Summer is here, just.

Summer is here, just. I was moving my boat to a friend’s cottage last weekend and it actually snowed. So much for Summer! But the leaves are out and I have started to paint summer. I still have many images that I have stockpiled from last summer. As of today (besides one quick river fishing adventure) I have not been out painting or canoeing yet. I am working up a number of larger summer images. In these I am really trying to capture the feel of sunlight traveling over the landscape in three very different ways.

The first is the idea of sunshine hitting a big Killarney landscape through heavy cloud.

In creating paintings, I am always looking for iconic views. The Matapédia is a river on the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec. It’s a wild place with deep valleys, fast wide water, and thick forests. It is also one of the best salmon fishing rivers in the Gaspé region. Perched up above the river, the view is through the pines looking down the course of the river. I used my cobalt and ultramarine blues to depict the rocks water and trees as they fade away into the distance.

The second in a high key, almost abstract view of a lake using muted shades of purple and green against a light sky.

The Haliberton area is a collection of small deep rocky lakes. I have paddled and fished many lakes in Haliberton. You get the feeling of the high rocky shores and the pine trees climbing the steep banks. Often these lakes have small islands and hidden bays and this is a view of them. I painted a cloudy sky, with a bright light filtering through lighting the rocks on the far shore.

And the last one is the most impressionistic painting. A Killarney ridge in the foreground with a farther ridge behind obscured by atmospheric conditions.

I am a big fan of the impressionists and one of the things I really enjoy about their work is reflections in water. This painting is all about the reflections. The foreground shadows and reflections are painted in cool blues, browns and greens. The colour temperature warms in the sunlit areas. While it is a summer day I thinks it amazing how you can depict small changes in temperature through colour choice. This is an area in the southern Kawarthas near Buckhorn. Shallow mud bottom lakes, drowned cedars and large beds of weeds are the norm.

These three are getting close to finished and I am planning to use them as a springboard to some really large paintings – up to 5 feet. Should be interesting, I have not done anything that big before.