AS I AGE

I'm ancient, there's no way around it. My body aches all over, and my eyesight is dimming. My hiking and paddling days are over....but I still have my memory, a bit hazy at moments, but still there, allowing me to revisit places I've been, and places I've seen. Memories, so important.

Days, sometimes long, are passed doodling memories, much like being there making a sketch, and reliving moments long gone. No better way to pass the time than to let your mind wander, and paddle up a channel on a northern lake that you promised you'd revisit one day, but never had the time. 

It's meditation of a sort, doodling. There's no pressure to get it right, just push the pencil here and there, scribble a line, and make it come alive....if only in your mind. 

MAY 2023

May 24, 2023: After what seemed a long winter we decided to spend a few days up at the Blue Spruce Resort located at Dwight, Ontario on the shore of Oxtongue Lake, which is 10 -15 minutes away from Algonquin Provincial Park. May is usually on the cusp of Black Fly and the mosquito season. We were lucky, during our stay we encounter neither, however, it proved to be bit cool, and we did most of exploring from the warmth of the car.

The Blue Spruce Resort, actually a resort only in name as there are few amenities, and no dining facilities. One has to haul all of your food, as well as decent drinking water from home, but this said we've been going up there using it as a base to explore Algonquin for several decades. Recently, the resort was sold from its original owners, and changes are expected, leaving us to wonder if, since we were getting a bit long in the tooth, whether this might be our last year. It's now, as I write 2024, also at the end of a long winter, and we've all but decided that this year may well be our last. It's the end of an era. Good times, and lots of memories. The park has also changed from easy going to regulated, but newcomers will never realize any change and will create, as we did, memories of near wilderness adventures.

For this year we'll head up there in the late summer and try to make a number of sketches, contemporary in nature. I use the term contemporary as, frankly, I'm quite tired of realism, and as I'm now aged and don't have a long future I wish to explore a bit. So stay tuned and check in from time to time and see what I'm up to......

 

THE WORDS KEEP COMING

 

https://www.blurb.com/b/11767217-the-words-keep-coming

I recently published yet another book of poems and prose in which I included a good number of examples of my paintings, sketches, and drawings. Of course there's my writing to muddle things up, but here too you might find something interesting. I would warn, however, that of late I've tended to write about things that people don't wish to know, or hear about, war, environmental issues, religion, and so on. They're my views born out of frustration at the state of our world, and the fact that everything seems to be going to heck. Anyway, should you not agree take heart you're probably not the first. Just skip the page, and enjoy the next bit of art.

FULL CIRCLE

 I’ve come full circle, or so it seems, as I look down the channel leading out onto Whitefish Lake. Some 25 years, or so ago, although it seems like only yesterday, I sat here, at a picnic table, perhaps the same worn and weathered picnic table that I’m now sitting at, and made some tentative sketches of this scene. My landscape sketches back then were indeed tentative. I began my quest to work at becoming an artist by producing intaglio prints, mainly of wildlife, birds if I’m to be more precise, and seeking some quiet place to avoid being scrutinized by the general public, had come to Algonquin Park in the off season to begin learning to sketch and paint landscape. In a tiny sketchbook, with pencil, and watercolour brush in hand, I made some marks, then some more marks, and now many, many, marks later, I’m back where I started, about to stop making marks and retire to watch others, however ,and before doing so, I decided to make a few more marks on paper, so with pen and pencil in hand I begin making marks, and travel to a place of solitude with Raven to watch my back…

1966 Sketches.......

2023 Sketches.......

Not a lot of change in the landscape over the years. As for a comparison between my now and then sketching, it would seem that there's also not much of a change, a bit more confidence in my  making marks, and perhaps a bit more knowledgeable about what I'm sketching, but not a lot of change. In looking back, perhaps I needn't have been so tentative in my approach. Too late now, I suppose,  to be judgemental.

Later that week we also travelled to Tea Lake, one of Tom Thomson's sketching places and made a sketch while enjoying the solitude of the park, a zen moment so to speak, as with fewer people in the park following the Labour Day weekend, and the children back at school, our visit to the park was much more enjoyable. 

Canary In The Icefields

Once upon a time we packed our bags and went on a trip to explore Canada’s West. Along the way we stopped to take in the views of the Athabasca Ice-fields, and various lookouts onto glacial fed lakes, one being Peyto Lake fed by the Peyto Glacier…..

https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/the-canary-in-the-icefield

                               Pencil Sketch and Drawings of the Columbia Ice Fields

Global warming is wreaking havoc on these glaciers. It is predicted that most will disappear during your children's children’s lifetime, forecasting a different future for those dependant upon them for a source of water. From the perspective of someone aged, global warming, it’s simply interesting, but for the younger generation, it should be of concern. Most certainly they will adapt, but to what?