environment

Late Summer Seedheads

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LateSummerSeedheads4The weather is shifting already and last night we had frost. It seems far too soon(!), but anyway, the flora is shifting with the temperatures, too.

I’ve been photographing these particular type of seedheads from my garden for over a year, through all the seasons (I don’t know what they are called). I can’t seem to make interesting photographs of them when they are still blooming, though. These are just some of the small remnants of summer, each one about the size of my thumbnail. I might try again while there are still a few blossoms left but it seems to be the transforming seedheads that my camera loves.

There are always new shapes and colours developing as the seasons change so I always find them interesting to photograph. I like how the tiny ‘tentacled’ seed forms look a bit squid-like in these images.

Many previously posted images of these (and other) seedheads can be found here.

© Karen McRae, 2013

How Does One Creative Process Shape Another?

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I was poking through archives, thinking about a particular painting I’m working on and looking for a visual reference. Texture, colour, form … Perhaps I over-think these things … In any case, I found a bit of spring, and a bit of autumn. If you put them together it seems you don’t get summer. But anyway, it is these earthy tones that draw me in.

I remember walking among these young trees in the early spring, the water high, and the thin trunks appearing like lanky hoofed legs wading in a river mangrove. Their reflections moving like a deep gentle breath. What sort of creatures would be attached to these spindly legs?

Of course, there is no such thing as a mangrove here, but if there was, it would be in this place where the trees are living on the edge rooted in both water and land.

Like the shifting seasons – one foot here, the other stepping towards the next. Tentatively. So far.
WaterRooted3As I write this there is classical music (mostly strings) playing in the background. Would my text be shaped differently if I had been listening to another sort of music? Would I have chosen different words or remembered these experiences the same way?
How does one creative process (in this case, listening) shape another?

[These images are layered photographs, made with equal parts of spring and fall]

© Karen McRae, 2013

The Yellow Canoe

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The-Yellow-Canoe2A few days and memories stacked on top of each other

I’ve been away on another canoe trip. A bit different from the last one as this adventure involved whitewater. I’d never done a paddling trip like this before on a long winding river with many, many rapids. I spent a fair amount of time grinning while we paddled 65km of that river. I confess, though, there were times I was a bit nervous. Things can go wrong in a hurry. Mostly they don’t.

The yellow canoe is not the one I traveled in (we were 5 canoes in total) but it is the most storied. It has seen many rivers and has touched many rocks. It has some wisdom the other canoes do not. It also has more scars. If you are the older and wiser vessel you will know to carry a roll of Gorilla Tape in your hull. You will know that same tape might be the thing that gets you home in the end.

This image is 4 layered photographs. Each layer expresses a different aspect of the trip; The flat water, the landscape, the whitewater, and the fearless yellow canoe. The vertical dark stripe on the canoe interrupts the image, but it belongs there. It is a bandaged scar. The other side sports a similar scar in the horizontal. The yellow canoe was on its last trek.

(These merged images were made during a 4 day camping/canoe trip on the Rivière du Lièvre in beautiful Quebec.)

© Karen McRae, 2013

Wild Apples

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Wild apples floating in the creek, doubly exposed and ‘cooked’ three ways. (I think I like the black and white…) It seems the deer come to this hidden place to bob for apples, leaving behind deep footprints in the clay banks.

© Karen McRae, 2013

Another Winged Thing

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WingedThings1Untitled. Oil, conté & graphite on Mylar 20″x24″. (These paintings always look so much better in real life, I think.)

A winged thing that is tied to water. Inspired from bits and pieces from the river shoreline, things now lying around the studio.

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A studio view with most of the mess unseen.

In-the-Studio2(The other painting was posted previously here.)

© Karen McRae, 2013

Sliver-thin Layers and Double Exposures

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ShroudedSliver-thin layers and double exposures. From the series Surface, Submerge.

© Karen McRae, 2013

I suppose this image doesn’t seem to have much to do with the rest of this post but it is woven in with a fine thread…

In the past few months I have been very fortunate to be included in a couple of wonderful publications and I thought I would mention this as a way of perhaps introducing these magazines to anyone that might be interested.

The first is a gorgeous publication from the Netherlands called “Flow Magazine” and they included this blog(!) in an article all about nature blogs. (*Although the article is in Dutch, Flow Mag has recently started issuing international copies of their magazine in English. Also, I recommend checking out some of those other nature bloggers listed if you have the time.)

You can find a copy of that article here: Flow Magazine ‘Groene Bloggers’

I am honoured, also, to have art from my ‘Surface, Submerge’ series included in the latest print issue of Art & Science Journal along with some other very accomplished artists.

You can find that article here: Surface, Submerge
As well as print issues, Art & Science Journal has a very beautiful and interesting blog.

Many thanks to both of these publications for the recognition, and for allowing me to ‘reprint’ these articles [*copyright of these articles remains with each publication]. I hope you get a chance to check them out – click on the images below to be brought to their home pages.

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It’s a Dragonfly Summer

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Yellow-greenDragonflyThe dragonflies have been amazing this year. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many. In fact, as I sit writing this post I can see them flitting around outside my window.

They have been gathering on the sun drenched bushes and shrubs allowing me to observe them rather closely (I’d venture to say that they are willing collaborators, one of them even perched on my nose for a while …). Mostly they are a yellow-green colour but there are a few other types, too, and they are all fascinating up close.

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When we were canoe camping in Killarney a couple of weeks ago I saw a several cast off larval skins from dragonflies and here is one pictured below.
DragonflyShellDragonflies in their larval stage live underwater and when they are ready to metamorphose into adults they climb out of the water on an available reed or water plant and go through the process of emerging from their old skin.

DragonflyinSundewsNear the shed skin was this poor dragonfly caught in some sticky carnivorous sundews (Drosera). Sundews are rather beautiful, I will have to head to the bog one day and see if I can find some locally.

[These above 2 photographs are lacking detail as I didn’t bring a macro lens camping (all other images were taken with a macro lens), and my canoe kept shifting around – next time I think the extra weight of the macro lens would be completely worth it!]

A whiskered closeup:
Yellow-greenDragonfly9_crop(click on images to enlarge)

© Karen McRae, 2013

~When the Wind Holds Back its Breath~

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RorschachRocks2smallIn the stillness there are things to be seen that disappear when breathing resumes.

If you lie down on this quiet lake ~ put your ear to the cool surface ~ and look to the shore, this is what you would find. These ancient totems perpetually drawn and re-drawn by rock, wind and wave.

These creatures that are both there and not there. Embodied by both solid and liquid.

They are like the spirits of the land, I think. Reminding me of the people who first paddled these lakes, first walked this land, and lived in balance with the earth.

[All these images are (rotated) reflections on water, made during a canoe trip to
Killarney Provincial Park in Ontario.]

© Karen McRae, 2013