Summertime marshland - Sink or swim

 

One of my favourite walking destinations, Trout Lake, might be taking a hit from our extended dry weather.  I’m reluctant to do reconnaissance because coyotes with young broods are actively on the prowl there.  This scene, from months back, will have to suffice. 

 

If it looks like a candidate for “drain the swamp,” it’s actually the reverse.  For a number of years, a wetlands reclamation project has been in progress there, under City of Vancouver auspices, building on the work of an ecological organization. 

 

It’s only natural that Summer Campers exploring different landscape forms would check out marshes and different artists’ views of them.  Early in my browsing, I came across Russian-born Canadian artist Paraskeva Clark.  She is barely known but her name was familiar to me as one among several overlooked 20^th century female artists featured in a 2023 exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

 

Her painting “Reflections” was surprising and intriguing:

 

Next, I went back to Trout Lake for a comparable image to work with:

 

As I began developing the scene “in the manner of Paraskeva Clark,” I spent a lot of time considering what made her piece so distinctive.

 

Her style was certainly not coming across in mine.  Should I have chosen another Trout Lake view, with strong diagonals and tighter composition?

 

I made some preliminary strokes and then decided to stick with the original, with its reflections, and be done with it:

 

Now, what about Paraskeva, the artist?  She scarcely looks like the type to go about in muddy boots.

 

I gave just a few sessions to a kind of quick study for her portrait, which might be useful later on.  Or not.

 

The best way to celebrate marshlands might be with another book title – an absolutely fascinating recap of history, geology, and strange lore.  Its biggest revelation for me was how much of middle North America was once bogland, and inhabited bogland at that.

 

Let’s rise above it all now – and take a cool Summer Camp paddle among the clouds.

 

 

 

Summer Camp in sight!

 

The very thought of summer camp brings seasonal excitement that goes back more than 70 years now (yikes!). I loved being in the woods all day (so it seemed), swimming endlessly (the one “sport” I excelled in), feeling the mystery of campfires, learning new skills with new friends – choosing my own colours to make my own boondoggle.  Those camps of long ago are long gone now, but the memory lingers on.

 

But that strong pull of the season has made “Summer Camp” a regular part of my art year – as I’ve learned that Summer Camp is where you find it.

This year my plan is a variation on past themes.  I've looked at paintings of different types of landscapes by known artists, then looked for a similar local vista and recreated it, maybe in the style of the artist, maybe using new media, whatever unfolds.  If I get carried away, I’ll also do the artist’s portrait.

And I did get carried away when I cut the ribbon to open this year’s Summer Camp.  What better artist to lead the way than Georges Seurat, whose “Sunday Afternoon”  at Chicago’s Art Institute was the first real painting I ever saw.  Love at first sight!

With its shoreline theme, Seurat’s “Evening at Honfleur” made a useful match with Ambleside, the shoreline in the photo above.

 

So here’s Ambleside in the style of Seurat.

 

What if it were hanging on the Art Institute’s walls?  Just think:  Instant acclaim for me if only it were large enough.

 

Onward now to portraits of Seurat, both of them in pastel but applied differently.

 

It’s so hard to turn lights out at the end of the first day of Summer Camp -- so I kept going.   I’d also been attracted by this engraving with a shoreline at “The Bay of Naples,” by new-to-me artist, Elizabeth Greatorex. 

 

Her very name is intriguing.  A type of dinosaur?  No, it’s more likely related to “great rocks,” or a half-dozen other Anglo-Saxon possibilities.

 

Without years of supervised study, I can't replicate Ambleside as an engraving.  Instead I chose the simplest printmaking technique – preparing a textured, inked “plate” and stamping it on my paper.

 

An interim stage:

With additional blotting and rubbing, here’s the final “Shoreline/Great Rocks.”

 

And Elizabeth herself?  

Same method, stamping the paper with inked texture.

 

The finale:  Does she look a little like “A Rare Bird With Feathers”? 

 

In this get-up, she just might fit in with the party crowd.  Let the summer begin!