I was on my way for groceries on the first day back to school in September 2021. I wanted to be in Kingston before the school buses started to roll. The early morning light was turning the vacated farm house into a bright, white beacon. The composition was perfect in the sunrise light. I had long admired this homestead before but the dawn of a new day had turned it into the painting that I was looking for.
It takes an aerial view to reveal that his bucolic (relating to the pleasant aspects of the countryside and country life) setting was actually surrounded by gravel pits and scars on the land. Extractivism is the process of extracting natural resources from the Earth to sell on the world market. It exists in an economy that depends primarily on the extraction or removal of natural resources that are considered valuable for exportation worldwide. Extractivism is a good way for a few to get rich but it is not sustainable like the small family farm that I wanted to paint. I believe that the farm itself was deserted. In the early 20th century, 80 percent of the Canadian population was rural. This figure was completely turned around by the early 21st century.
I remember going to Grippen Lake with the family in the mid 1950's. Who would have thought that we would later live just downstream and a few kilometers away from Grippen Lake and this painting.
The sky could not reveal the extent of the storm brewing over the horizon. A large convective storm was on the way. There would be several tornadoes reported in southwestern Ontario.
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