#3041 "September Morn Ancient Red Cedars"

#3041 "September Morn Ancient Red Cedars"
10 X 12 (inches) oil on canvas.
Started September 10th, 2026

I was out early in the morning, standing on the marble of "Point Paradise", exposed to gusty northwest winds. A cold front had passed by an hour earlier, and the skies were clearing. I was there to remember and honour the heroes of 9-11. 

Why paint to remember 9-11, September 11th, 2001? That's a legitimate question. 9-11 represents unimaginable hatred and destruction. Those were very dark days.  But countless examples of hope also emerged. The open doors and generosity of Gander and Canada turned airline passengers from strangers into friends and then family. There is hope. 

In this century, the "Century of Fire", the momentum of climate change will transform Earth into conditions last experienced around 3 million years ago, during the Mid-Pliocene Warm Period. By 2099, or perhaps sooner, global temperatures will average more than 3 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial levels of 1850. Some predictions are even more extreme and dire but very plausible given the news that “Nobody cares about climate anymore".  Several nations are embracing a fossil-fuel-free world.  Canada is not one of those... Green energy and circular economies can make a difference. Still, there is hope. 

Perhaps beauty pageant contestants were right all along. They hoped for things like the following:

• World Peace through international diplomacy 
• Education for All
• Eradication of Hunger and Poverty 
• Distribution of basic human resources like clean water and air
• Universal Healthcare
• Universal Rights of Nature 
• Worldwide action on the Climate Crisis
• Freedom of the Press
• Honest Politicians

This is just a snippet of a very, very long list, but a good place to start. All of those items are well beyond the means of the individual. The last one is mine! The collective will and cooperation of all citizens are required.

Most of us now have the right to vote, but an increasing number of citizens fail to exercise that privilege. When a majority of the above "hopes" fail, as they have, the result is an uneducated, uninformed populace ripe for populist rule. Such "leaders" serve only their interests and those of their friends. The research of Dunning and Kruger describes the creation of "Mount Stupid". 

The threats of Artificial Intelligence are also very real. Democracy fails without intelligent and informed voters. The result must be a version of "1984" or perhaps a "Brave New World". AI could also decide that humans are an unnecessary burden... to be exterminated...

The future is always uncertain, so we must live and work in the present. The Serenity Prayer is a secure place for me to fall back on...

• Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
• Courage to change the things I can, 
• And wisdom to know the difference.

The good people of Gander had the courage and generosity to do everything that they could in the time of great need and compassion. 

Gander International Airport during 9-11

Embracing the past and fearing the future begs another question. Why paint at all? 

Art, science and nature are things I have always had faith in.  Those are things I can maybe comprehend and contribute meaningfully toward. They are positive and can become beacons for hope in the present and for the future. So I paint on... and share everything, endeavouring to do the right thing. 

8 am Thursday September 19th, 2026, the eve of 9-11 on Point Paradise

These twisted red cedars on the marble of Point Paradise continue to thrive in the harsh environment. I have painted them several times. The red cedars are severely stunted by the extreme conditions they survive in - yet they persevere!  Their exact age is unknown, but they must be ancient! Remembering 9-11 felt like another opportune time to preserve them on canvas. 

The oldest known red cedars found in the rainforests of British Columbia are estimated to be between 1,000 and 2,000 years old. The oldest confirmed white cedar on Ontario's Bruce Peninsula started growing in 688 AD, making it roughly 1,338 years old (in 2026). 

Trees can survive where harsh environments protect them from logging and fire (basically people). The Carolinian forest on the eastern shore of Singleton Lake was and remains inaccessible. It has never been logged, and I still plant new trees every year. 

So I paint out of respect for the greatest generation who sacrificed much in the past to provide this opportunity in the present. I didn't want to waste the chance to paint something that might be good, that might brighten another's day or encourage them to think about brighter subjects: trees, the weather, the wind... So while there is still hope, I will still paddle, paint and plant trees ...

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

Warmest regards, and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick  

#3023 "Next Adventure at Parry Sound" Part Two

#3023 "Next Adventure at Parry Sound"
20 X 24 inches, oils on canvas.
Started at 9:15 am, Wednesday, June 24th, 2026

There is nothing really unique about this particular deformation zone, which I described in #3023 "Next Adventure at Parry Sound". Some features require a bit more description so that when you witness another deformation zone, those additional lines will speak to you and tell a more complete tale about the weather. 

Satellite data was a very new tool when I became a meteorologist in 1977. Weather was not to be discovered within the intersection of Venn Diagrams! The atmosphere was much more complicated and beautiful. My artistic background fused with the satellite patterns that we were witnessing for the first time. 

The Chinese "yin and yang" philosophy describes how seemingly opposite forces are actually complementary, interconnected, and interdependent. That philosophy is so very true. I could "see" yin and yang in the satellite patterns. They speak to me. Nature and the weather are all about balance. 

While in Edmonton in 1980, I attended a presentation by Roger Weldon of NOAA (1937-2023). His lecture opened a lot more doors, including the deformation zone conceptual model. 

Skip ahead a decade or two of studying the real atmosphere. Night shifts were the best for really concentrating and learning while preparing the all-important first forecasts for a new day. I  sketched the following patterns countless times for anyone who might be mildly interested. The pattern on the left below shows how a constant-area rectangle of moisture must be deformed in a divergent streamline flow on an isentropic surface. That box of moisture would morph into a line and never proceed past the col and the two confluent asymptotes which comprise the deformation zone conceptual model. The approaching flow is split, with one curving cyclonically (probably rising) and the other turning anticyclonically (probably subsiding). The real atmosphere taught me these lessons.

The pattern above on the lower right illustrates what can happen when the straight-line deformation zone (DZ) is distorted. There are three distinct DZ flavours: Convex (above lower right); the Double Cyclonic Pattern and the Double Anticyclonic Pattern (below left). Convex and concave DZs are the same pattern of cyclonic and anticyclonic vortices, only differing in your perspective.

The shape of the deformation zone reveals the types and relative strengths of the four vortices that underlie the deformation-zone conceptual model. This provides a much deeper understanding of the weather without any mathematics. 

Search for any or all of "wind, waves and swells" in The Art and Science of Phil the Forecaster. There will be several posts that explain in more detail what follows below. One post you might consider is Wind Waves and Swells and Lines in the Sky

The most interesting flow in the atmosphere is the warm conveyor belt since it is responsible for most of the weather we experience. 

The jet core located between the X and the N in the above graphic is responsible for strong vertical motions, which essentially shake the isentropic levels of the atmosphere like a blanket. These vertical motions create strong wind waves like on the ocean. These waves propagate with the flow, evolving into swells, a long distance from where they were first created. The rising crests of the swell are more likely to be thick clouds than the descending wave troughs. The thicker clouds in the gravity waves make them more apparent to observers. It is important to remember that water vapour and clouds are tracers for atmospheric motions, but those motions are always present with or without tracers. 

The crests of the swells behave in the same manner as the constant-area boxes of cloud in my simple sketch above. Multiple lines of cloud and no cloud crowd into the deformation zone, one for each swell. 

Wind gravity waves superimposed on the swells can also be generated along the confluent asymptotes of the deformation zone. These gravity waves occur on both sides of those asymptotes but require tracers to make them visible. The best spot to see them is in the anticyclonic companion of the warm conveyor belt. The following graphic attempts to describe this process. 

Swell-Wind-Wave Graphic

The following is another attempt to describe the process. I had written "The Radar Palette - an Operational Approach to Radar Meteorology" for COMET back around 2009. It was modelled after "The Satellite Palette"  but remains unpublished. 

I realized that a bit more explanation was required to clearly describe the interaction of swells and wind waves. My hand-waving approach at the Weather Centre was sometimes sufficient but not for this. The Swell-Wind-Wave Graphic above was intended as a tool to deduce what the addition of gravity waves might look like for any condensation level. The following illustrates that application for the anticyclonic companion of the warm conveyor belt. The result reproduces what nature actually constructs. 

The above descriptions and conceptual models are intended to explain the remaining bits of meteorology that were included in #3023 "Next Adventure at Parry Sound". The patterns we see in nature really make sense. The laws of physics create the patterns effortlessly. With a little deduction, we can comprehend what they mean. The following graphic describes each of them.

Note that the blue sky only appears in the very bottom of the swell trough and the wind wave trough in my painting. The swells are quasi-perpendicular to the wind waves along the confluent asymptotes away from the deformation zone col. This is an example of condensation level 4 in the Swell-Wind-Wave Graphic. 

Finally, distinct deformation zones occur at different levels in the atmosphere, even though they may appear to be at the same level when looking down from a satellite perspective. Each quasi-horizontal cloud layer intersects the three-dimensional deformation skin, creating a linear feature. In contrast, gravity waves (wind waves and swells) occur on the same stable layer in the atmosphere. 

Gravity waves are always perpendicular to the flow creating them. The deformation zone parallels the generating flow when those winds are increasing in speed. In decreasing wind speeds, the deformation zone is perpendicular to those winds. 

The following real-life deformation zones viewed from the ground illustrate how the cloud lines intersect the three-dimensional deformation skin that encloses the warm and moist air mass. 

For more illustrations of the deformation zone conceptual model, you may be interested in the following. 

#2568 "Thursday Sunset Swells" ; #2991 "A Swell February Morning" ; Applied Conceptual Models on the Space and the Earth Views

Dustin Hoffman as Rain Man

This additional explanation was required to completely describe those Parry Sound clouds. It is unlikely that anyone else would explain these patterns except me.

I actually do an acceptable interpretation of Dustin Hoffman's "Rain Man," although I am not acting. Perhaps we are all on the spectrum... and that is not necessarily a bad thing. Being dyslexic has actually been good for my art and science.

Many thanks to my friend Cam for being intrigued by what he saw in the sky.

If anyone wandered this far into the murky depths of cloud lines and patterns, you deserve a "Gold Star". Thank you so very much for taking the time and caring about the yin and yang of cloud patterns and nature. 

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

Warmest regards, and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick  

#3034 "Fiddler's Elbow Wildfire Sunset"

#3034 "Fiddler's Elbow Wildfire Sunset"
24 X 20 (inches) Oils on canvas.
 Started at 9:00 am Saturday, August 1st, 2026

Fiddler's Elbow is the sharp turn between the Short and Long Reaches of Red Horse Lake. The images used to depict the unique character of Red Horse Lake in the Cataraqui Region Conservation Authority (CRCA) brochures all feature the Short Reach. Our home is even visible at Jim Day Rapids in the upper-left portion of photo 3. 

The Short Reach starts at the exit of Jim Day Rapids and extends to the sharp turn into Long Reach at Fiddler's Elbow. The CRCA Red Horse Lake Fact Sheet from 2017 does not explicitly include the Short Reach on its map. I believe this is in error, as there are no rapids at Fiddler's Elbow. The Short and Long Reaches of Red Horse Lake are at the same water levels. 

My friend John Verburg took this particular image after an excellent afternoon spent in the deep waters of Red Horse Lake. I have enjoyed many hours paddling the Short Reach, so I  knew it well.

#3034 "Fiddler's Elbow Wildfire Sunset"

The real background story behind #3034 "Fiddler's Elbow Wildfire Sunset" is, however, the Boreal Inferno. The global impacts of the Climate Crisis are just in their initial stages. The raging wildfires around the globe are just the start of the Century of Fire. The full impacts of the combustion of fossil fuels will span the following centuries with ever more dire catastrophes in the offing. Any last-minute disingenuous, political "heroics" to reduce atmospheric carbon might impact the intensity of the pending cataclysms but certainly not prevent them from occurring. Climate has incredible momentum, and the tipping points are already tumbling. 

The Earth has run out of time in just 200 years of releasing the fossilized carbon that was sequestered within Pandora's Box over the last 14 million years. These mind-boggling numbers measuring time raise the question. What is "time"? Humans, being clever, have answered some of that question.  

Sir Isaac Newton viewed time as a strict, universal river that flowed at the same speed everywhere, completely separate from space or observers. Most people still view time that way as a cause-followed-by-effect phenomenon. 

Albert Einstein proved that Newton's absolute time was wrong. Time is fused with the three dimensions of space into a four-dimensional flexible fabric described as "Spacetime". The speed at which time passes depends on how fast you move or the local strength of gravity.  Far out!

Time runs slower near heavy objects or at near-light speeds. In fact, time is a pliable fourth dimension woven with space, keeping the speed of light a constant. Massive objects like stars and planets distort the fabric of spacetime, like a heavy bowling ball resting on a trampoline

Theoretical physicists, including me, still struggle with time. How wonderful it would be if humans could turn back the last 200 years to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution around 1850! 

But time is something the Earth has run out of. The Climate Crisis will make the Earth unrecognizable and uninhabitable for most species within a geological blink of the eye. The climate of the Pleistocene rested on a knife-edge balance of the atmosphere. The constituents of the air were perfectly fair gatekeepers for equitable incoming solar and outgoing thermal radiation. This equilibrium maintained an average global temperature of 13.5°C to 13.8°C. The global average surface temperature in 2025 was the third-warmest year on record, estimated to be approximately 14.97°C to 15.08°C (with varying dataset baselines). The atmosphere also protected life from cosmic rays. Life was very good in Paradise.

Treating the atmosphere as a common garbage dump has pushed the constituents wildly out of stability. The climate that fostered incredible diversity of life has fallen off the wall like Humpty Dumpty. All the King's horses and men can't put it back together again... I was even lectured once that "the solution to pollution was dilution." That clever saying might rhyme, but the ideas are utter nonsense like Humpty Dumpty and glad-handing politicians. 

Data from July 29th to August 5th, 2026, while I painted this skyscape.
Red dots are active fire detections or thermal anomalies.

The result of such ignorance and arrogance is manifested by the current wildfires around the globe. Those wildfires provided the colourful hues in the sunset sky and the dangerous PM2.5 pollutants in the air we were breathing.

Time may still not be well understood, but it is already too late! Over time, humans have evolved to be very clever but have never achieved being collectively wise. 

So I stay home, paddle, paint and plant trees. It is a simple life, but it works for me. An artist friend of mine mentioned that life for them had become one of the band on the deck of the Titanic. Collectively, we continue with our creative artistic endeavours but are fully aware that the doomed ship must sink.

Ironically, the following article was published a month before the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912. The Titanic was recklessly travelling at its maximum service speed of 22 knots despite receiving multiple ice warnings. Remarkable arrogance...

Francis Molina’s article Remarkable Weather of 1911: The Effect of the Combustion of Coal on the Climate — What Scientists Predict for the Future was published in New York’s Popular Mechanics on March 1st, 1912.

Just a century later (not a few, as hoped for in Popular Mechanics), the Earth is in the verification stages of those dire, "considerable effects". Humans continue to race recklessly into the future, heedless of the warnings that were raised long before the 1912 Popular Mechanics article, dating back to the early 1800s.

The following collage includes the main steps it took to capture the fiery sunset skies due to the Boreal infernos. I take my time to get it right... Life should not be a rush.

I have painted Fiddlers Elbow before: Please see #1743 "Looks Like Thunder"; #1753 "Fiddlers Thunder"; and #2246 "Turtle Point" among several others from nearby locations. 

For this and much more art, click Fine Art America or go straight to Collections or the new Wet Paint Collection. Thank you so very much for reading, and stay well!

Warmest regards, and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick  

PS: Canada's Changing Climate Report 2026 (available for download here: https://lnkd.in/gJzV-rk4) is a good summary of the facts. Canada is warming, especially in the north; the fire season is getting longer, and the impacts of burning fossil fuels show no signs of abating. The deeds of Canada and much of the world are those of a hotrod racer with one foot flat out on the gas and the other pumping the brakes, or maybe pretending to (if it will get votes and dupe the populace). 

#3039 "Hazel-eyed Daisy"

 

#3039 "Hazel-eyed Daisy" 
8 X 10 (inches) oil on canvas.
Started 10:00 am Sunday, August 16th, 2026

I thought I would spend another hour or so with the clump of brown-eyed susans featured in #3038 "Singleton August Bouquet". Every painting will be different, even if the subject is the same. 

A "hazel-eyed daisy" poetically describes the classic ox-eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare). Technically, there is no such flower. 

I picked my own hazel-eyed daisy (her name was not Susan) on this date in 1975 - 51 years ago. It was the best decision I ever made ... although I was only half of that selection-making process. A life partner is the only choice that you have to get right the first time. All of your other decisions can be flawed, and you will still get by. Time really does fly when you are having fun. 

Wild and just a little bit crazy... 

An hour spent listening to nature is worthwhile
even if no one understands the art. 

Plein air work is best left alone after completing the brushwork in the field. The oils might be rough, and there will be complementary specks of burnt sienna-tinted canvas showing through, but those "imperfections" are more than just "OK". Any such "blemishes" make the art real. Actually, there are no mistakes in art, just happy accidents, and I own them all.

This is not AI-produced in any way! "Artificially" generated anything is, by definition, synthetic, fake, and just an imitation of what has already been done. AI really needs to be avoided, at least in my small world. The human touch, even with all of the inherent flaws are essential to make the art come alive. 

Step away from the easel and move on. Perhaps grab another canvas...

I have painted brown-eyed susans as well as daisies many times before... 

For this and much more art, click Fine Art America or go straight to Collections or the new Wet Paint Collection. If you enjoy this, you might like the Flower Collection...

Thank you so very much for reading, and stay well!

Warmest regards, and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick  

#3038 "Singleton August Bouquet"

#3038 "Singleton August Bouquet"
10 X 8 (inches) oil on canvas.
Started 10:30 am Thursday, August 13th, 2026

We had been admiring this clump of brown-eyed susans on the marble ridge all summer. August was starting to cool off. I needed to loosen up en plein air. The sun still got hot, but there was no smoke in the air. Even so, I had to add some finishing highlights in the studio where I could apply those with a steady hand. 

Brown-eyed Susan flowers are native to North America. They are also called Black-eyed Susan, Brown Betty, Ox-eye daisy, poor-land daisy, poor-man's daisy, yellow daisy and goodness knows what else. I prefer the "brown-eyed" name after the 1967 song by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison. These flowers were painted as they appeared on Thursday, ‎August ‎13th, 2026 at 10:30 am. Linda had admired these flowers, so I decided to give them a try on a seasonal day before it got hot with the afternoon thunderstorms. Those storms blew down some trees and probably structures from Newboro to Smiths Falls and probably beyond. 

Painting, "outstanding in the field..."

The black-eyed Susan flower (Rudbeckia hirta) belongs to the sunflower family and is the state flower of Maryland. It's also a medicinal herb believed to treat colds, flu and even snakebites. Black-eyed Susans are indigenous to many sections of North America. They were introduced into Europe from North America soon after Columbus's visits and were named by Linnaeus in 1753. Linnaeus gave them the Latin name Rudbeckia Hirta after his mentor Olaf Rudbeck. "Hirta" means rough and hairy. 

I have painted them before... 

The above features "Susan" in the name. There might be others in my portfolio. 

For this and much more art, click Fine Art America or go straight to Collections or the new Wet Paint Collection. If you enjoy this, you might like the Flower Collection...

Thank you so very much for reading, and stay well!

Warmest regards, and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick  

#3037 "Wildfire Skies at Singleton"

#3037 "Wildfire Skies at Singleton"
14 X 11 (inches) Oils on canvas.
Started at 10:30 am Monday, August 10th, 2026

My friend John Verburg took this image after an afternoon of swimming in the beautiful, deep waters of Red Horse Lake. This picture was taken just ten minutes after John composed the inspiration for #3034 "Fiddler's Elbow Wildfire Sunset" just downstream at the entrance to Long Reach. John Verburg's pontoon boat was very near N44.522211 W76.104719 when he paused to observe this next inspiration at the exit of Jim Day Rapids. John is always on the lookout for something that speaks to him. Typically, what inspires John to photograph also speaks to me, encouraging an interpretation in oils. 

The sky was literally on fire! Smoke from the wildfires in the Boreal Forest and the Rocky Mountains of Canada and the United States wafted all over North America. 

I needed to chronicle those skies for posterity. I am not Edvard Munch (1863-1944), nor is this his most famous work, "The Scream" from 1893. Otherwise, the comparison of witnessing the threats to nature is identical. 

As an aside, I have seen at least one version of "The Scream" at the Norwegian National Gallery in Oslo. I was nose-to-nose with countless other incredible works of art, including some selfies by Vincent! The  National Gallery in Oslo was one of the finest galleries I have ever had the opportunity to visit. 

Now back to the story... The Norwegian name of Munch's painting is Skrik, which is 'Scream' in English. The German title under which it was first exhibited is Der Schrei der Natur,  'The Scream of Nature' in English. The agonized face in the painting has become one of the most iconic images in art.

In his diary entry headed "Nice 22 January 1892", Munch wrote:

"One evening I was walking along a path, the city was on one side and the fjord below. I felt tired and ill. I stopped and looked out over the fjord – the sun was setting, and the clouds turning blood red. I sensed a scream passing through nature; it seemed to me that I heard the scream. I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood. The color shrieked. This became The Scream."

Munch later described his inspiration for the painting:

"I was walking along the road with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature."

Some scholars believe that Munch was describing a panic attack. They have located the spot along a fjord path overlooking Oslo. In 1893, that road on Ekeberg Hill was near Kristiania (present-day Oslo) and led to a house where the artist lived for a while.

There are various explanations for the unnaturally orange sky, ranging from the effects of a volcanic eruption to a psychological reaction by Munch to his sister's commitment at a nearby lunatic asylum.

Munch,1895, The Scream, Pastel

Munch created two versions in paint and two in pastels, as well as a lithograph stone from which several prints survive. Both painted versions have been stolen from public museums, but have since been recovered. Munch created several variations on this theme with different figures in the front right and versions of the two strolling gentlemen, sometimes looking over the edge.

 The 1895 pastel version (image to the right) sold at Sotheby's in New York in 2012 for $119,922,500. That set a new world record as the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction at that time. Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi currently holds the record for the most expensive artwork. It fetched $450.3 million at Christie's in New York in 2017. Neither artist saw a dime of that cash. 

The impacts of fossil fuel combustion were still a matter of conjecture in the 1890s, when 'The Scream of Nature' was becoming famous. Coal was big! The automobile and the discovery of vast reserves of "liquid gold" or "Texas Tea" were in the future with the Age of Oil. Francis Molina’s article Remarkable Weather of 1911: The Effect of the Combustion of Coal on the Climate — What Scientists Predict for the Future would not be published in New York’s Popular Mechanics until 1912.

Just a century later (not a few, as hoped for in Popular Mechanics), the Earth is in the verification stages of those dire forecasts. The corporate media has utterly failed to tell the story of what it means to release 14 million years of sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere in less than 200 years. Severe impacts are being observed daily. Informed citizens are challenging leaders to take drastic action. 

My goals are not so lofty. My painting will probably go unnoticed and is unlikely to have the impact of Munch's 'The Scream of Nature'.  I just wanted to put those smoky skies within the context of the Jim Day Swimming Hole. We frequent those classic red chairs when the atmosphere is not so full of smoke and those small yet hazardous particulates. The PM2.5 micron particles produced by combustion are 30 times smaller than a human hair! Those particles penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream, causing inflammation. Not good...

The story behind those smoky skies can also be found in #3032 "Killbear Lighthouse Smoky Sunrise" as well as several of my science blogs. The air quality in Toronto was the worst on the planet in July as a result of wildfires. Distant, catastrophic events can still have very local impacts. We are all in this together with nature. 

As a meteorologist, I have been appalled since very early in my career by the lack of political leadership. Politicians and corporate leaders have failed miserably to address the largest, existential issue that threatens all life on Earth. Even worse, political leaders have undermined research on climate change and the scientists involved in developing and disseminating those facts. Multiple "program reviews" and funding cuts to environmental services were the norm in Canada throughout my career. 

All of humanity should be screaming at the abuses of nature and the planet by the powerful, wealthy and well-connected few - simple, arrogant, ignorant greed at the expense of the "little blue planet". The following graphic summarizes the truth of this science...

A strong case can be made that the Canadian political war on science (the search for understanding and the truth) started even before the early 1980s, back to the sixties and the Avro Arrow. Canadian science was leading the world in many fields in the early 1960s, including meteorology. 

Somehow, that knowledge conflicted with the political view of Canada as a global energy superpower. The brand of the political party was irrelevant, as they all lusted for power and wealth. Fossil fuels had to be subsidized and rebranded as "energy", thus disguising their existential links to carbon. That conception continues to this day with escalating political sanctioning (support) of oil, gas, fracking, pipelines ... a very long and misguided list of so-called "nation-building" projects that includes the high-speed rail project, Alto. Shame.

Instead, political leaders should be sanctioning (punishing) those who continue to destroy the environment for personal profit. That too is a very long list. Clear-cutting forests, including ancient, old-growth ecosystems, at a time when carbon needs to be resequestered is just wrong as well as incredibly stupid. 

Ignorance is not bliss... please be informed. 

The colours are real, but being beyond human experience, like "The Scream of Nature", some may find them challenging to believe. I wanted the heat to shimmer in both the sky and the reflective waters. The science is clear, while the politics are murky at best.

The other story behind this composition is that climate change has created two empty chairs at sunset in the natural Singleton paradise… due to heat and the PM2.5 particulates. There will be millions of permanently empty chairs in 50 years... probably billions by 2100. 

For this and much more art, click Fine Art America or go straight to Collections or the new Wet Paint Collection. Thank you so very much for reading, and stay well!

Warmest regards, and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick  

PS: Canada's Changing Climate Report 2026 (available for download here: https://lnkd.in/gJzV-rk4) is a good summary of the facts. Canada is warming, especially in the north; the fire season is getting longer, and the impacts of burning fossil fuels show no abatement. The deeds of Canada and much of the world are those of a hotrod racer with one foot flat out on the gas and the other pumping the brakes, or maybe just pretending to. 

3036 "Eastern Towhee Thicket"

3036 "Eastern Towhee Thicket"
10 X 12 (inches) Oils on canvas.
Started at 10:30 am Friday, August 7th, 2026

My friend John Verburg provided an inspiring image of this Eastern Towhee. We enjoy quite a few of them at Singleton. 

Many details of the Eastern Towhee's natural history still remain poorly known. The towhee spends much of its time near or on the ground in dense habitats. Tough places for humans to watch them!

Socially, it is monogamous and territorial. The female builds the nest and incubates the eggs, but both parents provide care and mob any predators. Like most of its sparrow and bunting relatives, the Eastern Towhee uses a distinctive two-footed scratching, moon-walking dance to displace loose litter on the ground and uncover hidden prey. This behaviour is especially important in winter, when nearly all of its food comes from the ground. During the breeding season, it also hunts for insects and fruit in woody vegetation above ground. 

I find the eyes on the towhee to be a challenge. They are large and located ever so slightly differently from other birds. This is another attempt to get it right!

My parents and grandparents made sure that we had access to field guides. As a kid, I spent a lot of feral time wandering the forests and pastures with the Golden Field Guides. I carried a wooden rifle that my Dad carved out of a 2 by 4 with an eye-screw as a peep sight. He even painted it. There was no fear in the woods in those days or even now.  The Birds of North America was a favourite, and I still refer to it today. 

Here are a few of the steps in trying to breathe life into this Eastern Towhee... Every painting is an interesting challenge and an opportunity to learn. 

I have painted Eastern Towhees before... please see

• #2245 "Eastern Towhee"; 
• #2950 "Eastern Towhee Sing On"; and
• #2969 "Male Towhee Sing Long" 

For this and much more art, click Fine Art America or go straight to Collections or the new Wet Paint Collection. Thank you so very much for reading, and stay well!

Warmest regards, and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick