Summer of Contrast

Finally able to spend some time painting. It is something I have wanted to do for some time.

Over the last month we have travelled by car, boat, plane and train. We have walked on city streets and woodland trails. As always on my travels I hoped to do some drawing and maybe even some painting. Travel would take us from Nova Scotia overland through New Brunswick and Quebec to Ontario, with a final destination in Saskatchewan. While we were in Saskatchewan I did find time one morning to walk out and make a small sketch of the grain elevators at Kenaston, which was the furthest western point of our travels. Yes, the grain elevators are vanishing.  Very few remain as farmers transport harvested grains to storage and rail lines in the city.

The area is so completely different from the maritimes it is impossible to compare except to say that the contrasts between land and sky seem somehow larger.

Moving from the wide open space of the prairie and onto a subway in Toronto takes only a matter of hours in a jet.

Along the St. Lawrence River near Gananoque we stopped to sit under a shade tree and watch the clouds float along in the sky while boats cruised the waters. It is high summer and even the birds have taken shelter from the heat of the sun. I sketched an island  that had a building used as a resort inn during the late nineteenth century.

A few days later by car and I am at the side of the pond at Lacey Brook again finally able to paint.

The beavers have made a new dam so the water level has gone up about a foot.