for the spring peepers now.

There is generally a delay of a couple of weeks between painting and posting the art. It takes a while for the thick layers of paint to dry before I can confidently move the painting around to photograph. The low water levels that I painted a couple of weeks ago are now submerged in the spring flood.

There is art ... and science everywhere we look. Curiosity may have killed the cat but it is the life blood of artists and scientists...

1552 is the chronological number of my painting... It was indeed a beautiful day to paint outside. The landscape was full of the sounds of spring although it looked very much like winter!

This is an attempt to explain some of the very interesting cloud formations that tell the daily story of the weather... I hope you enjoy it...

It was a warm and sunny day. The snow did not melt because the air mass was dry. The snow could only leave the pack through sublimation which would immediately cool the snow pack. The rains of late last week would melt the snow away.

Last Wednesday was a beautiful day... outstanding on the ice in front of the marsh next door..

Yes... there is a double entendre in the title. It came to me while painting and I just couldn't leave it unspoken. My questionable humour branches out on the strangest of tangents. This really was a dark day with fog, mist and snow under a thick layer of cloud. The paint was applied to the canvas as thick as the clouds. This picture shows the painting under way in the studio - it was too wet to paint outside.

This is a small and slippery surface with almost no tooth to grab the oils. One virtually lays the oil on the panel. I drew... and painted solely with the brush and let the colour and shapes of the pools of paint define the subject. It was fun...

The paint is very thick on this small panel... I wanted to play with colour and shapes. There was only one chance to lay in the correct colour without making "mud". It was fun!

I much prefer to paint outside on location with nothing between my eyes and my inspiration. The colours are more true and honest with the scientific interpretation of the camera taking a 3D scene and converting it to a 2D plane. The elements also encourage one not to dawdle on the details - get the shapes and colour right and the inspiration will magically come with them on to the canvas. Some days the elements are enough to force me into the studio...

These sealed and gessoed panels have next to no tooth. That makes them ideal for allowing the oil paints to show their texture and vibrancy of colour.

I had walked out to pick my subject matter but the cold temperatures drove me into the studio. This is how I start to block in my painting - fun and exciting. Each canvas is a blank page and one never knows just where it will lead.

I used a lot of paint on this 5x7 slippery surface. There is no tooth to a heavily sealed and gessoed panel so the only way is to apply thicker oils on thick and do not let the hog hairs of the brush root around in the underlying oil looking for truffles.

The sky is what first taught me about deformation zones and patterns in the clouds. The designs are far from chaotic and much more like a ballet between balanced meteorological processes. Art and weather can be a beautiful thing. The image is the rough lay-in of the painting that would evolve.

This is the way I start off a painting - I draw with a brush and a dark wash to find the scene within the seen. I try to do all of the reconstruction of nature at this stage. Nature may be perfect but it can be adjusted to better fit the canvas.

It would have been so much safer and easier to have the bridge built where it was in 1910...

The second painting in the Latimer Bridge Trilogy :>)) The photo is of the old wooden bridge that crossed Lyndhurst Creek. The residents bitterly complained about moving the bridge downstream to a slightly shorter span back in 1910. I guess that controversy is what delayed the bridge replacement until 1913. Some things don't change :>))

The second painting in the Latimer Bridge Trilogy :>))

Red Horse Lake Road is the only modern, overland way into our place. The best way to reach us over the centuries has always been by water - specifically by canoe. Those ancient travelers with a good imagination, invented stories to remember their routes through the maze and amazing landmarks. Someone probably fabricated the story about the naming of Red Horse Lake. It is a good story and the lasting image is the outline of the steed standing up to its belly in the deep water of the lake - apparently browsing on the Red Cedars. I will paint this rock some day...

The best Plein Air Painting Weather for 2015 has arrived. This particular day was cold but that was a week ago or more now...

This is the rough in for Cedar Shadows... on burnt sienna oil tinted panel.

I intended this painting to have some rhythm like the 14x11 inch plein air painting on which it was based.

This was a lot of fun! One of those paintings that I reserved for those cold wind chill days in front of the wood stove. This was the first day.

I love the smell of red cedar. That is why people use this special wood to line their drawers. The fragrance is fresh, clean and ancient. There is no need to cut a living tree but when I happen the clean up a dead red cedar, the chain saw is dulled pretty quickly. I have been told that the tree draws minerals upward into the wood. Maybe it is the iron that makes the heart wood red?

I tinted this canvas with ultramarine blue instead of my traditional burnt sienna. I think it is important to change things up and to keep experimenting. One never knows where the experiment will lead. Every painting starts off as a raw piece of canvas...

This is a very recent painting on a small, very slippery surface. The paint was laid on very thick. The important thing for me were the colours and the shapes of the clouds along the approaching cold front. It was fun! If you look carefully, I think you can see the wolf howling in the clouds!

The bull's eye shows where the scene originated. The paint is really thick on this painting. Sometimes I think it is best to let your oils get old on your palette.

It was a windy day to be canoeing. The turbulent stratocumulus clouds where churning in from the northwest. Time lapse would have really revealed all of the twisting and turning going on in the sky. I did my best with the brush. The virga are the darker streaks in the lower right that drift downward from the convective cloud base.

The human eye can distinguish 2.4 million colours. I am not making that up! The CIE or “Commission internationale de l'éclairage”, established the "CIE 1931 XYZ color space" in 1931. These colours can be plotted and the human eye can differentiate between 2.38 million different colours. A few hundred thousands of these colours would be considered grey - way more than fifty! I choose to use a lot of colour in this painting. Why not when there are more than two million to choose from.

Art is science and science is most definitely an art. The important characteristic is to be continually interested in and amazed by the word around you...

The clouds are the fingerprints for the meteorological forces that create them. Edges are harder and sharper as the strength of those forces increase. Swirls or rotation is the main force for cloud shaping and surprisingly, the science is still developing. I have only analyzed the obvious features in this particular turbulent stratocumulus sky.

This is me and one of my painting buddies. The cat has a mind of her own. The family Chesapeake was always with me when I painted whether it was an early sunrise or a late sunset. It didn't matter.

The family Chesapeake was always with me when I painted - either in the studio or en plein air. The cat was with me most of the time as well. I bet some of their fur got into the paint!
The colours of a winter sky when the sun is low on the horizon is my favourite. The shades are subtle but very striking. It makes me think that colour is more important than shape... at least sometimes.

This was an exercise in communication - getting enough on the canvas to tell the story of the scene without painting every detail. There is indeed a story behind every brush stroke. Maybe that is why original art is so engaging.

This is a studio piece although I would have loved the challenge of painting this on location. Facing challenges is a good way to learn.

Plein air painting gets you right into the scene and the colours. It is fun to share the experience with the family pets. I like to stick my brushes in the snow to keep them handy and clean. I wear a path back and forth from the easel about 10 to 12 feet. Sometimes you need to back away from your art ... and don't wear your glasses.

Looking back, weather has always been the inspiration behind my art... Being outside always had more attraction than the studio even thought the studio might have warmth and stereo sound.

When it is minus 25 Celsius outside, one starts to think of what spring might feel like in six weeks from now - at least according to Singleton Philly, one of the lesser known meteorological ground hogs.

The honey bees were flying - hoping for spring and some fresh nectar! This is my favourite time to paint en plein air!

I used a lot of paint on a slippery surface. It was a beautiful and warm March day - a strong spring sun!

I laid the paint on pretty thick on the panel... it worked for me!

The family pets always kept me company while I painted... what could be better?

People still stare when they see someone painting along the road... Some things will never change I guess.

I like to paint in the winter - when there is no wind chill!

The temperature was a mild minus 3 Celsius but the wind chill was still significate. Environment Canada is still trying to figure out wind chill and how to communicate it...

There is colour to be found in the shadows... one just has to look...

The path between the forest and the bird feeders was worn deep into the snow drifted behind the barn. Feed them and they will come...

Stratocumulus are low to the ground and rich in colour... I will paint some more today!

Every painting is a memory...

I blew up "The Notch". I think a painting trip to Killarney and the church of the great outdoors is equivalent and much preferred to any time spent in a bricks and mortar church... It is funny that the number of this painting is also the year that Columbus visited the new continent even though the Vikings arrived in late 1000 AD - Vinland and L'Anse aux Meadows. Three of Erik the Red's children visited the North American continent: his sons Leif and Thorvald, and their sister Freydis. Thorvald died there. Leif wintered in 1001, probably near Cape Bauld on the northern tip of Newfoundland, where one day his German foster father Tyrker was found drunk, on what the saga describes as "wine-berries." Squashberries, gooseberries, and cranberries all grew wild in the area. There are varying explanations for Leif apparently describing fermented berries as "wine."

Paintings bring back precious memories...

There is a magic time to paint - at sunrise and sunset... The light is special and the colours are strong!

The weather changes quickly. If you are in "the zone" there are endless possibilities for plein air subjects. Enjoy the weather and its many faces.

Snowsqualls are in the news with the current cold outbreak of Arctic air across the Great Lakes. In the centre of a snowsquall you can't see the hood of your car while 10 km away, one would wonder what the fuss is all about.

Snow is not white... I see a lot of different colours :>))

An art critic once said, "how tough can it be to paint snow? It's just white." Man, how wrong can you be?

The family Chesapeake always kept me company when I painted...

I prefer to paint along the quieter back roads - or not on a road at all ...

This is the mate to #0521 "Off to See the Blizzard" and was painted immediately afterwards. I was ultimately successful in moving to the back woods on a lake... life is good!

There is always something interesting - even in the commonplace stuff around us.

It was a cold and windy day - my hands can't take these wind chilly days any more.

What I would give now for an image of our dog and cat out on excursion painting with me...

What I would give now for an image of our dog and cat out on excursion painting with me...

What I would give now for an image of our dog and cat out on excursion painting with me...

This is a close-up of the head of the hen... it shows how loose the brush strokes really were while still maintaining a likeness.

This is a close-up of the head of the hen... it shows how loose the brush strokes really were while still maintaining a likeness.

I am digging deep into my treasure chest... this is a studio painting before I found the light of plein air. I think it still has merit though. The title is a pun on the Gray Hound bus line - these are basset hounds.

This is the same deserted and vandalized farmhouse painted as "The Neighbour's" across the 12th COncession from our Oak Ridges Watershed Farm.

This is the sky opposite the setting sun. Most of the time it is best not to stare into the sun to paint :>))

It was a brutally windy day. Although it wasn't cold, the wind blew me off the hill.

This painting was actually completed on Saturday afternoon, February 23rd, 2002.... Publishing works on Fine Art America is like visiting old friends. The paintings bring back fine memories of time well spent - and even time well wasted!

Every painting brings back a memory. Everyday should be filled with making memories...

Our Chesapeake was with me again and I threw her tennis ball into the forest canopy so that it drop through the branches like a pin ball or like those marble games we used to make as kids. The ball was lost on the last throw, just as I finished the painting. It was torn badly anyway and probably got caught in a branch. She hunted for it for a longtime. She is dogged about that kind of thing.

This is the plow that I hook up to my tractor. It has been snowed in on its palette support in the corner of the yard by the fence. The snow had ended and I was warmed up again after lunch so I decided to make the most of the day.
When I headed across the yard, the sun was shining and the light was really good on the plow and the fence line. The shadows were colorful as well. Within a half hour, after I had the sketch laid in, we were back in blizzard conditions. I settled for something in between for lighting.
The wind was really strong from the west. I had to fill a pail with snow and use that as an anchor for the tie down rope from the easel. It worked so well that I think I will include a pail with my plein air kit.

This is the farm on the north side of the 19th Sideroad of King Township. It is actually on the Caledon side of the town line on the northeast corner of the King-Caledon Town line and the 19th Sideroad of King.

Mid morning, I revisited the "Farm in the Snow". The sun was shining and the effect was entirely different from the other day with strong shadows across the snow and good visibility. I parked in exactly the same place and let the paint fly. I shrunk the barn a bit to make everything fit on the canvas.
The old car was still in the same place and I enjoyed trying to make it come alive with just a few rather crude strokes. There was a mixed herd of Holsteins and Herefords to the east of the barn and I put many of them in the painting. There was also a manure spreader parked in the field in front of the house so I put that in too. Around noon, it clouded in for good and the lighting changed. I had already laid in all of the values so it was still OK. I took the painting home and signed it on my studio easel.

Midday on Saturday, I checked in to see Bill Perry who lives on the north side of 17th Sideroad just to the east of the 12 Concession of King Township. I set up my easel overlooking his barnyard. The yard was a mixture of snow, ice, mud and manure and it was too much to put it but I hoped I caught the effect. His barns are in pretty good shape. Some beef cattle were poking their noses around the corner of the barn but none hung around long enough for me to be satisfied with the way they looked. The barn cats that prowled by were the same way.

In the late afternoon, I was set up my easel just to the east of the abandoned farm house across the 12th Concession from the farm. I laid in the drawing quick enough but found myself tangled in the trees. The farmhouse has been abandoned for as long as we could remember. It's too bad as well as it is a beautiful piece of land and would make a great homestead. The house, however, is too far-gone to be recovered.

The sun was starting to emerge from behind the turbulent stratocumulus streets. It felt good on my hands so I decided to paint from the Charlton Lake Camp waterfront. This is the view looking just a bit south toward the boat launch. The cottage is tucked onto a narrow slice of land at the base of a steep quartzite cliff. The green metal roof of the cottage sparkled when the sun was out.
Oils on medium burnt sienna oil tinted foundation

It was a wet and miserable day for Plein Air Painting ... but still fun.

I was painting with Bob Heddens art group in Rockport. Bob formed the Plein Air Painters Thousand Islands Region (PAPTIR) group in April 2009 to promote Plein Air Painting in the region. From May through October Bob organizes an event every second Wednesday and generally have four to seven artists. Events were sponsored by the Thousand Island Bridge Authourity-Boldt Castle (Alexandria Bay NY) in 2009 and 2011. On this particular Wednesday a band of heavy rain was approaching along a cold front so I figured that we would get soaked by 11 am.

I painted on the wharf with Bob and Cheryl. I selected a rather complex view of roofs and wharfs/ The gray sky gradually darkened over the following two hours. The Canadian flag stood out against the darkening skies - as did the brilliant fall colours. Bands of light showers swung across Rockport with a few spits of liquid but the heavier rain arrived by 11:15 am. I bailed in order to buy groceries in Brockville.

There was a beautiful garden of sunflowers on the southeast corner of this intersection. This has nothing to do with the Franklin Expedition ... although Franklin probably did go to church.
Oils on burnt sienna oil tinted foundation on commercial canvas - 11 x 14 (inches) Started 3:00 pm Sunday September 28th, 2014.

This is the first demo for the “Special Workshop- Classes with Phil Chadwick”. I wanted to keep it simple to illustrate that one does not have to include every detail to do an acceptable interpretation of even a complex looking subject matter. This is George Street looking southwesterly.Art is all about having fun in the moment. Everyday is a fresh chance to experiment and learn something.

I stood outside the Wilson Street Studio in Markham waiting for the participants to arrive for the “Special Workshop- Master Classes with Phil Chadwick”. It was a beautiful sunrise and I figured that I had time to at least get a sketch laid in and warm up for the busy day ahead. The light was streaming over the buildings of Main Street at 7:30 am. The light and shadows were changing quickly so I had to work fast. I pretty much had it completed by the time participants arrived after 9:30 am.

The fog was nearly as thick this morning. I did not have much time to paint and the sun was rising fast! I set up on the north side of the Charlton Lake Camp dock and painted looking north. Lori Murton saw the painting and referred to the obvious red maple as Laura's tree.

I visited Birch Island but couldn't find anything to paint - at least where I could get to. So I returned to the Outlet of Frood Lake and spent a wonderful afternoon painting the rocks and the way the wind played with the colours of the lake. There were no biting insects and the weather was almost too perfect - if that is possible.

The sun was warm for September so I stood in the shade as I painted this majestic brick home over looking the outlet from Frood Lake. The home had been deserted for a few years.

The sun was warm for September so I stood in the shade as I painted this majestic brick home over looking the outlet from Frood Lake. The home had been deserted for a few years.

The sun was warm for September so I stood in the shade as I painted this majestic brick home over looking the outlet from Frood Lake. The home had been deserted for a few years.

I stood on the dam and listened to the roar of the rapids as the fog lifted... a fun morning in Killarney!

This row of birch trees was on the very edge of the rapids and pool below the outlet of Frood Lake. The thick fog behind the birches provided the backdrop because there was nothing but a thirty foot drop into a cauldron of current behind the trees. I was attracted by the fall colour of the birch trees. The roar of the rapids drummed out all of the other sounds of sunrise. The fog was starting to dissipate rapidly as I finished the last few strokes. The few rays of sunlght turned the birches on like a light switch.

This is an unusual work... and it is not intended to be abstract. It is simply an observation of radiational fog in the fall. The faint outline of a lone canoeist was intentional. Like any good ghost, the suggested outline does not cast a shadow or a reflection. You might guess who the ghost could be.

The sun was high and I had to move out of the heat. I moved the easel into the shade of some birches and painted the north wall of the Frood Lake Outlet. The jumble of rocky shades had me confused sometimes. Perhaps I should have simplified more.

Oils on medium burnt sienna oil tinted foundation on commercial canvas - 8 x 10 (inches)

It was a beautiful sunrise in Killarney! All of the water from Charlton, Cranberry, Grace and finally Frood Lake must come through this narrow quartzite canyon. I was painting before the sun had cleared the trees. Crepuscular rays were still evident. It was a race to capture the colours before the sun got too high. I was the only one at the outlet except for a deer and a merganser.

I took a bit of an adventure up the creek. There was a lot of painting material but not a lot of places to land the canoe safely. I passed a deserted building or too and just when I thought I was in the middle of nowhere, I would paddle on to another camp or cottage. There was quite a widening of Howry Creek at one point and I found a nice campsite on the south shore which offered a great, easterly vantage of the large bay in front of me. I painted.

Oils on medium burnt sienna oil tinted foundation on commercial canvas - 10 x 8 (inches) Started 4 pm Wednesday September 24th, 2014. Looking from N46.13830 W81.63486

I simply turned around after painting 1476 “Killarney Foggy Sunrise” and there was another painting. The pines and twisted white cedar was all that was needed to create a composition.

This is the mouth of Howry Creek from Charlton Lake. I had just finished 1478 “Forest Waterfall” and felt that the simple view in front of me was a good as anything else that I might find. A curious toad kept me company as I stood on the home of a well established bank beaver.

Oils on medium ultramarine blue oil tinted foundation on commercial canvas - 10 x 12 (inches)

I set up on the east end of an island. The sunrise and meteorology of the sky was very interesting. Fog and stratus was just lifting due to the strong solar heating of Killarney, even in late September. It took me a while to paddle to my painting spot even though I had started early. The fog on the slopes east of Grace Lake had Kelvin-Helmholtz curls indicating an upslope flow. Meanwhile the tops of the stratus above the mountain tops had southerly curls at their top due to wind shear. Crepuscular rays were even evident at least in a transitory fashion. There was even a white line of sun glint on the eastern horizon of Charlton Lake. Meteorologically, I had to paint this scene.

This central area of Graham Rapids is a confusion of sound, foam, water and reflections. One might think that it was a simple painting to execute but they would be very wrong. It was a challenge to capture the inspiration of noise and entropy. There were a multitude of colours and reflections and I tried to do them justice. I do believe that it came together at the end using very wet paint on top of wet paint.

I spent all day at Graham Rapids. The subject matter was challenging but it is good to stretch your limits if you are able to. I used a lot of paint!

I moved the easel to the top of Graham Rapids. I liked the reflection of the rocks and the trees in the fast water. The sound of the rapids drowned out all other noises although I occasionally felt like I heard something and that I was being watched. Margo told me that there was a sow black bear and a cub staying nearby. I never say anything but it felt weird. The sheep dog and chased the bears a couple of weeks previous.

To quasi quote the Marx Brothers, I spent a Day at the Rapids For those who didn't remember and don't have access to Google "A Day at the Races" (1937) was the seventh film starring the three Marx Brothers, with Margaret Dumont, Allan Jones, and Maureen O'Sullivan.
I canoed through Charlton Lake to the falls that empties Cross Lake in Charlton. There was a quaint cottage on the south bank and I was careful not to intrude. I didn't have to worry because after an hour or so of sketching out bounded a dog that I should have recognized immediately from an earlier visit while painting 1463 "The Road to Willisville". The dog came bounding out the door to greet me like we were old friends and of course we were.

This is the Matheson cottage on the west side of the Whitefish River, opposite the Charlton Lake Camp. It is surrounded by a mature forest and appropriately flies the Canadian flag. I wonder if the cottage is owned by a relative of John Matheson, the Father of the Canadian Flag. I kept the forest to its proper height scale. I could have included some of the sky if I had reduced the height of the trees by a third.

There are a lot of ravens in the area. They seem to carry on a very intelligent conversation with varying tones of croaks and caws. I wish I could understand these “Einsteins” of the Bird World.

I still had some time to paint and the fair weather cumulus were very interesting. The winds were light so the convective bubbles were pretty symmetric as they climbed through the lifted condensation level. The west shore of the Cataraqui River was becoming increasingly developed by the City of Kingston. Virginia rails used to live in the marsh here. I have not seen one for years....

I crossed to the other side of the "Barriefield B and B" and stood on the waters edge looking at the main competitor. One door was white but the other door was indeed a shade of green. The cribbing supporting this boathouse had been ravaged over the years by the weather and ice. It too had a lot of character.

The other side of the boathouse as painted in "B and B - Barriefield Boathouse" was just as interesting. The water levels were down and any vessel located in the boathouse would have to be carried several metres to reach the water's edge. An old tire had laid in the grasses for several seasons and I was interested in the many colours apparent in the rubber. Large, old willows lined the dry banks of the Cataraqui River.

The other side of the boathouse as painted in "B and B - Barriefield Boathouse" was just as interesting. The water levels were down and any vessel located in the boathouse would have to be carried several metres to reach the water's edge. An old tire had laid in the grasses for several seasons and I was interested in the many colours apparent in the rubber. Large, old willows lined the dry banks of the Cataraqui River.

The rain had abated so I decided to try another canvas overlooking Frood Lake from the old railway bed that used to serve the local mining operations. As a meteorologist, I was prone to being too optimistic depending on what weather the client needed.

The rain started again but I tried painting under the hatch of the back gate of the Subaru. It was a good idea but the rain started blowing with the wind and it was raining even harder. Once again my canvas got soaked but I think I was able to pull off a good effort in spite of or maybe as a result of the weather. I certainly did not over work this very wet canvas.

It rained... hard at times.

It may look like a single Muskoka chair on the granite but this was Killarney. It had to be a Killarney chair. The empty chair is either a happy invitation to come and sit awhile on the edge of Killarney Channel “ to slow down and enjoy the fall colours. For those who view the glass as half empty, it can be a lonely chair vacated by those who left with the summer. Either way, I had fun capturing the moment in oil with a rather large brush.

Fall is a great time for plein air painting - no biting insects! It was chilly in Killarney. I was on the north side of the park staying in Willisville.

Plein air painting in the Kawarthas with the Wilson Street Studio Group... it was fun. Thanks to Keith Thirgood and the artists.

The sound of the waterfall was unmistakable in the forest. I landed the canoe and started looking for it. It was exactly what I had hoped that I would find. The heavy summer rains were still draining from the Killarney highlands. This waterfall was just 30 feet from making it to Charlton Lake. The midday sun occasionally broke through the trees to illuminate the tumbling water. It wasn't a mighty fall of water but for me, it was just what I needed.
The photo was taken as the painting neared completion with the inspirational waterfall in the background. There were just a few mosquitoes but not enough to rush my plein air work along.

Kawartha Highlands - Canoe and Paint with Phil the Forecaster.For more details, follow the links ... hope to have a full Group of Eight! August 6-10, 2014.

We are just a couple of weeks away but there is still time. The class is half full or half empty depending upon your perspective. This should be fun - I write all my own humour just in case it isn't obvious. Here is a link that will give you even more insight. This paint out is as much about adventure as it is about art.