10th Line.....December

...a bit of the first snow showing....

Evening by Lake Ontario

Rice Lake, North Shore

6.5 x 6.5 inches. Acrylic collage painting on paper.....perfect summer days....you can't hold on to time, so you revisit, by making a picture. That's one portion of the story.

North Field, Early December

7 x 7 inches, acrylic collage on paper,....little bits of acrylic brushwork added right at the end.

Little Stand

Watercolor, India Ink and nib, ink and brush. A little stand, seen from a little country church yard near Millbrook, Ontario.

A Few Watercolour Portraits

From the last week or so....a few watercolour portraits with pen and ink nib additions.

Overcast, Late November

Back Fields

I walked to the very back of a bean field and sat on a ridge....it's often more interesting to get off the roads and see how the land is laid out.

November Sky

Acrylic collage with acrylic brush work in the final stages. I kept the brush work to a minimum....I sometimes like to do that, just to see how little I can add. I left more of the sky yellow than was there, but there was something of the mood that remained. November can seem like a harsh, dangerous month here, but even though there have been some quite cold days, it hasn't felt very extreme yet. I think I may have tempered the effect here a bit, though....

November Dusk

....collage from acrylic painted papers at the beginning......acrylic paint over that.

Re-grade

....a sizeable hill was leveled to regrade a T-junction.

Cedar at Dusk

....the edge of a big cedar at the start of dusk.....I'm wandering up my usual path.

I scribbled the little diagram never really intending to use it....I thought the composition too odd....I decided to put the colours together last night just to see if I could get a hint of the mood.

Stand

.....late afternoon....from yesterday's walk up Lost Dog Hill....

Grey and Yellow

Driving home from work, I was struck by this contrast of two. Painted it when I got home but by then the light was almost gone so had to use artificial light. It turned out ok regardless. A little unexpected touch that survived was the step from the lime green bush, to the yellow, to the grey.......very often when I'm painting with artificial light, the thing looks dramatically different in the morning.

October Ridge

I walked deep into a harvested bean field...just before the light starts to fade.....getting to be late October.

Hillock

The collages are as important as the paintings. They take a bit longer to make than the paintings and the mood going into the making is different. The collages are more meditative....more playing around with colour combinations and mumbling to myself....the paintings seem to require a faster flow. In some ways the collages can also allow for greater openness to surprise.

Vapour Trails at Dusk, and Early October

Dusk, Lost Dog Hill

Walking in the evenings over the last few days.....weather was perfect and warm....this particular motif has been a favourite for a number of years and I may have painted it over 20 times.

I have some hope that little impressions might in fact be captured, at least in part. Not everything gets made into a painting. I found myself staring through a hedge and wondering about a leaf pattern against a particular sky. And there was a certain purple black that was very appealing against evening turquoise skies with just a touch of warm.....not in this picture, but little collected impressions that maybe get mentally banked.

As small as all these paintings are, just a slight reduction of scale frees up the process a great deal.

Campus Edge

Campus Field

Campus Field,
9.5 x 9.5 inches, acrylic on gessoed single ply matteboard

Approaching Home

Acrylic on gessoed single ply archival matteboard, 10 x 10 inches.

Toward Scriven Road

Towards Scriven Road. The road was named after Joseph Scriven, who wrote "what a friend we have in Jesus"......I believe he died through accidental drowning in the lake you see here....Rice Lake.

Mansion Hill

I approached a hilly property from a footpath.....I later researched these acres for sale.....3 beautiful houses on one property.....almost all of it not visible from any road.

Fox Hill, September

Fox Hill....yesterday........I exaggerated the yellows....fall time seems to be coming in early. It was very cool this morning. I left today's painting a bit late....not much light left right now.

Hydro Ridge

This little abstraction only suggests the landscape, but the memory of a particular location informed the choices. It was a wonderful steep and wild climb on a narrow path through some hill country.

Football Field

September Ridge

Garden Hill, Early September

Late afternoon on a still, overcast September day. The northumberland hills are so varied.....you can find all sorts of fascinating roads to explore.

I have avoided Payne's Grey in the last little while in favour of black or a warmer grey....in this case set on top of a pink underlayer in the sky.

Cove at Rice Lake, Saturday Morning

I never capture any of these moods very precisely....but the impetus for this was the way the few blues come together to create a feeling of calm and ease on a lake earlier in the morning....a cove at Rice Lake.

Guard

Rain Day

A very nice grey day.....August has had plenty of rain while July was totally dry. Looking into Coyote Hill near midday.

The bottom field caused problems in this painting...I changed it a number of times. The value remains fairly close to the dark of the back forest....not ideal in spacial terms.

Rice Lake, July

Small acrylic collage painting on pine, 6.5 x 7.25 inches.

August Blue

.........driving home on a hot August afternoon from a day trip north.....looking down into the cool blue of Rice Lake....almost home.

There is a certain blue of summer....involving lakes and distant boats and trees and rocks....giving us the sense that we're exactly in the right place.

Presentation of Small Paintings

Many thanks to Jill Harris for sending along these pictures showing how she framed and presented a grouping of my landscape paintings in her lovely home. She shows an interesting way of using a larger space to present smaller works as one unit. Thank you Jill! I really enjoy seeing how people present and place the work.

Saturday Drive Home

Even as small as my pictures are, scale remains very important. This painting for example, is 6 x 6.25 inches. I felt that making it even marginally bigger would not have been right. Even at this scale, there is a certain size that encouraged greater abandon.

August Cloud

I was far back in a harvested field of barley. Returned home and started painting...the light was fading and a thunderstorm quickly passed by. As strange as the lighting was while I was painting this, I rather like the odd effect. I try not to paint with artificial light if I can help it, but the light was fine at the start and then it got really dark during the storm.

Walking Home

Walking home as the light starts to fade. I liked how that pink white cloud was peaking out at its gentle, odd angle. Every so often I return to the advice "paint only what is in the initial idea as simply and forcefully as possible....no embellishment". You can see just what was in the 30 second diagram. I considered making the painting even smaller so there would be room for absolutely nothing but the original idea or motif.

On another point, greens can be notoriously difficult when we are talking about a tonal observational type of painting, which in part, this is. Intense greens can refuse to lie down and can seem to upset the chemistry of the colour relationships. Even with complementary mixing, some greens can be too energetic. For years I avoided mixing with black, in favour of a complementary mixing system. In this case I did mix with a warm black and was pleased with the results. I'll experiment with mixing greens in this way a bit more.

Coyote Hill, Deep August

I was ambling down a high hill in late afternoon....morning had a violent thunder storm with plenty more rain, all of it welcome. Late afternoon was pleasant and breezy, with the evening cooling off considerably. The nights are starting to suggest that summer is ending.