#2861 "My Ruffed Grouse Friend"

#2861 "My Ruffed Grouse Friend"
16x20 inches oils on canavs
Started June 4th, 2024

This is the sequel to #2857 "Ruffed Grouse". This particular ruffed grouse would accompany me as I worked on the trails within the forest. The sprouts of grass poking through last season's leaves were a promise of growth to come in the springtime forest. 

I think it is a young male but the sexes of ruffed grouse are challenging to decipher. The only difference is the extent of the dark ruff around the nape of the bird. During courtship activities, the male can fluff those feathers out to look more elegant and perhaps more attractive to the female. 

I took this picture of my new friend on our third encounter. I rarely take my camera into the forest when I am working but hoped that my ruffed grouse would come to see me. He did. I have seen him several times since and we have even walked together on the lane.

This painting was an exercise in "paint what you know". I know the birds and the forest very well. Plus I loved this little creature that should have displayed much more fear than it did toward humans. The simple goal in this painting was to strive to get better and to learn. 

John James Audubon (born Jean-Jacques Rabin, April 26, 1785 – January 27, 1851) was a French-American self-trained artist, naturalist, and ornithologist. 

About 1820, around the age of 35, Audubon declared his intention to paint every bird in North America. In his bird art, he mainly forsook oil paint, the medium of serious artists of the day, in favour of watercolours and pastel crayons (and occasionally pencil, charcoal, chalk, gouache, and pen and ink). As early as 1807, he developed a method of using wires and threads to hold dead birds in lifelike poses while he drew them.

John James Audubon's Birds of America is a portal into the natural world. It contains 435 life-size watercolours of North American birds.  The book was first published as a series in sections between 1827 and 1838, in Edinburgh and London.

My friend and I going for a walk in the Singleton Forest

For this and much more art, click on Pixels or go straight to the Collections. Here is the new Wet Paint 2024 Collection. 

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick 

#2860 "Male Yellow-shafted Northern Flicker"

#2860 "Male Yellow-shafted Northern Flicker"
16x20 inches oils on canvas started May 6th, 2024

We call these perky little woodpeckers "the aerator". They spend their time poking into the soil looking for insects and in doing so, loosen up the soil. They are entertaining to have around the property. This is another image taken by my friend, John Verburg, a naturalist and terrific photographer. The flicker was in the shadow of the dead tree stump working on a hole. The composition is unusual but very interesting.  

Flickers are the only woodpeckers that frequently feed on the ground. Their primary food is insects although they eat fruits, berries, seeds, and nuts. Ants alone can make up 45% of their diet. Northern flickers often break into underground ant colonies to get at the nutritious larvae there, hammering at the soil the way other woodpeckers drill into wood. They will even break up cow dung to eat the insects living within. Their tongues can dart out 2 inches beyond the end of the bill to catch prey. The northern flicker is a natural predator of the European corn borer, an invasive species of moth that costs the U.S. agriculture industry more than $1 billion annually in crop losses. 

The northern flicker or common flicker (Colaptes auratus) is a medium-sized bird of the woodpecker family. It is native to most of North America, parts of Central America, Cuba, and even the Cayman Islands It is one of the few woodpecker species that migrate. It typically arrives back at Singleton around April 12th. We keep track...

Over 100 common names for the northern flicker are known, including yellowhammer, clape, gaffer woodpecker, harry-wicket, heigh-ho, wake-up, walk-up, wick-up, yarrup, and gawker bird. Many of these names derive from attempts to imitate some of its calls. It is the state bird of Alabama. This bird's call is a sustained laugh, ki ki ki ki, quite different from that of the pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus). 

Like most woodpeckers, northern flickers drum on objects as a form of communication and territory defence. In such cases, the purpose is to make as loud a noise as possible, so woodpeckers sometimes drum on metal objects.

There are two easily distinguished races of Northern Flickers in North America: the red-shafted form of the West and the yellow-shafted form of the East. The key difference is the colour of the flight-feather shafts, which are either a lemon yellow or a rosy red. 

The Yellow-shafted Flicker have tan faces, gray crowns, and a solid red crescent on the nape. Males also sport a black mustache stripe as painted above. Red-shafted forms have a gray face, brown crown, and no nape crescent, with males showing a red mustache stripe. Hybrids look intermediate and are common at the edges of these two groups' ranges. 

As well as eating ants, northern flickers exhibit a behaviour known as anting, in which they use the formic acid from the ants to assist in preening, as it is useful in keeping them free of parasites.

The undulating flight of the flicker is typical of woodpeckers. The repeated cycle of a quick succession of flaps followed by a pause creates an effect comparable to a roller coaster.  When they fly you’ll see a flash of colour in the wings – yellow if you’re in the East, red if you’re in the West – and a bright white flash on the rump.

The oldest known yellow-shafted form of the Northern Flicker was a male and was at least 9 years, 2 months old when he was found in Florida. The oldest red-shafted form of Northern Flicker lived to be at least 8 years, 9 months old.

For this and much more art, click on Pixels or go straight to the Collections. Here is the new Wet Paint 2024 Collection. 

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick 

#2833 "The Sun of Whiskey Jack Bay"

#2833 "The Sun of Whiskey Jack Bay"
36x38 inches oils on canvas

The goal of this large canvas was to enhance the motion and perhaps the emotion of the scene. The virga falling from the top mixes with the light on the face of the distant clouds. Those brush strokes sweep into the outlines of the deciduous trees at the higher levels of the southern ridge, leading into the coniferous trees that line the shore of Whiskey Jack Bay. The white lines on the calm waters of the bay lead to the black spruces on the southern shore of the entrance to the bay. These trees lead both up and down. A path that sweeps downward leaps into the wave action of Canoe Lake and to the reflections of the black spruce on the western shore. The bright reflection of the soft maple should stop and hold your eye. Vertical lines lead to the source of the colour. The black spruce that surrounds the maple guides the eye back into the sky. The circle remains unbroken. That is what the sun can do to the nature of Whiskey Jack Bay. 

#1841 "October Bay"

This was based on #1841 "October Bay", one of a series of about 50 paintings based on a paddle around Canoe Lake on Sunday, October 2nd, 2016. I was all by myself as the weather forecast of torrential rain was a bit scary. Luckily, I knew about deformation zones. I had the quiet waters of Canoe Lake all to myself. 

I thought that  #1841 "October Bay" deserved a larger format so that is what I did in #1888 "Whiskey Jack Bay". That 22x26 inch stretcher frame had been built by my father Nelson Chadwick (1924-2001) in the 1980s so it was and is a special piece of canvas for me. I am still using stretcher frames built by my Dad from the 6x6 inch post of the family home at 24 East Avenue in Brockville, Ontario. Waste not, want not. 

I recognized the scene as one of the Tom Thomson weather records that I frequently include in my "Tom Thomson Was A Weatherman" presentation. Tom's record was of a cold frontal painting in autumn. The white box in the following graphic encloses the section of #1888 "Whiskey Jack Bay" that Tom painted.

As a result, this is a story of a journey and three paintings plus a fourth by perhaps Canada's greatest artist, the Canadian version of Vincent Van Gogh, Tom Thomson. They are all different as intended and by design. There are no rules in art and if there were, I would break them all... with intent. 

When I posted this painting on my Fine Art America site, Artificial Intelligence generated the following text:

"Vibrant brushstrokes in red, blue, and green hues capture a shimmering river bordered by trees under a colourful sky. The vivid, autumnal colours suggest a lively, impressionistic take on a natural landscape, evoking a sense of both tranquillity and dynamism."

The words are an automatic, computer-contrived complement but sounded nice...

Day 1 of  "The Sun of Whiskey Jack Bay"

This large studio painting was started at 10 am Wednesday, January 3rd, 2024. I have frozen my hands several times and the winter weather can keep me in the Singleton Studio - especially if the wind chill is significant. Over the intervening months, the canvas was loaded with layers of juicy oil. I was having fun. The design underwent several reinventions. A few people passed along suggestions. I listened as there was something to be said. I learn far more by paying attention than by talking. But in the end, there can only be one person holding the brush. Art is typically a solitary adventure anyway. Luckily, I paint for myself.

The canvas migrated back and forth from the display easel to the working easel conveniently positioned near the wood stove. I would apply oils wherever the inspiration mysteriously guided me until the canvas was all wet. At that point, the painting would shift back to display and further thought and deliberation. Five months of oil can really add up. 

There comes a moment though when one must step away from the easel. That time arrived on D-Day, June 6th. My father along with an entire generation of Canadians fought for ideals and a way of life. "The Greatest Generation" phrase is certainly apt. Their sacrifices and efforts allowed the following generations to flourish. 

A cold low and very wet day sometime in May with "The Sun of Whiskey Jack Bay"

Achieving creative mastery means making a thing and then trying to make a better one. We cherish the freedom to keep doing that until we die. That is a pretty good life thanks to "The Greatest Generation". 

This approach to creative mastery applies both to art and the science of meteorology. Perfection will never be achieved in either and besides, perfection is nebulous, highly over-rated and only in the eyes of someone else. Mastery is a personal thing and should only be in the opinion of the creative. I would encourage never empowering anyone else with that judgment over your work... just my opinion of course. 

There are twenty-eight paintings between January 3rd and today. Each was an opportunity to learn something - maybe even make a "better" piece of art, whatever you think that might be. For me, they are all steps in the creative journey and we have yet to find where that will go. 

For this and much more art, click on Pixels or go straight to the Collections. Series links to the Canoe Lake Collection from October 1916. Here is the new Wet Paint 2024 Collection. 

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick