Final glazes begin with the laying out of a complete palette.  At this point, the brush will be dancing everywhere on the canvas and having to stop to squeeze out a colour is to court short-cuts and missed opportunities.   Besides, setting out a full palette is a sensual joy.  I think most painters are colour sluts;  generally what happens here is that every tube is my favourite until I open the next one.   There are no bad colours, just unhappy combinations.

The first thing I did was to locate and place the “sky-holes.”  These are the places where the sky peeks through the canopy.  Without them, the forest would be oppressive.   I chose a pale blue, so as not to overly complicate this area.  It was also important to remember to trace the multiple trunks skyward;  it’s a bit embarrassing to find, too late, that a tree or two has mysteriously vaporized half-way up.  While I was at it, the nearby trunks received a series of transparent glazes to validate their importance.  And finally, I developed the foliage  wherever I wanted the eye to be drawn, while leaving other less important sections quietly suggestive.  

Then came the tousled forest floor, which lay replete with fallen leaves in every colour.  The predominant colour was autumn orange, but i could find pinks, scarlets and purples mixed in, as well as dark sections where branches had fallen.  Again, detailing this part of the scene would have made the painting too busy, so I chose again simply to suggest the rich disorder except where the path enters next to the biggest tree.  The well-worn trail was almost clear of leaves and shone with milky purples  and whites in my reference photo so I decided to treat it much like a meandering stream with lots of reflected lights.  It starts up just below the lovely old maple on the right and is a critical component of the focal points - its main job is to draw the viewer further and further into the painting until she is finally directed back to the beginning. 

Finally, I focused on following the shining path into the heart of the forest.  The distant tree trunks have quietened into soft lines which echo the smokey blues in the mid-range.  Only in the mid-zone are the tones rich and uncomplicated, the beating heart of a living forest where the sun breaks through and lights up a glade.

​Within a few days the sheen will have died down and I will be able to truly judge the intensity of colours.  A few more layers of glazing may or may not be in order before the painting takes on its independent existence.  Bittersweet moments, these.

 
As I have been working through the transparent colour foundation layers, Robert Frost’s “Stopping in Woods” has been resonating in my brain.  Why, I do not know, because his woods bear precious little resemblance to mine.

Frost’s narrator has stopped on a snowy evening to admire a beautiful woodlot.  In clear contrast, the image I am developing is a light-filled morning in October above The Credit River.  While many of the deeply coloured sugar maple leaves have fallen and are scattered on the forest floor, the beeches, who boast what horticulturists call “persistent foliage,” are stubbornly hanging onto their clear yellow leaves. The contrasting autumnal note is provided by the grey-green hemlocks making their last bid for precious light before our hemisphere tilts away from the sun.  So what I have is a scene more light than dark, more colourful than shadowed.  But I want the same thing from a passer-by:  the urge to pause and to drink in the loveliness of the forest.

Autumn scenes are notoriously difficult to paint because they tempt you to throw every high-intensity colour at the canvas.  "Go big or go home" tends to produce a garish painting that is too exhausting to live with over the years.  So with a slightly subdued palette I am choosing to play the long game - hoping to capture this autumn day through subtlety rather than high-key drama.  

With that in mind, I concentrated the blue layer, though omnipresent on the canvas,  in the tree trunks and the purples of the path.  It was important that the trunks are not be pure black (the natural outcome  of burnt umber glazed with ultramarine blue);  overly intense trunks would have overwhelmed the delicacy of the leafiness.  So, quite limited blues.  The leaves and the trunks had to play nicely together.  Next, with the arrival of yellows, the beeches threw their hats into the ring and the fallen maple leaves acquired deeper tones.  Here and there green leaves appeared.  The trunks' complex contours began to emerge.  A light glaze of alizarin crimson completed the complex colour foundation.   Nothing more to do for a day or two while the primary glazes dry. 

Soon, the final glazes!  I hope that Frost’s narrator will already be feeling the urge to linger:  the woods may not be “dark and deep” but I think they hold the promise of loveliness nonetheless.

My beloved claims that a casual observer could judge my progress within a painting by the degree of sartorial inattention (Actually, he said “You look more and more like a bag lady.”).  Today, at 2 p.m., I admit that I am sporting an aged pair of leotards and a camisole which has seen better days.  However, as Sherlock would say, “The game is afoot!”  Theodore is asleep,  exactly equidistant from Jon’s study and my studio but he’s the only one who’s relaxing around here.    

Jon is busy marking the end-of-term papers, just getting to them now after working late all week to create review packages for his math students;  that he is retiring in ten days is an abstraction, to be dealt with when it happens.  Otherwise, his sole gear is “Drive.”  

I too am completely absorbed in what’s in front of me.  It’s a highly complex forest scene, autumnal in palette, and large.  The value underpainting has been a real workout, necessitating the sorting of "what to edit out" and of "what to rejig."   I have chosen to bring the eye in at the middle left (the traditional way we read anything) and sweep it across upper part of the forest to peek at the subtle yellows at the right.  For that reason, I will tamp down the complexity of the canopy;  it must not distract, only convey the eye across itself.  Then I want the viewer’s eye to descend the big beautiful tree at the front, at which point it will notice the path, and obediently follow its serpentine progress into the forest.  Its final twist is to the left, which brings us back to where we started.  That critically important path must have strong white highlights because it is the bride in this wedding;  because the secondary role of matron of honour must fall to that foreground tree, my intent is to make it interesting without allowing it to steal the show.   I guess this analogy makes me mother of the bride, the exhausted architect of it all.   I should have hugged my mom more at the time.

Only once this value underpainting is dry shall I  begin to add the layers of transparent primaries.  If glaze oil painting has a particular virtue for the painter in terms of process rather than product, it is the steady increase of anticipation as the image takes shape.  I get more and more excited.  Imagine what I shall be wearing by the time I’m into final glazes.

In the meantime, maybe, just for the heck of it, I will get properly dressed.  

As long as it doesn’t throw my game off.

Some people make a place in your heart.  My dear friend and second mother, Eleanor, is one who will live forever in mine.

We met when I was a teenager and she the mother of a friend.  Age differences meant nothing because we clicked instantly, recognizing ourselves to be kindred spirits.  But I was the dull one;  Eleanor was interested in EVERYTHING;  even her rapid-fire conversation could not keep pace with her mind.  Tiny,  vivacious, and eternally redheaded, Eleanor always punched above her weight, especially in volunteerism.  Winnipeg is far the richer for her presence.

Let me tell you a story which Eleanor told me when I noticed that her quietly elegant home has a surprising picture near the door.  It is a large photo of bare-chested firefighters.  Apparently, when asked if she liked the firefighters’ calendar several years ago, Eleanor retorted, “I would rather have the real thing!”  So, when she celebrated her 95th the next year at the University Women’s Club, guess who showed up.  She had a lovely time and must have charmed them all.  Several months later, Eleanor had an accident and needed an ambulance;  looking up from the stretcher as they walked out of the house, she said, “Haven’t I met you before?”  The firefighter replied, “Yes, Eleanor.  I’m May.  October’s up at your feet.”    

Then we both roared with laughter.  

They aren't making'em like Eleanor any more and we are all the poorer.

It seems this time of year that we spend much of our lives in the dark; when I am out, it is usually with Theodore and often Jon as well so, again, there is little opportunity to watch the birds. Yet they are here and, as always, make me think of my mother, who dearly loved them - especially in the deep winter - and who fed them for the privilege. They brightened her January self, as they do mine.

Whenever possible I try to catch them with my long lens at the window, although I have to run to Jon’s study to get a clear shot. And so I have been painting little birds, in honour of my mother and also as a way to keep painting throughout the busy Christmas season, when starting a large canvas is an impossible dream.


Last week this chickadee and purple finch found homes on tiny 6 x 6 gallery panels. The chickadee’s breast is, I realized, a warm  grey which shades almost to black on his tummy. The purple finch shot was chosen because of his comical stance like a mini-gunslinger; I hadn’t realized how splayed his little feet must be to support his body. The dappling on his tummy also enchanted me so I worked wet in wet first to blend the spots, and then reglazed with alizarin when he was dry. Apologies to both if they are girls.


Every season brings its special delights. Happy New Year.