It was the hottest week of the summer of 2009 and my wife Joy and I were lucky enough to have a cabin rented at the Lakeside Resort on Hotel Lake here on the Sunshine Coast. The other plus for us was that we had our two grandsons, Keegan and Carter, with us for many of those carefree and lazy summer days. Hotel Lake is a small body of water in the Garden Bay area and the resort has been a favourite summer getaway for families for decades. It’s a very special place for many people. Generations return here like some internal homing instinct dictates such each year. Grandparents, who came here as children, return every year with their now adult children and their kids. It is a place of family, friends, tranquility and escape. Lakeside Resort is a place of simple comforts, familiarity and tradition. It is to the summer what a steaming bowl of mom’s homemade soup is to winter.
Ever the early riser, I was up one morning at about five. Quietly, I prepared a coffee and with my mug and camera in tow I snuck from the cabin to the fresh, clean morning air. The sun was not yet showing its face over the distant hills but even as I started walking down the road beside the lake I knew a painting was calling me. I already knew where I’d find it. Yesterday as we’d paddled between the small island called Turtle Island and the shore I’d seen the lily pads in the narrows. The shallow draft of my canoe allows me to pull through even six inches of water. I knew this was where the image was calling. Clambering out onto a rock at the shore, what I saw through the overhanging tree limbs confirmed my intuitions. This was a painting and indeed it was calling to me. With my camera only an inch from the glass smooth surface I snapped the shot. It’s an image that could be shown right side up our upside down and one wouldn’t know the difference. Only the presence of those lily pads defined the image in its proper orientation.
Now as I complete this painting in the first few days of December of 2009, Hotel Lake and that wonderful warmth of summer is a distant memory. It’s at times like these that I give thanks for my pastime of painting. You see the cold of winter is not my favourite time of year as time pushes me into senior years. By turning my eyes to my paintings I’m able to escape. In this case I escape back to the wonderful sunny days of a tranquil morning on “Hotel Lake – Daybreak”
