#2981 "Singleton October Sunset on Summer"

#2981 "Singleton October Sunset on Summer"
20 x 16 oils on canvas.
Started at 10 am on Friday, October 31st, 2025

The chores were done, and it was time to enjoy the quiet of Singleton Lake on a summer-like evening. Sunset was fast approaching on Monday, October 6th. There was also a cold front on the way, and conditions would be very different in just 12 hours. 

The nearest point on Highway 15 was 7 kilometres away to the west, but the sounds of the traffic carried far under the developing radiational inversion. Cars and trucks were shifting gears in a frenzy to get to where they were going. The rumble of engines sometimes increased to a roar as they raced along. The speed limit is posted as 80 km/h, but apparently, motorists view that as merely a suggestion and not a law. Commuters typically whistle along at speeds in excess of 100 km/h. 

There were other sounds to hear. I much preferred the mooing cows and the "who cooks for you" question posed by the barred owls. The wail of the loons echoed across the lake. Mourning doves flocked to the shallow natural pool depression in the marble ridge for a bath. They would soon flock to their roost. The sunset beavers drew V-shaped wakes in the calm surface of the lake as they headed to harvest trees on our shoreline for midnight snacks. 

The wind picked up briefly just as the sun reached the western horizon and then quickly settled again. The redistribution of mass follows the sunset around the globe, but is probably noticed by very few. The last convective exhalation of the day rises weakly to be replaced by the strengthening cool downdraft gusts of night. The turbulence of the final gasps of a warm, sunny day, with the contrasting radiational cooling of sunset, can set the leaves rustling in a dizzy display for a few moments… then all is still and cool and calm. 

We refer to the last cool turbulence of the day as the "sunset whisper wind". We look for it daily. The trees on the waterfront and the rose bushes beside the sunroom are the best measuring devices. The rustling branches and leaves typically last only minutes. Even I can hear them.

The Hunter's full supermoon rose in the east as the sun set in the west. It was wonderful to see at least one bat darting around in the twilight, catching bugs. There were no bugs biting me as I sat quietly in the outside chairs. 

I had yet to touch a brush to canvas, but I needed to get this story down before I forgot all that I found inspiring. 

You might wonder why I go to such lengths to explain the motivation behind my art. Shouldn't you be spending more time painting? That is a very valid question, given the time and effort it requires to complete these blogs. I no longer have access to the rich, scientific data sources I enjoyed while with the Atmospheric Environment Service and then Environment Canada, so I must work with what I have time to find and cobble together. The answer is twofold. 

• Sharing the wonders of nature with others might prompt empathy for the beauties and mysteries of the world around us. Nature can be most beneficial for health and happiness in these crazy times. Caring could lead to action to help preserve nature and make us all better stewards of the land. 
• The effort also allows me to learn and relearn science that was once second nature for me when every day was filled with investigation into the wonders of weather and climate.  

These investigations could go deeper into the science with better data, but there is neither time nor need to turn these brush stroke exercises into rocket science. We can all learn from just watching the clouds. 

The patterns in the sunset sky told of one cold front. Those lines stretching perpendicular to their motion were deformation zones. Given that the October temperatures were in the mid-twenties Celsius, those lines in the sky had to be the portent of a cold front. Every line in the sky, including frontal boundaries are deformation zones - my favourite meteorological conceptual model. 

I had to look at the bigger picture of the water vapour image to discover the second and colder cold front. 

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 

#2980 "Singleton Sunset Golden Hour Before the Showers"

#2980 "Singleton Sunset Golden Hour Before the Showers" 
16 x 20 oils on canvas
started at 9:15 am on Thursday, October 30th, 2025

It is not vital to understand the meteorology behind the sky of every painting. However, I find it interesting and like to share a bit of science as well as art. 

A quasistationary frontal system was draped west to east across the Great Lakes within the cold trough mentioned in #2979 "Singleton Sunrise Sunday September 14th".  Such a weather system must be weak without any significant vertical depth. If the air mass is convectively unstable, the fronts can trigger showers, which are always welcomed in a drought situation. 

Singleton Lake was barely on the cold, baroclinic side of the front at sunset. The warm sector was clear of clouds. A deck of clouds stretched along and to the north of the front. That is the sky I painted. The rich and warm colours on the western horizon caught my eye at 5:45 pm on that Friday evening in late September (September 26th, 2025). 

As I recall, the showers passed just to our north. We received no relief from the drought at Singleton. The rain was expected to miss us, given the west-to-east orientation of the front. 

The record-low water levels revealed some structures we had never seen before. I could walk across Jim Day Rapids and just get my feet wet. The three rocky shoals were bona fide islands and large enough to support trees. Most notable was a singular rock labelled as "4" in the following graphic. It reminded un os a swimming bear. We actually see quite a few swimming bears. 

The red chairs on our waterfront are well used. There is always something interesting to see and talk about. Of course, being Canadian, there is always the weather to talk about. 

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 

#2979 "Singleton Sunrise Sunday September 14th"

#2979 "Singleton Sunrise Sunday September 14th"
16 x 20 oils on canvas started at
9:15 am on Thursday, October 30th, 2025

John Verburg took this picture of a beautiful sunrise, probably from very close to where he was standing to take the image recorded in #2976 "September Singleton Sunset over Point Paradise". This sunrise sky was viewed on Sunday, September 14th, 2025, at approximately 6:36 AM. I would not have seen this panoramic vista had it not been for my friend John. 

Our place on the eastern shore of Singleton Lake was dark. We try to not contribute to light pollution, so that's the way home looks at night, pretty much all of the time. Battery-operated LED candles provide all the light and ambiance that we need. Motion sensor lights flick on as needed when we move around outside in the dark. 

A weak cold front was on the way. The disorganized lines of altocumulus were Langmuir streaks overrunning the departing warm frontal surface. The deformation zone leading the cirrostratus was already far to the northeast. The cold upper trough was just digging deeper over eastern Ontario. The entire weather pattern may have been fairly weak, but the sky and the reflection were too beautiful not to record. 

The following graphic puts the painting into the weather context. Note how the water vapour and even the visible image are not very excited about the clouds overhead the yellow star, which locates Singleton Lake. The sky is much more vivid from the ground!

I painted the Langmuir Streaks following the direction of the warm conveyor belt - the labelled block arrows in the following graphic.

That flow delivers heat and moisture toward the poles, helping to keep the Earth's atmosphere in balance. It occurs through the entire depth of the atmosphere as depicted in the following graphic. 

Warm Conveyor Belt Conceptual Model with Layered Cloud and Multiple Deformation Zones

The linear deformation zone (DZ) is the leading edge of the warm conveyor belt. The DZ stretches perpendicularly to the direction of the flow drawn between the swirls generated by the flow itself. The deformation zone is actually a three-dimensional skin that encapsulates the warm air. The physics of water and ice encourage moisture to form into layers of cloud, so that the DZ skin is seen as DZ lines where those cloud layers intersect it. Nature and physics can be really quite beautiful. 

Your right hand is the Coriolis Hand in the Northern  Hemisphere. With your fingers following the curvature of the swirls, your thumb must point upward on the left flank (looking with the flow) and down on the right side. Your Corilois Hand can follow the "Croquet Hoop" that encircles the flow. The lower portion of the warm conveyor belt, "Croquet Hoop" occurs in the turbulent layer of air adjacent to the surface.  Every puff of wind must generate these vortices exactly like smoke rings.   

The following graphic summarizes the straight-line deformation zone in the Northern Hemisphere using your Coriolis Hand. The lines and swirls that shape clouds/moisture in the atmospheric frame of reference are nestled together in this conceptual model. All of the swirls must be the same magnitude to create a straight-line deformation zone, and it is a good example to start with. All you need is your Coriolis Hand and some time to watch the clouds move. We can practice using these concepts on another satellite view of the sunrise of September 14th. 

The Nighttime Microphysics RGB satellite image reveals subtle features in this situation that are invisible in the typical water vapour and visible satellite images included above. The complete nature of the sunrise on Sunday, September 14th, can now be fully understood using this product. The convex deformation zone occurs with the flow of the warm conveyor belt is stronger than that on the other side of the deformation zone. The system must move in the direction of that flow. Animation of the satellite image makes these motions obvious as doens watching the actual clouds from the ground. 

The graphic above uses a stroke of my paddle in a surface filled with duckweed to illustrate the creation of swirls and lines. The physics is the same in the sunrise atmosphere that I painted below. 

Nature inspires and continues to make sense when not much else does. It might take a few re-readings for some of the more subtle points described above to become clear. That's OK and only natural... 

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 

#0879 "The Copse"

#0879  "The Copse"
11 x 14 (inches)
Started around 5 pm on Tuesday, March 27, 2007.
Painting Place N43.95376 W79.74567.

This painting originates from the era of Watershed Farm, located on the 12th Concession of King Township, just west of Schomberg. That was home between 1993 and 2009... I loved that time and the friends we made in the country. We still have those wonderful memories, but I miss the friends.

Watershed Farm was at the very crest of the Oak Ridges Moraine. The front yard, including Kennifick Lake, drained through the famous Holland Marsh and then Lake Simcoe. The pond and stream behind the farmhouse connected with the Humber River and Lake Ontario. It was a natural paradise and a wonderful place to raise both pets and children. We planted trees and built bird houses throughout the 25 acres. We were even founding members of Art Society King. Life was very good!

Times change, and the development pressures were and remain intense. Paradise was continually threatened. Political maneuvering for highways, houses and profit came yearly under different "leaders" and "parties". The latest iteration of the Conservatives has been particularly ruthless. See Bill 5, the "Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act, 2025". 

Any reader of this bill would benefit from understanding "doublespeak", "word-smithing", "gobbledygook", and "bureaucratese". Hypocritically, this act does not pass any smell test. It repeals the Endangered Species Act, significantly alters several other environmental and heritage laws, raising concerns about its impact on First Nations' rights, environmental protections, and public consultation while ignoring Indigenous rights. Bill 5 is all about greed when Climate Change demands an immediate end to the release of carbon into the environment. Shame! 

But looking back, for twenty-plus years (1985-2009), I was able to paint around Schomberg and the beautiful farm fields of King Township. This particular "thicket of small trees or shrubs; a coppice" was on the southern flank of Watershed Farm. Tuesday, March 27th, 2007, was warm at 18 Celsius, and I had to paint in the shade. The bluebird sky was absolutely clear. I can’t take the sun anymore, so I set up in the shade. I rarely paint looking into the sun, but I placed a large tree between the golden orb and my eyes so this view was possible.

This was one of my favourite places to paint. The copse of trees, shadows and fallen fence create lines that I enjoy. The copse was composed of basswood and maple trees, all intertwined on the slope of the hill. The family Chesapeake loved this place as well. I spoke to her when I finished painting - it was a simple, spontaneous reflex. She had passed three years previously. I missed her greatly, and this painting was in her honour.

The weather turned dramatically as I finished stroking. A cold north wind blew in with overcast skies. I finished just in time!

Just a very small selection of the paintings and memories inspired by the Oak Ridges Moraine is included in the following collage. There are 270 paintings in the Oak Ridges Moraine and Watershed Farm Collection on Pixels. 

But the story of "The Copse", building bird houses and planting trees, does not end there. My artist friend Herbert Pryke was putting together a book of art inspired by the Oak Ridges Moraine. I applied to be part of that very worthy conservation effort. 

"Congratulations on being selected for the Oak Ridges Moraine Book -I loved your work and I chose both the autumn scene (879-this one) and the winter fence (0610) scene ... the works really stood out, especially the colour in THE spring scene ... the use of brushstroke and composition in both with horizon line near top were very engaging. " Christine A. Lynett, Manager, Programs, McMichael Canadian Art Collection

"The Connecting with Nature, Oak Ridges Moraine" art book received the 2009 Moraine Hero Award for demonstrating remarkable efforts in protecting the Oak Ridges Moraine. Several other King artists were involved in this wonderful book that Herbert Pryke designed. Herbert had some of the paintings from the book at the ASK Soiree. There were also copies of the book available to buy. 

I recall that effort raised about $20k for conservation. Sadly, that is chump change for developers and politicians who routinely deal with millions or billions of dollars without blinking or seemingly thinking. Much, if not all, of that cash is Taxpayer money, but that is another sad story. 

The science and importance of the Oak Ridges Moraine are both well known and very clear. Unbridled greed and lack of empathy explain why the Earth and Nature have arrived at such a sorry and precariously existential state. Efforts to protect the Oak Ridges Moraine and countless other unique and vital landscapes continue around the globe. The same can be said for the Frontenac Arch Biosphere, which is our current and final home. We plant trees and build bird houses for that property as well. 

The pressures on unrestricted development and extraction of resources are high - apparently everywhere. We protect an important portion of the ecosystem right in the middle of the Frontenac  Arch. It is another natural paradise like Watershed Farm once was. 

For this and much more art, click on Pixels , go straight to the Oak Ridges Moraine Collection, or to all of the Collections. Here is the new Wet Paint Collection for recent art. 

Warmest regards, and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick