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I sit here looking out my studio window and see a few dried leaves clinging to the old beach tree by the porch. They have survived wind, rain and the bitter cold nights of the past couple of month. While many of us do not like winter, it is my most productive season. Few things beat sitting at my easel by the fireplace conjuring up images of past summers and the various spectacular places I have stored in the nooks and crannies of my mind, vowing to later paint.
It proved to be a banner year by finally making the effort to explore our great province from Parry Sound & Killarney to Algonquin Provincial Park. First I wanted to go to a place
on the eastern shore of Canada's Georgian Bay called Pointe-Au-Baril, an odd sounding name that I always wondered about. Its name comes from a time when it was a port for
shipping oil in barrels (Baril) from this region which is dotted with many granite outcroppings and now home for all sorts of cottages and related seasonal recreation.
rocky outcroppings. - Available
North America was once a solid mass of rock & as the mass split up drifting apart, it eventually became the landscape we know today. Mountains have come and gone a few times, however plate tectonics and hot springs like Yellow Stone are a constant reminder of what lurks below.
We live in a world of constant geological change but at a pace too slow for most to notice until an earthquake or a major volcanic eruption remind us of how small and helpless we really are, "Men's weapons are useless when Nature comes armed."
"Moonlight feels Right", I'm reminded of this classic pop song's lyrics each time I travel Canada's highways on a moonlight night. I wonder what our early explorers felt while navigating their highways of water during the 17 & 1800's. It must have been a surreal experience that even now with our Cell phones, GPS and all manner of modern conveniences, is hard to imagine.
As an artist, I am constantly aware of the visual jewels around me, how sunlight hits a certain spot on a wall or a tree's branches reach for the life giving rays. Like giant serpents, I see the smooth weathered Granite shapes rise from the water and disappear just to rise again further out. I see the lake's historic water levels etched permanently on these serpent's lower extremities and the fissures caused by eons of thawing, freezing and expanding. I am more intrigued climbing these ancient rock outcroppings than I could be in a New York lifetime and it's a story I want to share with my paintings.
"The Coming Storm" 24" x 40" Oil on Canvas, it is near Whitefish in the Bay of Isles
During the early nineteen hundreds, Canada's Group of Seven did much to give the world a glimpse of this rugged landscape. Their simple & colourful paintings taught a new nation about itself by indelibly etching these visual landscapes into our culture.
My quest is not to reproduce their work like the image below, rather through my paintings look closer at the details of this amazing planted we call home.
"Blue Mountain High” 18" x 24" Acrylic on Canvas
I'm often told; “ Your art is so real looking why not just take a photo” Well yes, if I could not draw I probably would, however a photo rarely reflects the three dimensional world we experience, how often have you been disappointed that your photograph did not turn out as you expected?
"Georgian Bay Sunshine" 24" x 48" Oil on Canvas - Available
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