Mottled Sunlight on Paintings

     I remember someone saying that after you have a painting on the wall for two months, you don’t see it anymore, and to a certain extent that is true.  Your eyes get used to seeing it there, and so you no longer take notice of it.  

    As you might expect, I have a lot of my paintings hanging on the walls, which I guess I normally don’t pay any attention to, but ever once and a while, sunshine and shade from outside will filter through the windows which give the paintings a whole new feel.  

    Some of the areas and colors are highlighted, while in other places the colors are darkened.    They often give the painting a whole new power and intensity.  I love seeing what that sunshine and shade do to the paintings, and sometimes wish I had painted them with that extra contrast.  Here are some examples of sun and shade on some of my paintings.

You can see my paintings (without mottling) at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Charlie Leake Memorial

     This has been a weekend of connecting with friends.  On Saturday I did it at the Dunster Market, and yesterday I attended the memorial for local aviator and friend, Charlie Leake who died last year.  Charlie grew up in McBride, became a Lt. Col. from the Royal Canadian Air Force, then retired and continued flying privately upon moving back to McBride.  I met him when I was working for the BC Forest Service where he did a lot of contract flying.  At yesterday’s memorial I was happy to run into several of my old forestry workmates and was able to catch up with their current lives.  

    If you want to know more about Charlie, here is a link to a blog I about him in December:

http://www.davidmarchant2.ca/Color_and_Light_2/Blog/Entries/2024/12/30_2024_Losses__Charlie_Leake.html

    The activities that took place at Charlie’s memorial largely centered around the Tiger Moth bi-plane that he owned, which is now owned by a local guy who now lives in Prince George.  The bi-plane flew around all afternoon entertaining the crowd at the memorial.  Charlie’s ashes were spread from the Tiger Moth as it flew over Teare Mountain, (which is the peak you can see in the photo above).

    While I mostly associate the Tiger Moth with Dr. Cowburn, who owned it and flew it during most of those early years after we moved to McBride, Charlie bought it when Dr. Cowburn could no longer fly it, and we were happy that the bright yellow bi-plane continued to periodically accent the skies over McBride.  

    I took a lot of photos of the plane doing by-passes for the crowd.  It was wonderful to see the old canvas, wire, and wood bi-plane whizz by and do turns and loops with the mountain peaks in the background.  The bottom photo shows a young Charlie Leake as a jet fighter pilot.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Dunster Market Season Opening

     Yesterday was the season opening of the Dunster Market and so we drove to the Dunster Community Hall to join the crowds buying bedding plants, art work, grilled burgers, and of course, doughnuts.  There were lots of people on hand (unfortunately, although I had my camera along the whole time, I didn’t think about taking a photo until we were leaving, and by that time, the crowd had thinned out considerably)

    We bought some red cabbage bedding plants and some marigolds, which we plant beside the cabbages to keep the bugs away from them.  We also stood in the long line for some homemade doughnuts being sold by a young Mennonite  woman.  I was surprised to see on her sign:  “We do e-transfers.”  That was something I hadn’t ever associated with Mennonite women.

    Beside the bedding plants and doughnuts, the big draw of the Dunster Market opening is running into  old friends and acquaintances from Dunster and Valemount, as well as McBride, to do some catching  up with what is happening in their lives.  I heard about a death of a friend that I wasn’t aware of, and of course, hearing about how of our aging friends are dealing with getting older.  I am always a bit surprised at how many “new” people were there; people I didn’t know.  When we were younger we knew most of the people we ran into.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

An Unexpected Frost

     This year I decided to start my corn inside the house to give them a head start instead of planting the kernels outside in the garden like I usually did.  I figured that would increase my chances of actually getting some ears of corn this summer.  I must have started the corn too soon, because they grew too quickly in the house, and I felt pressured to plant them in the ground before they got too big.  

    Transplanting the corn in the ground didn’t really work out very well for me.  The spring weather remained cooler than the corn preferred and then on Wednesday night we got a frost.  I saw that the nighttime  temperature was due to dip below freezing, so I did cover my corn plants with a plastic sheet to protect them from the cold, but they still suffered.  Above you can see how forlorn my corn plants now look.

    On the positive side, that cold temperature did give me some the nice photos of mist on the pond that I showed you yesterday, and below is a shot of a frosted Lupine that I also took.  It got so cold that the drops of water that were nestled in the center of the Lupine foliage even froze.

    

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Mist on the Pond

     While I take my camera with me just about every time I take my morning walk around the pond, usually I don’t find anything to take a photo of.  However on Wednesday morning there had been a frost overnight and the warmer water in the pond created a mist that I found very photogenic.  Here are a couple of pictures that I took of the mist hanging over the pond.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

A Walk Home From Town

     I like normal days when I can just stick to my regular routine, but yesterday wasn’t one of them.  I had made an appointment in McBride to get the winter tires taken off of the car and my summer tires put on.  Usually my wife will drive in with the car and I will follow with the pickup truck, we drop off the car, and we drive home in the truck, but yesterday, my wife could hardly walk because of a fall, so I decided I would just drive the car into town, drop it off, and then walk the five miles back to our house.

    It had been a beautiful morning with the sun shining, some fluffy clouds, and what looked like a good day for my walk, however by the time I got the car dropped off at the garage, the clouds had pretty much taken over the sky, and their was an unpleasant strong cold wind blowing.  Nevertheless, I was committed (or should have been) and I set off for home.

    I had biked the trip many many times, but I don’t remember ever walking it.  I had my camera along to take some photos along the way, and was disappointed at having a gray sky, but it was, what it was.      

    Here are some of the photos I took on my walk home.  Above you see Hwy. 16 east of McBride.  Below that is the old Koeneman log house at Koeneman Park, surrounded by dandelions.   The photo at the very bottom shows the white teepee on the opposite side of the Fraser River.

 I didn’t really have to walk all the way home, fortunately just as I got the the bottom of the steep Mennonite Hill, my neighbor Nick came along in his car, offering me a ride the rest of the way home, which I was happy to accept.n Park, surrounded by dandelions.  The photo at the bottom is a view across the Fraser River showing the white teepee.  I actually saw a few white caps on the river, proving that the wind was blowing pretty strong.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Forget Me Nots

     This time of year, whenever I look out onto our yard I think of our long ago neighbor Mrs. Nail.  Back in 1977 when we moved to McBride, Virginia McKibben Nail was a tall, lanky, elderly woman, who had worked at the Harvard College Observatory for twenty years, and had written many published many papers on astronomy, but that was not why I think of her every spring.

    Mrs. Nail had been a member of the Alpine Club of Canada, and had gotten some Forget Me Not seeds from them which she planted in her yard.  Those Forget Me Nots have spread to our yard and because I always mow around them, instead of mowing them down, they proliferate.  I now have big patches of them growing in various places in my lawn, which I really enjoy seeing.  They give a flowery-meadow look to the yard.  That is them growing on the beside of our sidewalk in the photo below.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca