#2283 "Ominous Kingston Shore"

This was Day Two of the Paint the Town Kingston event of the Annual International Plein Air Painters (IPAP) Paint Out - affiliated with the Kingston School of Art 2019. The dark rolls of cloud to the west looked very ominous like shelf clouds associated with the outflow from a thunderstorm. In fact the September sun was just breaking down the radiational inversion. Northwesterly winds were organizing the moisture into streets of turbulent stratocumulus parallel to the wind direction.

These cyclonic winds extended all of the way to Post-Tropical Cyclone Dorian which was tracking northward across Nova Scotia as I painted.

I was faithful to the buildings on the western shore of the Cataraqui River. A large brush does not permit the details of any of the structures but the viewer's mind can fill those in. The Kingston Woolen Mill comprises the red brick buildings on the left side of the distant shore.

The Woolen Mill was built to last. This four-storey red brick building was constructed in 1882 when a group of Kingston businessmen needed a place in which they could produce cloth. The Dominion Textile Company were the original occupants and operated for upwards of 50 years. In 1987 The Woolen Mill was declared an historic building.

Some ducks were keeping me company. I could hear shooting to the north as the early hunting season on Canada geese had just opened.

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#2282 "Barriefield Green Bay Shore"

I stayed overnight in Barriefield. That meant that I was only minutes away from painting after a quick breakfast and coffee. A warm front had crossed the area overnight delivering just enough rain to wet the ground. I was painting by 7:15 am.

This was Day Two of the Paint the Town Kingston event of the Annual International Plein Air Painters (IPAP) Paint Out affiliated with the Kingston School of Art 2019. This view is from the very end of Knapp Street. Knapp is more of a dead end lane that takes a ninety degree right hand turn off James Street. I looked back eastward across Green Bay toward the Barriefield Shore and the boat house and homes. My painting spot the previous day was behind the large metal-clad boathouse on the right. You can also just make out the dilapidated boat house on the edge of this painting - just a few strokes of paint.

Gravity waves were evident at the top of the planetary boundary level. This is the layer of the atmosphere that exchanges heat, moisture and momentum with the earth. The stable level at the top of this mixing layer is most pronounced after a long night of radiational cooling at the ground. Gravity wave clouds mark this level in exactly the same way that waves identify the surface of a lake. The wind pattern was now under the influence of the cyclonic flow around Hurricane Dorian.

A female ruby throated hummingbird hovered just inches in front face for a few seconds while I painted and then darted to the assortment of flowers that grew along the shoreline beside and behind me. The humming sound of the car tires on the metal grates of the La Salle Causeway was a constant background noise. I much preferred the whirr of the wings of the hummingbird.

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#2281 "Barriefield Sunken Boat House"

This was Day One of the Paint the Town Kingston event of the Annual International Plein Air Painters (IPAP) Paint Out affiliated with the Kingston School of Art 2019. The day was getting late. There was no time to relocate to a better location plus I think this was the best spot anyway. Only a few artists remained.

I decided to have another go at the B and B - Barriefield Boathouse but this time only focus on the boat door. There was still some paint clinging to the weather boards. The record of the changing water levels was etched into those boards and the faded paint.

A beam was jammed into the opening to stop the wall from caving in. I think that the interior of the boat house was even in rougher shape and the occasional home of the mink, muskrat and the raccoons that I saw.

I was all by myself to finish this painting. It had been a busy day. Plein air is always fun.

The other paintings about this boathouse include #1458 "B and B - Barriefield Boathouse", #1459 "B and B Flip Side", #2278 "Barriefield Boathouse Door", and #2279 "Water Side Boathouse".

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#2280 "Barriefield White Door"

This was midday on Day One of the Paint the Town Kingston event of the Annual International Plein Air Painters (IPAP) Paint Out. This IPAP event was affiliated with the Kingston School of Art as it had been since 2015.

I decided to remain in the shade of the friendly willow tree. In 2015 this boat house was the subject of #1460 "Green Door B & B".
This day I decided to only paint the white door. The changing water levels were recorded in the stained paint. The metal roof was rusted and probably starting to leak. The walls were rusty as well. The future did not look bright for the Green Door B & B.

The waves from passing boats and jet skis would refract around the corner of the building occasionally leaving those ringed ripples which I included in the painting.

A muskrat played in the shallows in front of me while I painted. A furtive mink also came by. The ladies painting near me called them all otters. It was a beautiful day even as Hurricane Dorian chewed up the east coast of North America.

Barriefield White Door won one of the three awards! Congratulations!!! Our juror this year was Michele La Rose, and here's what she had to say:

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Phil Chadwick: Barriefield White Door
This little jewel has made an unassuming subject quite special indeed. Phil has taken the ordinary and made it extraordinary through effective cropping and a fine overall composition. It also feels like a pure abstraction to me, an important element in any style of art. It has a wonderful use of colour and pattern, a strong use of contrast in colour and value, and a lightness of touch that is commendable.
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#2279 "Water Side Boathouse"

This was Day One of the IPAP Paint the Town event affiliated with the Kingston School of Art 2019.
The sun was getting very oppressive so I decided to paint in the shade of a very large waterfront willow. This is the other side of the battered Barriefield Boathouse. I had painted this particular view as well in 1915 as

#1459 "B and B Flip Side". It had fallen into even greater disrepair in the past four years. The sad boathouse was not helped at all by the flooding and the higher water levels of the Great Lakes and the St Lawrence River. The story of the changing water levels were etched on the walls of the boathouse.

The other paintings about this particular boathouse include #1458 "B and B - Barriefield Boathouse", #1459 "B and B Flip Side", #2278 "Barriefield Boathouse Door", and #2279 "Water Side Boathouse".

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#2278 "Barriefield Boathouse Door"

Let's have some fun! This was Day One of the International Plein Air Painters (IPAP) Paint Out affiliated with the Kingston School of Art 2019. The Kingston event is locally called "Paint the Town". I naturally gravitated toward the waterfront. That is where I spent most of my time for the 2019 plein air event. That is also where I painted when the Paint the Town Kingston event was held in Barriefield in 2015. I had the oils flying on to the canvas by 10:15 am. I was delayed by some equipment failures on the solar microFIT.
Hurricane Dorian was also chewing up the east coast of North America.

This view is from the edge of Green Bay Road (Number 223 Green Bay Road) looking toward the old front door of a boathouse that had a lot of character. I liked the way the shadows of the willow leaves played across the sunlit side of the boathouse. It looked as though it had not been used much in recent years but in its day, it would have seen a lot of activity. This part of the Cataraqui River is called "Green Bay". The water levels were significantly higher than in 2015 and the shoreline structures had been damaged.

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#2277 "Singleton Summer Clouds"

I had some time to paint and the weather is always inspiring. Fair weather cumulus fueled by daytime heating from the August sun is always a favourite. These clouds are positively buoyant and uplifting both in a meteorological and mood sense. The painting is intended to be happy from the summer side of life as we prepare to fall into autumn. The cloud bases were flat at the lifted condensation level for the air mass. Dry parcels of air cool fast as they are lifted into higher realms of lower pressure and expand. Temperature, volume and pressure are all related through the ideal gas law. Turbulence was not a factor in lifting those air parcels from the ground to saturation as the cloud bases are not ragged and torn like the cuffs on old jeans.

The clouds were well reflected in the calm portions of the surface of Singleton Lake. The rippled water surface in the western basin of the lake tend to smear these reflections into the colourful average of chroma. Although this is a studio painting I tried to stay light and impressionistic with the brush strokes. Clouds are not white. The sky is not blue. Company was arriving soon after this sky inspired me so there was no opportunity to paint en plein air.

There was a light northwesterly breeze under the mainly sunny skies which is why the exposed west basin of Singleton was disturbed. The backlit cumulus were enhanced along the easterly extension of lake breeze convergence line from Lake Ontario which explains these particular clouds. A rain system was on the way in about 36 hours. The cirrus from this next system was still well to the west of Singleton. The daytime heating would be tempered when the cirrostratus arrived behind the deformation zone and these cumulus would fizzle.

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#2276 "Singleton Sunset Anvil"

I had been anticipating this thunderstorm all day. The flanking line of cumulus feeding into this thunderstorm cell was short but becoming increasingly more shallow and subdued. This thunderstorm was weakening with the sunset. There were striations in the southern flank of the updraft. The cloud at the tips of these tendrils was thinner and lacked the cumulus knuckles of a strong updraft. Fragments of the weakening updraft drifted along in the wake of the thunderstorm.

This cell moved well to the north of Singleton Lake but it looked much closer. It actually even passed to the north of Elgin. It died with the setting sun and we never got a drop from this line of convection.

The sunset colours were restricted to the lowest levels of the atmosphere. The pink band of cirrostratus on the western horizon looked like a typical deformation zone and foretold of more weather to come. The darker blues of altostratus hugged the horizon. The remaining bright oranges of the setting sun lasted only a few minutes. A couple of more thunderstorms actually did cross Singleton overnight and brought 10 millimetres of much needed precipitation in short and heavy downpours.

A light seems to be on all night. I included the unnecessary stab of Titanium white on the dark western shore of Singleton. It was already on before the thunderstorm passed by well to the north. Human pollution comes in all forms including light.

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#2275 "Shelf Cloud Sunup"

The thunderstorm complex that kept rumbling all night across southern Ontario and was finally reaching Singleton Lake in the early morning hours. The air was heavy with heat and humidity even at 8:30 am on Wednesday August 21st, 2019.

I took the memory into the studio the next day.

The warm air mass was extremely unstable. Several vertical towers erupted on the wedge of the shelf cloud itself. The dark shelf cloud is formed when the air pulled to the ground by the heavy thunderstorm rain spreads out and lifts the warm and moist surface air to the lifted condensation level. Torrential rain brought only about 10 mm of accumulation. That rain fell in a very short time though.

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#2274 "Dark Sunset Convective Cumulus Bases"

Stratocumulus clouds can be really quite beautiful. They are shaped by the terrain and the powerful interchanges between the atmosphere and the land. Stratocumulus are always in a state of flux resulting from these interchanges of heat, moisture and momentum. There was even a bit of virga which I included. These backlit stratocumulus look very dark in the final light of the day but they soon dissipated with the sun. These particular streets of stratocumulus were still rather quite convective. Weather is your friend.

This painting was just some fun in the studio working with old oils. I always include the bright lights of Wick Picks Lodge and Singleton Lake Campground.

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#2273 "Mullein Perches"

Mulleins on the Singleton shore make the perfect perch for insect eating birds. I do not discourage these tall mulleins as the birds and insects like them so much. They are now part of the natural landscape even though they are actually an invasive specie. The insect eating birds perch on the very top of these mulleins waiting for a hapless insect to appear. They pounce when the opportunity is right and are successful in getting their meal more often than not.

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#2272 "Dumoine Grande Chute Campfire"

This was Day Five of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) supported DRAW (Dumoine River Art for Wilderness) 2019. We were all eco-artists trying to assist with the awareness of the importance of wilderness in modern society. This is the last of this series unless I do larger studio versions this winter - any suggestions?

Don Smith would have certainly used this campsite for sure. The roar of the Dumoine as it pitched over the lip of the Grande Chute and down into the canyon would have been constant. The sound of the cascade muffles everything else and would certainly result in the deepest of sleeps possible.

Don was a canoeist and high school teacher who had the small business "Valley Ventures-Deep River" leading Dumoine trips. Those canoe adventures would have exposed many to the beauty of the Dumoine and the importance of the wilderness. Nature has a calming and healing influence on all who take the time to bask in the splendour. There was a sign in memory of Don Smith on the next outcropping down from this campsite. There were also some sticks in the fireplace all ready to start. Considerate campers typically leave behind a supply of dry wood for the next traveller. We always did. We also always packed out any garbage that might have been left behind. I made a couple of bucks in beer cans from this Dumoine Paint Out. Art does pay...

I had to get out of the August sun and paint in the shadows. I thought the quiet campfire would be fun. There was no heat coming from it. The large boulders around the camp had been smoothed and rolled into place by the huge current of the Dumoine in flood stage.

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#2271 "Dumoine Grande Chute Jumping Rock"

This was Day Five of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) supported DRAW (Dumoine River Art for Wilderness) 2019. We were all eco-artists trying to assist with the awareness of the importance of wilderness in modern society.

I moved downstream to the next rocky ledge to try one more painting of the Grand Chute. This location offered another hour or so of shade. It was getting hot. Cirrostratus had blanketed the sky. Rain was indeed on the way. The midday lighting is a challenge. The large rock in centre left is a favourite jumping rock just upstream from the quiet pool where I also like to swim. A family were enjoying the excitement of leaping into that pool while I painted.

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