#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