#2992 "February Winter Sunset at Jim Day Rapids"

#2992 "February Winter Sunset at Jim Day Rapids"
16 X 20 (inches).
Started at 10:30 am Monday, January 19th, 20026

The colours of a brilliant sunset peaked under the stratocumulus to reflect in the open water of Jim Day Rapids. I never get tired of this panorama! 

The open water in the current is essential for wildlife. Typically, 20 to 40 trumpeter swans call that home during the winter along with otters, mink, deer and transient ducks. The open water shrinks to just a few square meters when the temperatures dip into the minus thirties Celsius. The swans will then sleep on the ice with a few sentries posted to warn against potential predators. 

Those frigid temperatures are also essential for nature! A temperature of -29 °C is required to kill the larvae of the invasive spongy moth, lymantria dispar, a species native to Europe and Asia.  The moth was introduced into North America in 1869 as a potential source of silk to replace the shortage of cotton caused by the American Civil War. In 2022, the name was changed from the gypsy moth, which had been used since 1832, allegedly to be politically correct. Politics and the wars were the cause of the invasive species in the first place along with countless other problems. 

Recent severe outbreaks of the spongy moth have resulted in densities exceeding one million caterpillars per acre. Forest defoliation has been severe even at Singleton.  Climate change has contributed to longer spongy moth outbreak cycles, which typically occur every eight to twelve years. More frequent and severe environmental impacts have resulted. Forests need our assistance, and cold weather is an ally. So embrace those -29 °C temperatures. 

The open water of Jim Day Rapids after a winter cold spell...

Trumpeter swans spend a lot of time at Jim Day Rapids, even during cold outbreaks when there is not much open water. 

I use art to learn more science and vice versa. It was also fun to include our red chairs that overlook the beautiful Jim Day Rapids. Many of the world's problems, ranging from climate change to political corruption, have been decisively solved in those red chairs.

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 

#0429 "Moose - Back Pond Hookie"

#0429 "Moose - Back Pond Hookie"
Oils on stretched canvas, 18 X 24
Started February 14th, 1999.

My daughter, Janice, started to play hockey in the later years of high school and continued this at Trent University. The inter-mural university hockey league had only a few girls, with Janice being one of them. She played defense and although she is one of the smaller players, the other teams have learned not to be too rough, as her co-defence-man was big and very protective. 

The Trent University team she played on was called "Road Kill". The players all had nicknames based on common animals found along the sides of the roads. Janice always had a fascination with moose, perhaps stemming from the way I talk about animals or a close encounter of the moose kind I had in Alberta many years ago. Regardless, her name was "Moose" on this team, which is quite a contrast from her feminine stature. Her partner on defence used the moniker "Rigor Mortis".

The painting was based on a day of skating we had over the Christmas holidays of 1998. The ice was perfect, and Janice sat on a pine stump leaning on the south side of the marsh. The picture is looking southeast. It was a magical day, and the ice was like clear plate glass over large areas, and we could see the chunky smallmouth bass swimming underneath. The fish were very startled when we skimmed over their heads on our skates. 

View looking northwest toward the skating channel that led to the larger swamp. 

The "Hookie" in the title refers to Janice looking for almost any excuse to avoid schoolwork. In this case, the excuse was more than justified. It would have been a crime not to avail ourselves of the opportunity to skate on clear, thick ice.

#0429 "Moose - Back Pond Hookie"

That was before the days of digital photography, so I do not have anything in the way of  "in-progress" images. This painting is not yet on Fine Art America, but I may fix that omission. 

This scene was also a decade before cell phones would change the world and lifestyles. Family time spent out in nature is harder to find.

We learned a lot of lessons at Watershed Farm. It was a very special time, and I loved that place. Wonderful memories abound.

For this and much more art, 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  

#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 

#2991 "A Swell February Morning"

#2991 "A Swell February Morning"
14 X 18 (inches).
Started 9:00 am Sunday, January 18th, 2026, 2025

Blustery southwesterly winds and chilly temperatures convinced me to stay within the Singleton Studio. This inspiration was from Wednesday, February 22nd, 2023, during the heart of COVID. Conditions back then were very similar to the Sunday morning when I found time to pick up my brushes again. 

On that day, a warm conveyor belt was approaching from the southwest. The details were clearly written in the sky, identifying the anticyclonic companion of the warm conveyor belt. The winter storm was stronger than average and had created large swells in the atmospheric ocean. The air mass was relatively moist. The lifted condensation level of that flow was near the bottom of the trough in the large gravity waves of the swells. Smaller amplitude and short-wavelength gravity waves were imprinted on the stable layer at the top of the swells. These smaller gravity waves were almost at right angles to the swells, creating a lop-sided lattice pattern in the cloud tops. The following graphic details what these observations mean.

The storm is steered in the direction of the average wind over the area of the storm. Cloud shapes are created purely by winds relative to this mean within the atmospheric frame of reference. Those are the patterns that can reveal the true dynamics of the weather. 

Conceptual Model of the Swells and Wind Gravity Waves
on the Warm and Moist Side of the Deformation Zone

The Jet Stream Core was downstream and to the right of the above graphic. The winds along the axis of the jet stream would be increasing into that core, thus requiring the deformation zone to be paralleling that flow. The science behind this deduction can be found in "A Jet Streak with a Paddle". This research was never published with COMET or EUMETSAT but formed the basis of my approach to understanding atmospheric patterns back in the 1990s. 

Those are the kind of thoughts that kept me busy on night shifts at the weather centre. I felt it was vital to understand the principles of atmospheric dynamics so that it might be better predicted and communicated to others. Computer simulations that comprise NWP (Numerical Weather Prediction) do not "explain" or "understand" in the human terms of pattern recognition. I freely shared these concepts, and some peers found them to be quite useful. 

The large swells were drifting northeastward with the surge of the warm conveyor belt. The smaller wave patterns were drifting southeasterly, diverging from the col of the deformation zone pattern, which was further to the north. These gravity waves were only visible on the leading edge of the swell, although the gravity waves themselves certainly prevailed, riding the stable layer on top of the larger swells. The patterns in the clouds would have been better observed from an aircraft. Gravity may have kept me on the ground, but it was essential to create the diagnostic patterns in the sky. 

The average flow will advect the gravity waves along. Watching the drift of the gravity waves for just a few seconds will reveal the direction of that flow if you are observing it "live". For paintings, the upwind side, where the air is uniformly ascending into the wave crest, is typically sharper than the downwind edge. The rising air experiences expansional cooling, and the air parcels uniformly reach saturation. The downwind descending cloud experiences compressional warming due to increasing pressure, but also mixes with unsaturated air parcels before becoming cloud-free. That edge can thus be a bit fuzzy. 

The Singleton forest cast long shadows at 7:35 am with the sun barely clearing the trees. These shadows trailed across the snow-covered ice. The morning light also cast a warm tone on the shoreline and deciduous trees of the Carolinian forest. 

Water levels were high. The eastern basin of Singleton Lake was mainly ice-free, which was unusual for February, when people are usually ice fishing. 

My goal was to capture the colours of mid-winter and do justice to the dynamics of the cloud patterns. I treat most cloud paintings as another opportunity to learn and teach about cloud dynamics and meteorology.  I have been doing that for a very long time... perhaps it is time to stop and simply paint. Hmmm...

My Dad built that beautiful studio easel and three others just like it in the 1990s. 

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 

PS: "Swell" is intended to be a pun. The laws of nature (physics) apply to everything, everywhere and all of the time. They make sense. Physicists are still attempting to understand these basic tenets from the very small to the scale of the universe. Einstein made it his life's work and never quite achieved "the unifying theory of everything". Other geniuses followed, but mysteries remain within quantum mechanics to dark matter and black holes. The inter-connected lattice of variable time and space keeps the velocity of light (energy) a constant... 

Within the great scheme of things, the Earth is quite insignificant. Humans are equally so but have caused a chain reaction which will affect all life on Earth - a polite way to describe the Sixth Mass Extinction. 

#0609 "The Crossroads"

#0609 "The Crossroads"

16 X 20 (inches).
Started Monday, February 10th, 2003

I had some time on the morning of February 10th, 2003. The Chesapeake and I headed out once again to the fence on the south side of the neighbour's property. We came across a crisscross of bunny trails as well as some coyote tracks. Clearly, it was a major thoroughfare, and who survived the night was determined by which branch of the crossroads one took. 

I was really intrigued by the strong shadows trailing across the slope. There was a dense little thicket of young ash trees growing along that slope where the cattle could not get to them. These shadows were sporadic with the sun, but the colours were always there. The temperature was around minus 10 Celsius, but I was protected from the wind, so the conditions were comfortable. However, the paint froze. The titanium white changed into paste. It was great!

The Chesapeake chewed on some of the forest, trying to get another limb of a tree for me to throw. She had remembered our game from the previous painting trip. The location for "February Fence" was only about 100 metres further west. I concentrated on my painting, and the Chesapeake was left to amuse herself. She had her green tennis ball with her, and I did throw that a few times.

I loved that home! We planted trees and erected hundreds of Stevenson bluebird houses in that portion of King Township. Nature was welcomed back. My Dad planted a huge sack of black walnuts in 1999, and they should be significant trees by now, if only the current owners realize what they are... I could walk in his footsteps, following the trail of trees which were saplings when we had to move... Toronto was swallowing the area. There was constant pressure for development and highways that continues today. 

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 

#2990 "January Rain at Singleton"

#2990 "January Rain at Singleton"
8x10 inches oils on canvas panel
Started 10:30 am Friday, January 9th, 2026

I had a palette of a mixed bag of colours that needed using. They were left over oils from #2989 "Winter Sanctuary" which was still very wet after spending more than a month on the easel. There was going to be a lull in the rain, so I decided to head to the lee of the Outbuilding. I also had to avoid the sheets of ice melting off the roof. The resultant tumbling, avalanches could be very bad for both my easel and me. I hoped that any accidents would be happy rather than sad with respect to my painting. 

Fifteen minutes into the painting... raindrops becoming more numerous...
Not a great solar day for my panels, but that's OK.

Twenty minutes into the painting...

I wanted to use the leftover colours on my palette and rely on the weather to push me to spontaneous inspiration rather than that of hesitant calculations and precision. The canvas panel got very slippery as the moisture accumulated. In 30 minutes, it was done like dinner, just as it started to rain much harder. The rain washed away the ink of my "painting bar-code". It was time to stop before I got really soaked. The wind was due to increase to near warning criteria in advance of the approaching cold front, so there was no time to waste. 

The painting was looking northeast toward our entrance from Long Reach Lane. I imagined that the solar panels weren't there, but did include the sugar maples that stand proudly behind them. The tall basswood and homestead forest were included with just a few crude brush strokes. That portion of the Singleton forest is so named (by me) as the rocky foundation of the twenty-foot square pioneer cabin can still be found on top of that marble ridge. 

The pioneer's homestead foundation can really only be seen in the winter. Trees have grown up in the last hundred years since it was occupied. The area is so thick with vegetation in the summer that it is hard to see. The foundation is only a short stroll from our home on a high ridge. Our home is also high and dry on a ridge. The area is prone to flooding in the spring. 

I liked how the tractor treads were preserved in the ice like dinosaur tracks. There is really no traffic on our portion of Long Reach Lane - just us and nature. 

My hearing aids had been tuned up the previous day, so I could really hear the winter birds singing. The birds suddenly stopped vocalizing when the heavier rain arrived. 

I wanted to start 2026 with a plein air painting. Surrounded by nature is where I find the greatest inspiration. My art tends to be "out there", defying categorization, the result of a solitary, exploratory journey, just trying to learn and get better in my own eyes. There is no hesitation in those brushstrokes, only happy accidents. The art may not be polished, but the crude brush strokes might be more eloquent. Anyway, that's my desire, and I will stick to that story. 

Life, art and science are not competitions in my small sanctuary. This trio of concepts blend happily into one, exemplifying the search for truth. Life is good surrounded by nature, plus "you gotta laugh" especially in the rain. 

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

Warmest regards, and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick 

#0608 "February Fence"

 

#0608 "February Fence"
18 X 24 (inches).
Started Saturday afternoon, February 1st, 2003.

I finished my Watershed Farm chores by 2 pm. The family Chesapeake and I felt inspired to paint. We ended up on the south side of the neighbour's property, looking toward the southwest and the fallen-down fence bordering the Coulter's Holstein farm fields. The only thing that really keeps the cows in is the precipitous drop on the north side of the fence line.

I dug into the snow so that I wouldn't fall flat on my ass. My pacing back and forth as I painted turned the slope into ice, and more than once I had to catch myself. It was a mild 4 degrees Celsius and very pleasant with almost no wind. The colours and multitude of tracks in the snow, as well as the lines of the fence, were what caught my eye. There was even a snow roller that had tumbled down off the fence line. I included that as the round disk on the left side of the painting. The roller got hung up halfway down the slope. 

Snow rollers are self-rolling snowballs sometimes called "snow bales," "wind snowballs," or "snow donuts“. The winter equivalent of tumbleweeds, they form when wind pushes snow, gathering it into a hollow cylinder. The Bernoulli Effect certainly plays a role in the initial formation, with the associated pressure drop above the snow surface resulting from a gust of wind. Gravity played a big part in the snow roller that I painted. Bigger snow rollers can travel a couple of feet, leaving trails a few inches wide in their wakes. The wind speed needs a threshold of 50 km/h with gusts. Conditions have to be just right to lift and roll loose, sticky snow over a layer of ice or a harder crust of snow. Snow rollers may be rare, but extremely interesting. 

My Chesapeake managed to break off a limb of a tree. She delivered it to me to throw for her after she had suitably gnawed off the smaller branches. I tossed it periodically the rest of the afternoon until there was nothing left except a chunk of wood the size of a baseball. By that time, it was dark, and we had to bail anyway.

I wish that I had pictures to supplement those memories. I was still using a film camera, so I thought twice before I took any pictures. Digital cameras would make "in-progress" images very affordable, but that had not happened for me yet in 2003. 

Other paintings along this part of the fence line: #0610, #0618, #0629 #0879.  Also see the larger offspring of this plein air sketch as #1084 "The Son of the Fence".

We loved that dog! She was a wonderful character and even a better judge of character. I had to hold her back one day from wanting to eat a bad guy who came up the lane selling stuff. 

This painting was also completed on the day when Space Shuttle Columbia burned up at 200,000 feet of altitude and travelling at Mach 18. All seven of the crew died at 9.00 am EST on that winter Saturday. 

Some memories are happy, but some can be tragic. That's life. 

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 

#0615 "Bough-zers"

#0615 "Bough-zers"
18 X 24 (inches).
Started Sunday, March 2nd, 2003

This scene is along the path leading directly south from Watershed Farm through the open

gate with our neighbours, Thelma and Max Church. The family Chesapeake and I went to

examine the snow-laden white spruce. There were some interesting bunny tracks in the snow

leading between the white spruce, so I set up my easel. However, the Chesapeake soon

destroyed those tracks but added many of her own.

I was just starting to take a few pictures of my plein air work in progress. Digital cameras would

make that all very affordable, but that had not happened for me yet in 2003.

The snow was still heavy on the boughs from the snowstorm of the week before, and a fresh 2

to 5 centimetres had fallen the previous night, so that everything was white.

The conditions were quite reasonable to start with. The winds were light from the northwest,

and the temperature was steady around minus 4 Celsius. By the time I was finishing up in the

mid-afternoon, the wind was out of the northwest at 30 to 40 km/h and the temperature had

dropped to minus 14 Celsius. The wind chill was brutal, and the paint all froze. I had to retreat.

Can you spell "cold front"? I was on the verge of freezing my hands again! An artist can feel

the brush and the oils very well with gloves on. Of course, the same is true when your hands

freeze.

The title is after the slang word used on "Inspector Gadget" that the kids watched when it was

a popular cartoon. Would you believe.. the voice of Inspector Gadget was Don Adams, Agent

86 from "Get Smart". I used to imitate that voice. Don was also a fine artist. 

The canvas had been primed with a medium-light coat of raw sienna.

The Chesapeake assisted me while I painted #0615 "Bough-zers".
She was always with me when I painted, even in the Studio. 

We loved that dog! She and her friend, the Maine Coon cat, would line up for special suppers. Both would accompany me outside on walks or when I painted. They were much more than just family. 

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 

#2989 "Winter Sanctuary"

#2989 "Winter Sanctuary" 
48 X 36 inches.
Started at noon on Thursday, December 4th, 2025

I received a high-priority work order for a large winter scene to be placed in the art display rotation of our home. An inspirational scene packed full of memories immediately came to mind. 

Our young family frequented the Tecumseth Pine Conservation Area west of Schomberg, Ontario. The pine plantation was a terrific place to be surrounded by nature and out of the wind. There was one steep hill that we liked to toboggan down. The kids and I had a riot sliding down that precipitous slope just in our snow suits.  The boot prints in the show headed up that hill are in direct relationship to our fun sliding down. 

#0208 "Shadows - Too"

#0208 "Shadows - Too" was completed on an 18 by 14 inch canvas in the winter of 1989, based on that pine-covered slope. My Studio was a three-foot square tucked under the basement stairs back then.  I thought it would be a wonderful subject to turn into a much larger canvas; actually, 6.8 times larger with dimensions of 4 by 3 feet. The goal was to make it even better. The bare bones of the painting were strong. The zen needed to be preserved as well. I thought I could enhance the colours of the snow and the texture of the painted surface. It would be fun, win or lose!

The backlit tree trunks were dark. The shadows diverged as they poured down the undulating snow surface. There were a lot of different elements to play with, providing many different possible solutions. Art is never just about the brush strokes. 

#0208 "Shadows - Too" is not included in my Fine Art America portfolio (yet). I did not own a camera capable of taking an adequate image back then. The original sold fast, and life was so very busy! 

What were my excuses? Meteorology was keeping me very involved as I was still learning from the atmosphere. I was developing new applications of remote sensing data, both satellite and radar. Performance measurement was also very important, trying to prove beyond any doubt the value of quality weather forecasts to the Canadian economy. I hoped that such information might be of importance in negotiations to increase the meagre and decreasing funds devoted to environmental sciences. There was an economic war being waged against Canadian science. Truth is only tolerated when it serves those in power, and the politicians of the day had been bought by big oil. Atmospheric carbon levels also continued to rise dramatically, and the impacts were bound to be noticeable in the 1990s. This was all important science!

I was also busy with PowerPoint presentations on the Art and Science of Tom Thomson, Severe Convection, CANWARN and Climate Change. If that wasn't enough, my family was contemplating building Watershed Farm on the 12th Concession of King Township. That big project got going in the early spring of 1993. Life was exciting, full of challenges, and some things just didn't get done. Anyway, that's my story. It is all true, and I will stick to it. 

For this and much more art, click on Pixels or go straight to the Collections. Here is the new Wet Paint 2024 Collection. Thank you for reading, and stay well!

Warmest regards, and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick