#0612 "Sun Dial"

#0612 "Sun Dial" 
16 X 20 (inches). 
Started 9:30 am Friday, February 21st, 2003

 A hike to the back marsh just north of Watershed Farm around 9 am on Friday in late winter with the family Chesapeake, started the clock ticking. I set up my easel with my back to the forest of tall white pine. I intended to paint the far end of the marsh and the hardwood hills further to the west. This marsh was drained by a creek, which connected eventually to the Humber River and Lake Ontario. The pond in the front yard drained through Schomberg to the famed Holland Marsh, following the Holland River to Lake Simcoe. I paddled that path that the Ontario Conservative government now plan to pave over. 

The tall shadows cast by the trees swung with the sun, and I incorporated that into the painting. There was no choice but to remain "truthful". The right side of the painting had the early morning shadows heading to the northwest. By the time I was finishing up, it was early afternoon, and the shadows had been redirected more to the northeast on the left side of the painting. I used lots of paint.

The Chesapeake devoured that stump poking through the ice.
You can see chips of wood littered all around where she played. 

Cirrostratus cloud blanketed the left side of the sky with very subtle detail. The nearly vertical band of cirrus on the right side of the sky actually marks the jet stream and the edge of the warm air approaching from the south. The transverse banding pictured in the cirrus edge was really there. The anticyclonic companion of the warm conveyor belt was approaching Watershed Farm. That "swell" meteorology has been explained many times before. See "The Art and Science of Phil the Forecaster" and search for "swell" for multiple versions of that conceptual model. That pun was intentional. 

Later in the plein air session, the Chesapeake busied herself barking at an open patch of water by the shore. I'm not certain, but the beavers might have returned after being trapped to local extinction in the 1990s. The beavers might have been keeping that water ice-free and thus attracted the attention of the canine. 

Anyway, the Chesapeake fell in and just couldn't get climb back out - the water was deep at the edge of the ice. It must have been cold, even though the air temperature was around plus 2 degrees Celsius. I crawled on my belly and grabbed her front shoulders to roll her out. She didn't go back to the hole for a while and never really got close to the edge again. 

Done like dinner. The cirrostratus had thickened into altostratus. The winter storm was getting closer. 

Posting this painting on Fine Art America for the first time brings back many memories of the Chesapeake. She was quite irreplaceable... like the Oak Ridges Moraine and Watershed Farm. She passed on Christmas 2004 and is still part of our lives in many ways. 

#0722 "The Spa" is included on Fine Art America

For this and much more art, click on Pixels or go straight to the Collections. Here is the new Wet Paint Collection. Thank you for reading, and stay well!

Warmest regards, and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick