Month: February 2020

                               SITTING LADY FALLS

There’s a wonderful west coast walk located in Metchosin, on the outskirts of Victoria.  It’s called Witty’s Lagoon Trail.  A groomed track, it takes you from the parking lot down a meandering trail through a very typical west coast rain forest to the open beach looking out on the Juan de Fuca Straight.  I’ve done that walk many times with my daughter Melanie and her family.  Always I’ve felt the presence of a painting, and once I found a painting of tranquility along the forest trail. (Witty’s Lagoon – Tranquility)

But, that image of calm and serenity doesn’t tell the whole story of this trail.  There’s a waterfall on the trail that changes character almost daily.  Depending on the runoff from the surrounding area, Sitting Lady Falls can be an idyllic tumble of water over an impressive rocky outcrop, or it can be a raging, foaming torrent as it charges its course to the ocean.

The winter of 2020 was a particularly wet and grey one.  The heavy rains created dangerous and destructive flood conditions in many places on the west coast.  And Sitting Lady Falls was the benefactor of that rage of torrential rains.  I wasn’t there to witness it personally, but Melanie took a photograph one January day and sent it to me.  Melanie’s an artist herself so she knew the value of the light as it played on the trees in the foreground.  Though not a composition I’d usually be drawn to, I had to try my hand at painting this impressive natural display.

If ever you’re looking for a nice forest walk at the southern tip of Vancouver Island, consider Witty’s Lagoon Trail.  There you’ll get to see Sitting Lady Falls for yourself.  And it’ll always be impressive, no matter what mood the Sitting Lady is in.

                                                                                                               WINTER MEDICINE AT -7°

I’d been searching through the dark, wet, grey winter of 2019 and couldn’t find it.  My search continued through the entire month of January, 2020.  Still it wasn’t to be found.  My spirits were as dark and grey as the season.  The artist within just couldn’t stir.  The fire had gone out.  Some would call it “painter’s block”.  I’m certain my lack of artistic energy would be better diagnosed as “SAD” or “Seasonal Affective Disorder”.  I just couldn’t find it within to paint.  I longed for the light that I paint, but this record long winter of rain and drudge denied that light.  No matter how I tried, I couldn’t stir the spirit.

Then, at coffee one rainy morning, my friend Tom Hierck changed all that.  He’d been out to Lloydminster, Alberta on business and he’d come back with some photographs of the cold, still winter he’d experienced while there.  As soon as I saw his photograph of the old cabin in the steel blue snowy field, the bright light of that Alberta winter acted as a spark to my artistic energy.  It was the light that did it.  I’d been craving that light, and I’d paint that light.  It would be my first painting of 2020.

Even though, he told me, the temperature that day had been -7°, that simple, still scene was truly medicinal to me.  As I painted over the next two weeks, that exercise of “painting the light” healed my spirit.  No longer was I lacking the creativity of the artist.  In fact, I found myself compelled to paint.  Already I was composing my next painting even as I created this piece.  That winter scene of a cold Alberta fence line and solitary cabin in the crystal, sparkling snow had truly been a powerful tonic.  It launched me into 2020 such that by mid-February, when I finished the piece, I was full of the positive, creative energy so necessary to me as an artist.

Painting that bright Alberta winter’s light, from me, truly was “Winter Medicine at -7°”