Prairies & Lakes Series (Part 2)
It has been ages since I have written a post here. I apologize for that but I have been consumed with commissioned paintings since June, which is exciting and I am very thankful for! Fast-forward to December now. I find myself with some time carved out where I can continue working on this Prairies and Lakes (2020- ongoing) series I started many months ago.
Between March and June I managed to finish four paintings in this series, and I wanted to share individual details about these paintings here. I did this with my last watercolour series, which you can start reading here. It was nice to be able to share more personal memories of each painting and landscape so I wanted to carry on the tradition as this series with be ongoing for a while.
When I talk about any of the paintings in this series, I feel like I can easily make the mistake of giving almost too many details. For example, Morning at West Chatfield Beach (2020) is a painting depicting looking north down West Chatfield Beach at Jackfish Lake, Saskatchewan. Which is not very interesting to share, unless you wanted to go on a pilgrimage tracing my exact steps to see this places in real life. But those details mean something to me, it explains where shadows fall at certain times of day, etc. which recreates the time and place perfectly in my head.
Jackfish Lake is where our family’s cabin is, and is affectionately known as “The Lake” or “Jackfish”. The scenes I paint should be instantly recognize by the unchanging landscapes. The same boats, the same deck chairs strewn across the beach, the same plastic buckets forgotten in the sand, etc. adorn the beach year after year and encompass the quintessential elements of carefree cabin life and summer to me. Almost like all of these man-made accoutrements are naturally occurring, a part of the landscape. This is what I hope to capture in this series and I hope it translates to others. Now let us get on with the paintings!
First up is of course the first painting, Lakeside Morning at West Chatfield Beach (2020). This painting is a scene that has not changed much in the last 20 years! The same sail boat, upside-down beached boat, peaks at cabins, beach paraphernalia scattered across the beach, and I love it all. It is such a quintessential image to me. It was the perfect image to set me off on this new series.
When I first wrote about this series, here, I mentioned that the first painting of this series was started on the Friday when the world started to turned upside-down where I live. March 13th, 2020 to be exact. That was not intentional that is just how my work aligned for me, but a nice detail I think. It doesn’t make me feel like this series is unlucky in anyway. More the opposite. Like this series must be great because I got to settle into some new works that depict a place I hold very dear when we were all looking for security blankets in the madness. And now as winter descends, getting to word on these morsels of summer are keeping me warm and cheery!
The second painting of this series is Farmer Day’s Kitchen Garden (2020), this painting is as the title implies. There is a farmer whose’s family name is Day and this is his kitchen garden framed by its surrounding fields and hills along Day’s Beach at my beloved Jackfish.
Day’s Beach is the neighbouring beach of West Chatfield Beach, and there is a nice walking path that cuts through a pair of fields connect the two. For years during our annual trip to the lake, my Mum and I have been going for daily morning walks over to Day’s Beach, whose backroad is surrounded by glorious lush greenery and fields (Chatfields’ road is decidedly barren), and inhabited by delightful snowshoe hares. These early morning walks are always a highlight of our trips to the lake. We love their scenery, tranquility, morning light, and the chance to see some illusive snowshoe hares or other wildlife activity.
Kitchen gardens are a favourite of mine, their prospective of edible bounty thrills me. Getting glimpses of what other people are growing to eat always inspires me for my own garden. Seeing the simple potatoes and corn growing in farmer Day’s brings about memories of relishing the taste of simple vegetables. Also I always wonder what the milk cartons are really for as they do not seem to be marking rows but they must be there for a reason.
Mornings with a Snowshoe Hare in the Clearing (2020) is the third painting in the series. This image depicts the clearing along Day’s Beach road where we are most likely to spot a snowshoe hare. If you have never seen a snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus),they are quite small (appearing 6-8 inches long crouching) and shy. They get their name of snowshoe from their large-long back feet, they have no tail, and relatively short round ears. We have never seen snowshoe hares anywhere else so our yearly crusade to the Lake makes sighting them all the more special. My Mum and I can count on seeing a snowshoe hare several time in this specific clearing. It is quiet, open, grassy, and enclosed by shrubs making it attractive to these small critters.
This snowshoe hare is the first time I have ever included wildlife in a painting. That does not sound like a big deal. But for me it is. I am not that comfortable depicting animals in my art. Figurative work was what I dreaded most all throughout art school, especially if the figure had both eyeballs visible (notice how the hare in my painting is seen in profile). I would take painting an intricate machine with all of its mechanical parts visible over an creature with a face any day of the week. Hence why the hare is balanced out with the boat lift!
Boat lifts are not particularly beautiful but I find them architecturally alluring for some reason. Maybe because my family’s cabin only has one single person kayak. Cabin boat life has always seemed like an anomaly to me for a plethora of reasons. But I do not remember this boat lift ever not being in this clearing, it has become part of the natural scenery at this point, for better or worse, and is part of the beauty of the quintessential prairie-lake landscape.
Lastly, we have Trembling Aspens on Day’s Road (2020) the painting with the most mystery of this series so far. I think it is one of those paintings where people can see what is but they are not really sure why the artist painted it. But I love this painting for these reasons. The deep dark shadows with the electric highlights as well as the small gap in the trees unveiling a peak of the field behind the aspen trees is what drew me to this image. It sort of feels like the prairie equivalent of Narnia, a different world lies beyond the Aspens, and the old fence post or the wooden dowel painted orange that is just behind, is the lamppost! The unknown is very intriguing.
Well there we have it the first four paintings in this series! I hope you enjoyed getting a little more insight into each painting. I have plenty more paintings in this series to come, but it might be a while until you see another post with them. Simply because I actually need to paint them and that always takes the longest!
Beaches and trees,
L. C. Cariou