#2964 "Bullfrog on the Log By the Bay"

 

#2964 "Bullfrog on the Log By the Bay"  
16 x 24 by 3/4 depth stretched canvas (inches)
Started 9:00 am Sunday, July 20th, 2025 

This is another image taken by my friend, John Verburg, a naturalist and terrific photographer. John provides a tremendous source of inspiration that encourages me to paint within the Singleton Studio when conditions outside are not conducive to plein air. I had just finished #2962 "Great Crested Flycatcher Friend", but both #2961 "Froggy Friend" and #2963 "Foggy Zen Sunrise at Peggy's Cove" were much too wet to work on without messing things up. There were Heat and Air Quality Advisories in effect outside. So I grabbed a fresh canvas and painted on. 

I was having such fun with bullfrogs that I selected another frog for a self-portrait. Like this bullfrog, I prefer to simply stay home and enjoy the peace and quiet with a near-zero carbon footprint. I look after nature and paint when have the opportunity and the energy. Every day is full of interesting things to see and do at Singleton. 

Art can be a wonderful way of life, making things. Make something, and then try to make a better one. The days, months and years pleasantly pass, trying to make better things until you die. That is a pretty good, creative life. 

Perhaps my self-portrait...keeping an eye on the world    

Little things catch my eye, and my goal is to give them a lasting voice in oils. Combining art and science into a search for truth yields a life full of curious creation and wonder. As an eternal student of nature, life is very good. This lifestyle is reminiscent of what it might have been on Walden's Pond in Concord, Massachusetts - only much nicer and in Canada. 

Henry David Thoreau, an American transcendentalist writer, published "Walden" or "Life in the Woods" in 1854. Thoreau built a rustic cabin near Walden Pond in a woods owned by his friend and mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson. The book reflects his simple life over the following two years, two months, and two days. I don't know why "two" was important. Too much of a coincidence.

Thoreau made precise scientific observations of many plants and animals, the colour and clarity of different bodies of water, precise dates and descriptions of the freezing and thawing of the pond. He measured the depth and shape of the bottom of the supposedly "bottomless" Walden Pond. These are all things that we do at Singleton Lake. Being inaccessible from an economic profit perspective, our Carolinian forest had never been logged, so it is especially rich with nature and some huge, unique trees. 

There is nothing really special about humans. The best among us display empathy for everything and everyone. In just a couple of hundred years, the greedy actions of a corrupt few with an overabundance of wealth and power, displaying mindless, voracious consumption, have sent atmospheric carbon soaring to levels last measured more than 16 million years ago - beyond comprehension. Think about that...

By the 1970s, Big Oil knew! Politicians knew. They had all been well briefed on the carbon crisis because scientists knew. Even meteorologists like me knew. The science had been developing since the early 1800s, and the existentialist alarms had been sounding ever since. Big Oil and politicians selected to do nothing. 

By the 2020s, half a century of opportunity had passed with nothing but lip service, obfuscation, and denial of the scientific facts. The wealthy elite in power persisted in guzzling the Coal Kool-Aid, greedily consuming more and more that could never be enough. This complete lack of empathy is beyond any scale of measurement when their actions pose the end of life on Earth. 

Sadly, those levels of carbon will end the 11,700-year-old Holocene. I have been unable to change that trajectory, but I tried... Words are never enough, and even pictures, worth a thousand words, are insufficient. Simple greed.

Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide levels climb with no hint of abatement in the Keeling Curve left.

Now back to sanity and art... The title of this painting is loosely based on "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay", a song co-written by soul singer Otis Redding and guitarist Steve Cropper. Redding recorded it twice in 1967, including just three days before he died in a plane crash on December 10, 1967. 

"Sittin' in the mornin' sun

I'll be sittin' when the evenin' come

Watching the ships roll in

And then I watch 'em roll away again, yeah…"

The pose of the bullfrog reminded me of  "boketto", the "act of gazing vacantly into the distance, lost in thought or in no thought at all". Those words, in turn, reminded me of the prose of the song lyrics. It is important to select distinctive titles, even though the chronological numbers are, by definition, unique to each painting. 

All creatures great and small have hopes and desires. This bullfrog watching the horizon from a log is really no different from me sitting in a red chair on the marble ridge overlooking Singleton Lake. Inspiration can be found around every corner if we just look with a curious mind and critical thought in a search for enlightenment, for truth. Sometimes a song is the product, but for me, it is typically a painting that may be more permanent. 

'It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.' – Henry David Thoreau 

Here is the pictorial story of just some of the steps taken in #2964 "Bullfrog on the Log By the Bay" that spanned a couple of weeks in July 2025 within the Singleton Studio.

I get a lot of time to think while I paint, as evidenced by the rather lengthy discourse above. Perhaps this is another self-portrait... warts and all. George Orwell's "1984" arrived in 2024. The forecast society was sadly accurate, although he missed the date by 40 years. Still a great prediction! 

For me, it is best to just stay home, surrounded by nature. But I must still continue the uphill struggle for an honest, democratic age of enlightenment in touch with nature and reality.

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