#2966 "Fiery November Sunrise over Singleton"

#2966 "Fiery November Sunrise over Singleton"
12 x 16 by 3/4 depth stretched canvas (inches)
Started 9:30 am Tuesday, July 29th, 2025

 I worked on #2965 "Barred Owl Forest Canopy" for a couple of hours until every inch of that canvas was very wet oil again. Dithering over those oils before they tacked up would be problematic, so I selected another canvas. 

The human perspective is that the Earth and the atmosphere are huge to the point of being boundless. Herein lies the issue! Both the resources and the atmosphere of the third rock from the sun have very strict limits. The atmosphere is crucial to block hazardous radiation. The balance of constituent gases is precisely what is required to support life as we know it. If that balance is upset, so is life. 

These thoughts were on my mind during the "Heat Dome" which was controlling the summer of 2025 weather. The extreme temperatures, poor air quality and drought conditions encouraged me to remain in the Singleton Studio when I composed this composite sunrise. I took the sunrise image at 8 am on November 22nd, 2012, as viewed from the front porch of our Singleton home. The sun was still below the eastern horizon of the Singleton forest. The red light passing through the long atmospheric path caught the bottom of the clouds. That colour reminded me of the smoky skies resulting from the wildfires within the Boreal Forest, which rings the northern hemisphere.

Such illumination is fleeting, lasting only minutes. As the sun continues to rise, the layer of cloud blocks the sun and the light show is abruptly terminated. 

I wanted to include our waterfront in this painting rather than the Singleton forest. The shoreline profile from an earlier painting #2959 "July 7th Singleton Sunrise" worked well. I put on the tunes loud and let my short hair down. The oils flew. 

An autumn storm was crossing Singleton in November 2012. The leading edge of the middle-level cloud had already passed to the east with the deformation zone of the warm conveyor belt. Those clouds were on fire with the illumination from underneath. 

I painted calm conditions on the lake to maximize the amount of brilliant reflection. By doing so, I implied that the winds in the cold conveyor belt matched the speed of approach of the storm. That storm would have been a bit stronger than average based on those conditions. 

The following summarizes the key steps in this painting. 

Regardless of how they turn out, every canvas presents opportunities to learn and grow. The time spent is also an opportunity to remember the important people on the journey that it took to record these memories in oil. Art can be a way of life. The image below captures #2966 "Fiery November Sunrise over Singleton" on the easel that my Dad built. 

For this and much more art, click on Pixels or go straight to the Collections. Here is the new Wet Paint 2024 Collection. 

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick