Because I am a landscape painter who very often paints on site, I find myself usually painting the seasons. Winter-time finds me looking for snow and leaning heavily on the blues in my palette for snow shadows, while in spring as the leaves start emerging, the bright yellow greens get used a lot. As summer progresses, I move on to viridian (green) and the more bluish greens because that’s what the trees do!
Autumn with it’s tremendous display of warm colours, is my favourite painting season but I’m stuck with this horrendous paradox: North Island, my favourite place in the world in which to paint, doesn’t have the poplars, birches, beeches, oaks and maples that the rest of Canada does! The poplars, begin near Woss Lake, but you have to go on down to Campbell River before you reach Maple country and these are Vine Maples, not the brilliant, red Canadian Maple found in Eastern Canada. However, a few years ago, my neighbours, bless their hearts, have solved my predicament and planted poplars and birches to soothe my artistic soul. Now each fall I seek them out and use them in my paintings. The painting shown here is one of those.
The eagle in the painting was also made possible by the kindness of my neighbour. He began putting food out for them and soon these majestic birds were gracing the skies of Nimpkish Heights. I managed to capture a number of good photos of them in various positions of flight to use as references for painting. In this one the brilliant fall foliage acts as a perfect foil for the soaring raptor. That got me to thinking (always a dangerous act for me) about how I could get some close-ups of these regal birds. Aha! Why not feed them in my own backyard! Our local butcher helped my cause by giving me all the fat and scraps I wanted.
At first it worked. I placed the scraps in the middle of a big open area in our yard where I could get an unimpeded view of their dining and soon I was sharing my space in Nimpkish Heights with four or five of these impressive birds. Then came the crows; hundreds of them and as everyone who has ever observed crows and eagles, the big birds are no match for the canny shenanigans of the crow family. Nevertheless, the eagles were hanging in as much as they could, yielding to the temptation of the meat scraps, tempting me to go on with the feeding. Every kind of bird under God’s blue sky had a go at the scraps, including huge gulls, who were obviously passing the word to the oceanic neighbourhood for soon hundreds of that clan began appearing. That didn’t stop me since I was learning scads about bird protocol. Fascinating stuff!
What did bring the whole thing to a very short stop was the appearance of the bear. The supplies I was getting would go a long way with the bird population but this four footed vacuum cleaner could not be filled! On the positive side, I did get a whole lot of really good photos of all sorts of birds and learned a lot in the process. I hope you enjoy the painting as much as I did “experiencing” putting it together!
