#1972 "Entrance to Grande Chute"

Some of the CPAWS artists returned back to the bridge that crossed Grande Chute. Vic, Angela and Lynne were my painting partners.

I stood in the middle of the bridge looking up the inflow of the west channel that fed Grand Chute. This time I wanted to include the black spruce and trees on the island. The palette flipped onto the sand and gravel of the Grande Chute Bridge. Like all things that are sticky on one side, the painted side of the palette landed face down into the sand. The added texture that followed in the remaining paintings was authentic Grande Chute sand. The sand texture added something very earthy to the paintings and was not something you would be likely to find in any studio produced art.

A dark thunderstorm was approaching from the northwest. I painted exactly what I saw. The sky was ominous but I painted on...

Saturday was the 140th Anniversary of Tom Thomson's birth in 1877 in Claremont, Pickering Township about 50 km east of Toronto on Lake Ontario. Tom was the sixth of ten children. Tom was only two months old when the family moved to a farm in Leith, eleven km northeast of Owen Sound. Tom died much too early just shy of his 40th birthday on July 8, 1917. I hope that Tom would have been pleased with my plein air efforts on this special day.