#2716 "Singleton Sanctuary Shagbark Monarch"

#2716 "Singleton Sanctuary Shagbark Monarch"
14x11 oils on canvas

Shagbark Hickory 2006

This majestic shagbark tree and I are friends. I loved that tree from the first day we parked under it in the autumn of 2006. 

The twin stems are a concern for its health. There is rot around the roots of the tree and in between the stems. We have had a professional tree service company out to the Singleton Sanctuary twice. 

The cost of doing so and looking after the Singleton Forest was money well spent for nature. The squirrels and birds spend all of autumn harvesting the nuts. One year volunteers from the Leeds and Grenville Land Stewardship Council came and rubbed shoulders with the squirrels and collected thousands of hickory nuts as well. I also plant lots of these hickory nuts on our property and expect a bountiful forest in the decades to come. This tree on the northern fringe of the Carolinian deciduous forest is the parent to countless other trees and the next generation. 

The November sun was in the southwestern sky so I set my easel up on the porch and enjoyed the warmth on my back. The sounds of the squirrels and the birds filled the air. Nuthatches make a very peculiar and distinctive chatter that I really enjoy. 

Sadly, the Ontario  Ministry of Natural Resources (OMNR) ceased supporting the Land Stewardship Programs in April 2013. It was one of the few government programs that really provided hands-on projects and positive results. The local Leeds-Grenville Stewardship Council (LGSC) has made a commitment to continue this important work. 

Sadly, governments are generally unsupportive of the efforts of Land Stewardship Programs and Conservation Authorities but politicians still show up whenever there might be a photo opportunity. 

We had won a national Land Stewardship Award in 2005 for our work on the Oak Ridges Moraine and were simply repeating our efforts at Singleton. It is the right thing to do, with or without government assistance. It does hurt though when the actions of the politicians are quite in the opposite direction as is currently the case - shame. 

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Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick

#2715 "Jim Day Rapids Shoreline Shadows"

#2715 "Jim Day Rapids Shoreline Shadows"
6x6 canvas oils

The beautiful day was certainly too nice to work. 

After completing #2714 "Red Chairs Overlooking the Jim Day Rapids Swimming Hole" I just turned the easel a bit. I included the red chairs on top of the marble ridge that overlooks Singleton Lake. The sun was on my back and it felt delicious. "Walter" our resident large fish jumped nearby and startled me. Walter apparently left show business on Golden Pond and retired to Jim Day Rapids. We are friends. 

My goal was to have fun with the juicy oils on my twin palettes. I was not wearing my glasses and the details were not important anyway. 

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Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick

#2714 "Red Chairs Overlooking the Jim Day Rapids Swimming Hole"

#2714 "Red Chairs Overlooking the Jim Day Rapids Swimming Hole"
6x6 inch canvas oils

It was a beautiful sunny day - far too nice to work. "Walter" our resident very large fish that shared the swimming hole with me, jumped several times.

We keep red chairs on our floating dock. Jim Day Rapids is typically sheltered from the prevailing southwesterly winds. It is a very special and serene place to spend some time surrounded by nature and the sounds therein. Henry David Thoreau thoroughly enjoyed Walden's Pond. The Singleton Sanctuary works for us. 

Art is supposed to be fun. Recording the shapes, colours and sounds with a too-large brush and using lots of oils is the recipe for bold strokes with strong colours. I simply let the oils flow and did not need to please anyone but myself and Walter. 

Walden, Thoreau's most famous writing articulating the essence of Transcendentalism, was published in 1854.  It reflects the meaning of life like the calm waters of Jim Day Rapids on that November morning. 

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Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick

#2713 "Curly Hook Cirrus Sunset"

#2713 "Curly Hook Cirrus Sunset"
14x18 inches oils on canvas

This is a red and orange sunset from 6:20 pm on Sunday, October 23rd, 2022. The mare's tails stretch out along the strong wind. When the wind weakens even just a little bit, the swirls form in the atmospheric frame of reference. These swirls all appear to be anticyclonic using my Coriolis hand as a gauge. The anticyclonic companion of the warm conveyor belt is typically the first to arrive at Singleton Lake. The clouds all have stories to tell. 

Cirrus uncinus is a type of cirrus cloud. The name cirrus uncinus is derived from Latin, meaning "curly hooks". Also known as mares' tails, these clouds are generally sparse in the sky and very thin. The clouds occur at high altitudes, at a temperature of about −50 to −40 °C (−58 to −40 °F). They are generally seen when a warm or occluded front is approaching. 

For this and much more art, click on Pixels.

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick

#2712 "Jim Day Windy October Afternoon"

#2712 "Jim Day Windy October Afternoon"
9x12 oils on canvas

Around midday, I watched a group of six kayakers riding the southwesterly winds down Singleton Lake and through Jim Day Rapids. I would have loved to paddle with them but I had chores to do. 

I had caught up with my duties around 1 pm and headed out to paint. The sun would still be a bit on my back if I headed down to Jim Day Rapids so that is what I did. After laying in the composition, I heard some voices behind me. The kayakers had returned and they called me by name. I was surprised to see a friend I had known since I was five years old with the group.  Her family were our neighbours on Howard Road when we first moved to Brockville. She had an aptly named pony "Nipper"… but in 2022 she had a kayak. Another friend who I worked with on a project was with the group as well.

This time they were facing a headwind up the length of Singleton Lake. It would not be an easy paddle. One of the group kindly took some pictures of me painting - something that I do not enjoy very often. The images tell a story of a sunny but windy afternoon at Jim Day Rapids. What a wonderful way to spend some time. 

This painting was all about subtle colour variations and loose brushwork. The experience also included a warm October sun on my back and enjoying the wind in the shelter of the trees on the marble point. 

For this and much more art, click on Pixels.

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick

#2711 "Jim Day Sunrise Steam Fog"

#2711 "Jim Day Sunrise Steam Fog"
10x12 by 1/2 inches oils

I knew that the wind would develop by mid-morning when the radiational inversion broke down, so I decided to head out for a paddle around Singleton Lake while the water was like glass. The air was cold enough to support steam fog. It had been a while since I painted steam devils so I thought that it would be good to try them again. The story can be found in the title. This is looking southeastward around 7 am in the morning. 

I did manage to paddle around Singleton before the southwesterly winds picked up. 

I enjoy working on these smooth and slippery surfaces. It encourages one to mix the correct colour, load the brush, lay the oils in the right place and move on. Too much brushwork can quickly make the colours muddy. 

For this and much more art, click on Pixels.

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick

#2710 "Cold Low Rain Sunset"

#2710 "Cold Low Rain Sunset" 10x12 by 0.5 inches
oils on smooth panel

This is the way the sunset looked an hour and a half after #2706 "October Afternoon Between the Rain Bands". 

There was a bright glow on the western horizon. The setting sun was getting through the cold low rain bands. There was rain overhead and the next band was approaching over Napanee. The light from the setting sun threaded the needle between the two lines of overcast. Sometimes you have to look in order to see. 

My goal was to play with the colours.

It was a very smooth and slippery surface that I had prepared a couple of years before. This was the start of the autumn sunset series from 2022. 

For this and much more art, click on Pixels.

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick

#2709 "Sugar Maple Tree Tunnel in Autumn"

#2709 "Sugar Maple Tree Tunnel in Autumn"
12x10 by 1/2 inch panel oils

The cloud edge described in #2708 "Back-Lit Sunrise Autumn Maple" was close but it still had not arrived so I decided to try another, brilliantly illuminated scene of the Singleton Sanctuary Forest. I have painted this pair of sugar maples to the right before. I have even painted the sugar maples that lined the tree tunnel to the left several times. I do not need to go very far for inspiration. 

The overcast skies arrived when I was pretty much done. A few touch-ups could be done later. The next rain band would arrive around 2 pm even though it was fairly close even at 11 am when I finished. Cold lows are interesting weather phenomena to predict. Sunny skies and be replaced by overcast clouds and heavy rain several times in the course of a single day. As an aside, I saw a really large and interesting walking stick while I painted. 

A beautiful rainbow finished the day. This rainbow displayed the supernumerary bows below the violet band. The cold low raindrops are not perfect prisms and the sun is not a point source of light either (about half of a degree in diameter). Raindrops have round sides and are not even perfectly spherical. As a result, the light entering the raindrops is refracted at different angles, reflected inside the drop at different angles again only to be refracted again at different angles upon emerging back into the atmosphere. The colours of the rainbow are spread out from the narrow concentrated band that is the average of the raindrop geometry. The supernumerary arcs of colour at the bottom of the rainbow are the result of the rainbow colours being spread out along with the interference patterns that result when waves and particles interact. It is enough to simply enjoy the show though. I do like to understand the physics though. 

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Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick

#2708 "Back-Lit Sunrise Autumn Maple"

#2708 "Back-Lit Sunrise Autumn Maple"
7x5 inches oils

The October sun was just bursting over the forest canopy. The luxuriant maple just to the south of the Singleton Studio was brilliantly bathed in light and the colours of autumn. 

Visible Satellite Image Showing the Overcast 
Clouds on the Singleton doorstep

I could see the overcast skies to the west so this was a bit of a race. Sunlight can be fleeting and I do not paint at the speed of light - fast but not that fast. 

I wanted to slap in the simple, brilliant colours with the sun charging through the young sugar maple tree. No details. Just colours and shapes. It was a small panel and I did not fuss with the brushwork trying to keep the colours clean. 

• Load the brush;
• drop the colours in the right spot;
• leave it;
• Repeat. 

It was a beautiful sunny day outside but I could not afford the minutes required to move my easel outside. I put the small panel on an easel that was already facing the window from my efforts the previous day. This was the view from outside the Studio window looking toward the southeast. 

For this and much more art, click on Pixels.

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick

#2707 "October Colours on Long Reach Lane Between the Rain Bands"

#2707 "October Colours on Long Reach Lane
Between the Rain Bands" 5x7 inches oils

There was still some daylight left so I headed to the front porch under the ancient shagbark hickory. I wanted to record the autumn colours before the leaves were all stripped from the trees. The approaching cold and blustery winds would arrive on Thursday behind the cold low. 

I painted to the chatter of nuthatches and squirrels. The turkeys came around to inspect what I was doing as well. A few deer strolled out of the forest and started to graze on the clover by the solar panels. The Singleton Sanctuary can be idyllic. 

I have painted the characteristic white pines of Long Reach Lane several times. The tall pines reach up into the sky. The Carolina forest hardwoods were still brilliant in spite of the heavy rain. A sprinkle of pines, cedars and hemlock complete the colours in the Singleton forest. This would be a very different scene in a couple of days after the strong northwest winds behind the cold low strip the remaining leaves from the forest. I had best use up the colours on my palette before then. 

For this and much more art, click on Pixels.

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick

#2706 "October Afternoon Between the Rain Bands"

#2706 "October Afternoon Between the Rain Bands"
5x7 inches oils

I decided to take the opportunity between the bands of cold low rain to go out and paint some clouds. It had rained hard most of the day. I was confined to the Singleton Sanctuary in the morning to look out the window. I had given the turkeys some corn so they were milling about as I painted. Wild turkeys make a lot of interesting sounds as they communicate back and forth. 

The cyclonic centre of the cold low pattern was still far to the west over Lake Huron. The cold low air mass was convectively unstable to begin with. Rain bands spun around the cold low like spiral spokes on a wheel. The opportunities for plein-air painting would be limited to those short periods between the spokes. Colder air would follow behind the cold low. Heavier bands of rain and snow were bound to develop when that air crossed the still relatively warm Great Lakes. The rest of the week would be much more like winter... 

I revisited this sunset again at 6 pm in #2710 "Cold Low Rain Sunset". What a difference an hour and a half makes in the sky. 

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Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick

#2705 "Rainy Monday Autumn Colours"

#2705 "Rainy Monday Autumn Colours"
12x10 inches oils on panel

This is the view toward the southeast and the adjacent marble ridge. Marble ridges of rock are dominant in the Singleton Lake portion of the Frontenac Arch Biosphere. The ridges all run from the southwest to the northeast where they submerge and transform the landscape into farmable soils. This granite and gneiss and schist bedrock dates to nearly a billion years ago, when shifting plates of the earth's crust collided and pushed an enormous range of mountains into existence. These mountains ran southwest to northeast. Over hundreds of millions of years, the softer rock of the mountain peaks weathered away, leaving only the "roots" of the mountains. This durable rock cradles Singleton Lake today. The northeast-southwest trend of the ridges and valleys belies the orientation of the long-eroded mountains. The shape of the lake is molded by the pattern of the slopes and valleys of the old mountain roots. While glaciers gouged and rounded and deepened and broadened the old valleys over millennia, the topography today is not unlike that of hundreds of millions of years ago. 

The autumn colours that were the subject of this painting are actually those of the Carolinian Forest. The Carolinian life zone is actually the northernmost edge of the deciduous forest region in eastern North America and is named after the Carolina states. Carolinian Canada is a unique ecosystem zone found in southern Ontario. The Carolinian zone in Canada is extremely rich in both plant and animal species. The accompanying map shows the extent of the Carolinian Forest in Southern Ontario in 2007. Another investigation in 2016 stated that less than 15 percent of it remains in scattered stands across southern Ontario. Climate change will extend the possible range of the Carolinian zone northward but it is unclear if ongoing development will be allowed to continue to decimate the Carolinian Ecosystem. 

The Carolina forest hardwoods have cloaked the slope with a smattering of pines, cedars and hemlock mixed in. The colours were brilliant but somewhat subdued by the heavy rain. I don't classify these as plein air works as I was not out painting in the elements. Instead, I was inside with the wood stove crackling away and the tunes on in the background. I still play CDs and have a very eclectic collection. I am very old school. 

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Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick

#2704 "Heritage Sugar Maple"

#2704 "Heritage Sugar Maple"
14x18 inches oils

This maple was in its last decade or so. The woodpeckers were opening up some holes in search of the bugs that were certainly invading the tree. One very large tree limb was on the ground where it possibly fell due to the 1998 Ice Storm and as I had painted previously. This Singleton Sugar Maple was likely at least a good-sized tree for the War of 1812. Size is not always related to age though. Cedars on the Niagara Escarpment are 2000 years old (measured to be 1890 years old in 2014) and have circumferences that measure just a few inches. Life like art, is not a competition and I am just happy that both old trees are still alive. 

This maple has a circumference of 135 inches (11.25 feet) at 36 inches above the ground. Simple math gives the diameter of this tree of about 43 inches. The Comfort Sugar Maple tree has a 20-foot circumference at the base which is larger than the 11.25 feet circumference of the Singleton Maple which I measured a bit higher. The Comfort Sugar Maple near North Pelham, Niagara Region, was a sprout when Columbus navigated to the New World in 1492. 

#2454 "Singleton Sugar Maple"
8x10 Plein Air Oil 

I have painted this mighty sugar maple before in #2646 "Singleton Sugar Maple Matriarch", #2454 "Singleton Sugar Maple" and #2471 "Pioneer Sugar Maple". 

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Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick