This morning the sight of a yellowed ginkgo leaf on a path at Riverwood gave me a pleasurable start.  I hadn’t noticed such a tree but there it had evidently been growing!

It got me thinking about botany (so many things do) and what a part in that latitude plays.  Seeing that we share a common latitude, it shouldn’t be surprising that China’s field botany is much like our own, because plants establish themselves and colonize areas that suit them, just as people do.  Chinese and Canadian native plants thrive in similarly temperate climates, a fact that might give both countries pause regarding climate change.  Predictably, then,  gingko biloba (i.e. “two-lobed”), while long cultivated in China, also does well in Canadian cities, where it also withstands urban conditions admirably.  But what makes it so   exciting is its pedigree;  ginkgo’s fossil record dates it back 270 million years;  apparently its genetic flexibility allowed it to adjust without undergoing much speciation -   ginkgo could be said to demonstrate extreme ecologial conservatism, restricting its environment to disturbed streamsides for hundreds of millions of years.  Good grief.  Jon and I think living in the same house for thirty-five years counts for something.  Ginkgos sure know how to play the long game.  So to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, a ginkgo leaf is a ginkgo leaf is a gingko leaf, whether this year’s or in its stone incarnation. 


That must be why we can talk about giving some people “latitude” but you never hear an argument for  “longitude.”    Limited variation is easier.  So, while "Eastern" versus "Western" might involve different continents, one can also expect profound natural similarities, those driven by sharing Earth's tilt; "Northernly" versus "Southernly," on the other hand, presages deep-seated differences, whether in temperature ranges or in characteristic weather patterns. That’s not to say that I wasn’t thrilled to find a rare (at least around here) Carolinian species  - sassafras -  in the ravine edging our back garden;  I did, however, recognize it as bit of a natural stretch, a southern denizen, who verged on an anomaly. 

Might this begin to explain a recent election on our vertically-organized continent?  A bit too much longitude.

I’ve always been bothered by the willingness of perfectly nice people to take a shot at the city I grew up in. Even though I hadn’t been home since my mom died exactly a decade ago I still describe myself as a proud Winnipeger. After her death, I just didn’t have the heart to go back, but finally admitted that I was lonesome for the dear friends who are still there. Besides, a milestone alumni reunion was looming, so, even though Jon was working, I went alone.

Just what I feared happened: I fell back in love with Canada’s best city.

Are you aware of the number of super-smart Canadians who come from Winnipeg or even, if they are lucky, still live there? It’s a large number in fact. In my own limited circle I am aware of
a Nobel Prize short-lister,
a writer of very successful history books ,
a professional NHL goalie,
a multitude of rock stars,
a wildly successful entrepreneur now in Britain,
a pair of Stratford directors,
an accomplished commodities trader,
a career economist who has developed global agricultural policies,
a poet/novelist who was short-listed by Norton,
a director of a theatre troupe which develops its own productions around the issues of social justice,
a talented print journalist,
and a host of outstanding professors, teachers, social workers, nurses — to whom we owe our thanks for a thriving and beautiful city.

And I’m just getting warmed up.

So there’s never a shortage of accomplished people to spend time with, even at the beach - which is not much more than an hour away. To gild the lily a bit more, Victoria Beach (car-free and beautiful) has a world class waterfront of white sand cliffs. The dinner parties I attended there and in the city were just as I remembered — lively conversations that reflect that Winnipeg combination of intelligence, warmth, and good food. As a houseguest, I was treated like a princess. And although Eleanor, one of my favourite people, is struggling with advanced age, she too graciously invited me over for tea and “dainties” (which, in Winnipeg, means sweets, not underwear, don’t you know).

Lest you think that we all cowered inside so as to avoid the climate, let me hasten to assure you that no such thing occurs. For one thing, they had a far better summer than the humidified drought we endured in southern Ontario this year. During my visit the sun shone all day every day and the skies were a clear deep blue. It was perfect weather to tour the zoo, visit the sculpture garden, wander the gardens in Assiniboine Park or explore the Exchange District.

And I arrived to find the autumnal city bustling with energy and beautiful new buildings. Not that they can improve on the early ones. Did you know that in the 1890’s, when my grandfather and his brothers owned a fine-woodworking shop just down from Eaton’s, linear frontage on Donald was more expensive than its Chicago counterpart? The major buildings from that period were invariably built of Tyndall stone, which is creamy and cut in huge slabs; I spent my childhood reading the fossil record while waiting for the bus.

Lack of time this year meant that I couldn't fit in the symphony, the theatre, or the ballet -- all of which I attended regularly even as a teenager. Growing up in Winnipeg meant acquiring culture whether you wanted it or not. In fact, Winnipeg hosts what was and may still be the biggest music festival in the world. ALL of us sang, played piano, or were part of an orchestra - sometimes simultaneously. I grew up assuming that "going to the festival" was a fact of life everywhere, in the same category as death and taxes. One of my worst memories is of accompanying the school orchestra and missing a repeat; the various strings went one way and I went another....in a concert hall filled to overflowing, including one mother who was beet red.

Returning to happier thoughts, the best surprise of this visit was to realize that the famous Winnipeg elms had survived. When Dutch Elm Disease arrived forty-five years ago, Winnipegers rallied to save our miles of Gothic-arched boulevards; I believe it is the only city to have succeeded on that scale. In fact, the mental image that I carried with me for the last decade actually fell short of the real thing. So, having walked for hours to take hundreds of street shots, I am planning to paint a boulevard of elms if I ever get ten minutes. In the meantime I leave you with a large painting of a street in Lorne Park, near here. It’s nice but when you eventually see its prairie counterpart, you will say — “Wow! That’s so gorgeous, it's gotta be Winnipeg!!”

Last summer in the company of a very bright, engaging person who knew a lot about botany, I commented that I wanted to locate a particular wildflower because I couldn't remember its habitat and wanted to paint it in situ. Without a backward glance, she said "Just fake it. That's what art's about."

No.

Let me think about that.

No.

Let me first admit to personal bias.  Looking at  anything generic makes me long for specificity. If I am painting a maple tree, I try to capture its grandly symmetrical shape;  botanists refer to this quality as "opposite rather than alternate".   The pagoda trees  which volunteer on our property with predictable regularity should, on the other hand, look as if they are built on the principle of alternate but equal, like a tai chi stance;  I like them best set against a light backdrop like our neighbours' stucco, where in winter their elegant shapes sing.   I want white pines to be tall and irregular, their longest branches pointing to the south-east (in a pinch, a mature white pine can function as a rough compass if you are lost in the woods).  And tree trunks ALWAYS  have straight parallel edges and never taper up.  Point being, tree species have some things in common but many many differences.  In October you would never confuse a poplar forest with a maple-beech forest.  You would sense something is wrong but perhaps not what is wrong. It just doesn't feel true to your experience.

I propose that Art is about TRUTH of some sort.   So our next job is to think more about what constitutes artistic truth.  Let's begin by agreeing with Gerhard Richter's assertion that "I believe that art has a kind of rightness, as in music, when we hear whether or not a note is false."   The "bright, engaging person" may not have been an artist but I am pretty sure that she would have been vaguely bothered by the painting of a fake plant.

​More on this topic in March.  Good-bye February!!

Went to a terrific workshop yesterday, where Johannes Vloothuis crammed our tiny brains with a million good ideas about composition.  Joe focused on what he calls the "melodic line," which is the path the artist uses to guide the viewer's eyes into and out of the painting.  It tends to enter on the left, as European readers are accustomed to doing, and usually near the bottom.  Then it inscribes graceful arcs which are subtly connected, until it draws said eyes up and out.

He was preaching to the choir because I have been pondering this while building the underpainting of this ancient tree.  The rhythmic undulations of its roots were the very reason I had chased down this particular tree.  I see that I should knock back the value of the rock on the far right, so as not to lead the eye out;   the roots themselves will constitute the path which swings up into the brighter leaves.  I hope the eye will swing upward and loop through the branches. I have roughly planned the route but need to add more hue to define it better.

For me, at least, these final glazes constitute the payoff for the slow and sometimes agonizing job of building a strong underpainting.  By now, I'm generally champing at the bit, ready to lay out a full palette and get to work.  If the muse shows up and I don't have to assign the painting to Le Salon des Refusees in our basement, this baby might be finished by Monday.  Artists live in hope.  You have a good weekend yourself.

Hello again.  I've been AWOL for a while.  I'm here to ask a favour.  Just as you know to remind me never to paint either another violin or a harbour scene with ships, would you please add "Never paint another ancient tree with gnarly roots and a partial reflection."  Yes, I do admit to a weakness for exposed roots and their reflections.  I waited three years for a second crack at this cursed image, which I had glanced once before;  it necessitated perfect weather on the right river and a quick dropping of the paddle to take the shot.  Had to merge two, as it turned out, because Jon sterns robustly, but finally I had a working look at "The Ancients" #2.  .

Getting the shot turned out to be the easy part.  One of the challenges of landscape is maintaining the balance between overview and detail.  The gorgeous roots that drew me are now driving me crazy.  Unlike Ginger Rogers, who was praised not only for dancing with Fred Astaire but doing it backwards and in high heels, I am having trouble even finding the beat.  To put it bluntly, the grisaille has been grisly.  It's like being lost in a maze.  Now add a gazillion maple leaves (sugar maple, to be exact) and l'm inventing reasons to avoid my easel.  

On the plus side, the drawers in this house have never been better organized.
  
Just last week the final piece of new furniture was dry enough to move inside.  Nothing like a small house to turn you into a cheap date when it comes to storage;  beholding these empty drawers gave me frissons of delight.  Filling them was even better.  Now, to reward myself for ten minutes on sorting out roots and leaves, I simply open a drawer and feast my poor crossed eyes.  For the first time I have all of the paints - oil, acrylic and watercolour - and all of the brushes within reach (except for my favourite brushes, which are currently residing in The Land of the Missing.  Oh well.  At least I now know where they aren't.)  Even my gloves have their own drawer.  Life doesn't get much better.

So pity me not, dear friends.  It may be Christmas before I paint myself out of here, but I have my gloves to keep me warm.

Spending so much time on my hands and knees in the garden provides me with time to think, a commodity too often in short supply.  For example, while digging out tiny persistent volunteers in the grass, I can't escape remembering that I am actively promoting a population explosion;  many non-native seeds require no more than a scratch in order to germinate.  That is why botanical field guides use the phrase "disturbed ground" to describe the habitat of weeds.  Classic double bind --  either leave the weeds to grow or become the vector for a thousand new ones!

For me, the lesson to  be drawn is to postpone beginning  a job until I can commit to completing it.  In gardening, of course, this might take some time.  When I decided thirty years ago not to use herbicides it didn't strike me that the fallout might last quite this long.  

On the other hand,  spring weeding helps me feel less impatient with my slow and careful painting;  by comparison with gardening, it is a product-oriented flight of fancy with quicksilver feedback loop!  There.  I feel better already.

I am also slightly comforted by the observation that lawn weeds do have tiny beautiful flowers;  many belong to the mint family, with zygomorphic flowers and square stems.  In a week or two the biggest plants on the property, the ancient black locust trees (who are legumes), will be covered with similarly-shaped fragrant white flowers.  "Zygomorphic" is simply a faster way of saying "bilaterally symmetrical," which tells you that you can draw only one line through the flower shape to find a mirror reflection;  think of snapdragons.    "Actinomorphic" flowers are perfectly symmetrical In that you can cut them in half anywhere through the centre.  Members of the rose family, which includes apple, peach, pear, plum and apricot trees,  produce bowers of these simple round flowers.  

I can never decide on a favourite flower shape or colour or perfume.  My Beloved has been known to refer to me as a botanical slut and I'm no more choosy with animals or china patterns.  I find even dandelions admirable in many ways.  They are robust, edible and herbally useful;  their French common name - pissenlit - alludes to their efficacy as a diuretic.  Unfortunately, they are not only perennials but members of the compositae family.  Each sunny head is made up of hundreds of individual flowers,  all intent on floating to a new world, there to build a kingdom.

Trees may be my favourite plants because of their capacities for great age.  While my family has been in Toronto since 1842, the white oak here which finally succumbed was at least seventy-five years older;  the endangered and ancient butternut in the back garden remains a treasure celebrated by squirrels, birds and neighbours.  I like to think of them as history made manifest.

In living memory, this street been defined by a its line of graceful black locust trees.  As you can see from this monoprint, their search for light has rendered them dramatic and somewhat oriental.    Decidedly post-mature, these wonderful creatures are battered by each storm, shrinking limb by limb, and we fear their imminent deaths.   

Or ours:  Several years ago Jewell and I were canoodling on the grass near the tree line.  We eventually tired of pleasuring one another and wandered off, she to check her peemail and I to do something marginally more useful.  There was a huge crash and the ground shook.  Just where we had been lying, a branch the size of PEI had crashed, creating a crater 8" deep.    Yes, I still weed near the tree line.  But only on windless days.

The talented Doug Mays uses the phrase "the mantle stage" when he's talking about the necessity of leaving a painting alone so that it can decide if it is finished or not.  I personally have always thought of this as the "piano stage" because I do tai chi in the dining room and each full turn creates an opportunity to see the new painting afresh.  At the moment the creamy French horse (title still eluding me) sits in the front bedroom, which also uses creams, but has no chance to talk to me as I have a rotten messy cold and have banished myself to the back bedroom until I'm no longer plague-ridden.  The best I can do is to take a digital and study that, as impersonally as I can manage (this being my baby, of course).  If I post it into the website's "Work in Progress" at least a comparative look is available, as there are six so far.  Having done that, I would like to add more rich creams to the mane, more speckling, and deeper shadows here and there.

Each post of a work in progress is an opportunity for me to ask "Is this closer to the target or not?" That said, art is also a moving target or a camera would have done the job.  This painting from the "Tapestry" series was on its way to high realism but I lost my heart to it somewhat earlier.  I'm glad I did.

One of the best things about paddling is direct access to a turtle's-eye view of riverbanks.  One of the worst thing about paddling is being the bow paddler and therefore responsible for rock-spotting;  there are far better things to look at.  For example, when we paddled in August with our friends, Brian and Marilyn, the sunny banks were dappled with knapweed, Joe Pyeweed, turtleheads and at least two species of lobelia - Kalm's and cardinalis.  Through all of them angelica poked their tall fat heads.  Flocks of cedar waxwings wheeled overhead, handily nabbing flying insects and looking far nattier than they do in late winter when they get drunk on fermented crabapples and hang by one leg while squabbling.  On the water, mergansers, great blue herons and flocks of Canada geese concentrated on eating;  only the kingfishers on overhanging branches expressed their outrage at our intrusion.  And everywhere, cedars.

It is only in the last few decades that I've come to appreciate white cedars.  Granted, Western Red Cedars become enormous and stately but what our cedars lack in biomass they make up in longevity and beauty.  Tiny bonsaied cedars cling to the Niagara Escarpment, core sampling having revealed that many were alive when Columbus "discovered" America.  A TED talk on ancient plants enumerates much older ones but none more elegantly assymetrical.  Their complex curvature created by the roots' patient search for purchase on the low rocky shore is particularly visible from the canoe and I frequently photograph them.  The blue-grey tones of the aged wood  contrast magnificently with the complementary Indian reds of the cedar duff.  This scene which so strongly draws me is more portrait than landscape, I realize.  To paint it is my gesture of respect for venerable survivors.

I am reminded of a poem that my mother embroidered for her own mother many years ago.  It begins with the wish "Let me grow lovely growing old" as do "so many old things"  like silks and pearls and treed streets.  The  poem ends with "So why not I, as well as they/ Grow lovely, growing old."    Our ancient cedars provide the same inspiration.