#1319 "Water's Edge"

#1319 "Water's Edge"
8x10 oils on canvas 
2pm Wednesday, August 7th, 2013

The cold front was fast approaching and the sky was simply a mass of gray with the occasional sunny break. I turned to the lake shore for inspiration. 

This is the view toward the south looking across Jim Day Rapids. Duckweed hugged the shoreline while out in the current the faster water was completely open. Silver and soft maples grow right to the water's edge. In the spring the water is at least a couple of feet up the trunks but the trees seem to survive the month or two of drowning quite nicely. 

I wanted to capture the feeling of the place without painting every blade of grass.  

For this and much more art, click on Pixels. For themes of my art, visit Collections. 

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick 

#2826 "September Sunday Drizzle with Sunflowers"

#2826 "September Sunday Drizzle with Sunflowers"
7x5 inches oils on canvas panel

This time after completing #2825 "Sunday Morning Drizzle and Sunflowers" I just stayed in the same place to record the large sunflower bloom that hung down with the weight of the hundreds of seeds. Each sunflower head can contain as many as 1,000 to 2,000 seeds. I would have preferred looking up into the flower but the plant was too short or I was too tall. So I simply painted what I saw looking almost down at the giant flower head. 

The skies were still overcast with drizzle. We received only 3.4 millimetres overnight from this weather event and the lake levels were low.

The squirrels left their footprints all over the bags
of prime soil after they found and ate the
hickory nuts I had planted there. 

The scurry of squirrels was busy eating, burying and digging up hickory nuts. They even found my bags of top-grade soil in which I had cut small openings through which I planted prime, healthy-looking shagbark hickory nuts. The squirrels found and ate these too. I would have to protect these bags with my turtle guards and replant. The goal was to have vibrant, healthy shagbark hickory sprouts to transplant in the forest in the spring. 

After I left the scene, a flock of little chipping sparrows swooped and appeared to find much to forage on. 

This was the final panel for the 2023 edition of the Annual IPAP Worldwide Paint Out.

For this and much more art, click on Pixels or here to go straight to the Flower Collection.

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick 

#2825 "Sunday Morning Drizzle and Sunflowers"

#2825 "Sunday Morning Drizzle and Sunflowers"
7x5 inches oils on canvas panel

This was the third and final day of the 2023 International Plein Air Painters (IPAP) Worldwide Paint Out. The tragic events that occurred on September 11 many years ago changed the world. IPAP began as a direct response to "911". I tend to be a solitary artist but am a Charter and Signature Member of this group dedicated to creativity and looking for something positive out of tragedy. On the second weekend of September 2002, the first Worldwide Paint Out was held to honour those lost on 911. I have participated every year ever since. At one time I organized large group paint-outs...

The wise phrase "cirrostratus coming at us" had correctly predicted the rainy weather overnight. Sunday morning dawned to a grey overcast sky with drizzle. 

The weather did not slow nature at all. Nor did it impede my brushwork on a small canvas panel. My painting location had come full circle cyclonically since Friday morning on this third day of the Annual IPAP Worldwide Paint Out. I was still optimistic that something fun and perhaps exceptional might come from my efforts with the oils. 

The corvid crows were announcing my every move to anyone listening. Their raucous calls filled the air. I remember from my nature reading that their calls that numbered four in a row warned of a dangerous intruder within their vicinity. That would be me. The murder of crows should have realized by now that I was their friend but one cannot be too careful! 

A curious seagull buzzed just above me as I painted. I could feel the air from its wings. 

 Occasionally the drizzle transformed into light rain. I was not going to melt and kept on painting. 

For this and much more art, click on Pixels or here to go straight to the Flower Collection.

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick 

#2824 "September Saturday Afternoon Sunflowers"

#2824 "September Saturday Afternoon Sunflowers"
7x5 inches oils on canvas panel

This was the second day of the annual International Plein Air Painters (IPAP) Worldwide Paint Out. The tragic events that occurred on September 11 many years ago changed the world. IPAP began as a direct response to 911. I tend to be a solitary artist but am a Charter Member of this group dedicated to creativity and looking for something positive out of tragedy. On the second weekend of September 2002, the first 1st Worldwide Paint Out was held to honour those lost on 911. I have participated every year ever since. 

Cirrus clouds were thickening up on the southwestern horizon foretelling of the rain that would fall overnight. As the saying goes, "cirrostratus coming at us" accurately describes the approach of the warm conveyor belt of a mid-latitude weather system. 

There was still a window of time during the early afternoon to revisit the sunflowers in the front garden. I continued rotating cyclonically around the tower of blooms just as I had the previous day. I wished to investigate the sunflowers from every angle.

There were several small bumblebees working the sunflower blooms. Sadly, I did not see any honey bees. 

The afternoon sun got very hot! It became far too hot for painting but not too balmy for swimming. I went and followed the sage advice that I am often given, and jumped in the lake. 

For this and much more art, click on Pixels or here to go straight to the Flower Collection.

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick 

#2823 "September Early Afternoon Sunflowers"

#2823 "September Early Afternoon Sunflowers"
7x5 inches oils on canvas panel

I kept rotating cyclonically after completing #2822 "September Midday Sunflowers". Meteorologically speaking and using my Coriolis hand, that rotation keeps me positive and my thumb pointing upwards. This is the view of the same cluster of sunflowers but looking toward the century-old shagbark hickory. 

A "scurry" of squirrels was busy harvesting nuts. A group of squirrels may also be called a "dray, " referring to a squirrel mother and her young. For those who do not care to be too grammatically precise, you might also call the twenty or so squirrels scurrying around the huge shagbark hickory a "herd".

There were a lot of creatures including birds, harvesting the thousands of hickory nuts. The squirrels would climb the tree out to the flimsiest limbs and chew off clusters of nuts. Shagbark hickory nuts typically develop in clusters of two and sometimes three nuts. The squirrels would then hurry to the ground to collect their harvest before other marauding rodents made off with them. 

Painting is work; I called it a day at the end of this fun little painting. I went for a long swim in Jim Day Rapids. Life is good when surrounded by nature and sunflowers.

For this and much more art, click on Pixels or here to go straight to the Flower Collection.

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick 

#2822 "September Midday Sunflowers"

#2822 "September Midday Sunflowers"
7x5 inches oils on canvas panel 

I did not wish to overwork #2821 "September Morn Sunflowers" so I quickly grabbed another panel and moved cyclonically around the base of the grouping of sunflowers. These plants were modest in stature. One year I painted a towering twelve-foot giant of a sunflower. 

The lake was quiet. Painting was blissful and I found the zone surrounded by nature. 

For this and much more art, click Pixels or here to go straight to the Flower Collection.

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick 

#2821 "September Morn Sunflowers"

#2821 "September Morn Sunflowers"
7x5 inches oils on canvas panel

It was a beautiful day and I wanted to paint. The International Plein Air Painters is one of the very, very few organizations that I belong to. I am not a joiner. 

At one time I organized groups to celebrate and participate in the annual IPAP Worldwide Paint Out. This year I decided that I would just stay home and celebrate the beauty outside my front door. For me, art tends to be a solitary activity anyway as I try to immerse myself in the moment while surrounded by nature. Having a lot of distractions around tends to pull you out of the artistic zone that you really need to be fully immersed in - almost drowning in natural inspiration. 

The atmosphere was very quiet save for the birds and the bees. Small bumble bees were really working the sunflowers. 

I used bold brush strokes endeavouring to keep my colours clean. Yellow is one of those colours that can very quickly turn grey. 

There were still a few persistent biting mosquitoes and they found me.

The sunflower is inspirational. It stands tall and turns to the sun while inviting all kinds of nature to its shelter and sustenance. I have at least forty paintings of sunflowers since 1967... 

I was still in my summer wardrobe of swimming suit and T-shirt (Until October 7th, 2023)

A very tall sunflower from September 2020. 

For this and much more art, click on Pixels or here to go straight to the Flower Collection.

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick