There has been quite a lot of painting happening here the last couple of months. Brushstrokes and thin layers, glazing and blending.
Trying to find the essence of a seascape in a slow build.
The subdued colours of a day with a low sky.
A sky that settles like a whisper in your cupped hands.
A world painted by fog.
This is not the sea but there is a sense of it here in this river. An essence. There was a sea here once. It has left pieces of itself behind.
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© Karen McRae, 2013
The River in full-on winter. There is no shortage of snow here to welcome in the new year. It is crisp and beautiful.
The Ghost of Seasons Past: A seed head in double exposure …it would seem there may still be unknown life left in there…
© Karen McRae, 2012
This is an in-camera double exposure (digital) I had made this past summer in the middle of drought. The water was so low the lily pads were wilting on dry land. I just came across this image when I was looking for a reference for something I am painting and I was struck by the environmental extremes that we all seem to be experiencing.
(Click on the image for a larger view)
© Karen McRae, 2012
~ The liquid between 2 cities. ~
© Karen McRae, 2012
It looks so quiet here at this wide natural part of the river.
But the silence here has interruptions.
There is often intermittent popping of gunfire from the nearby rifle range and this makes the silent pauses in between more distinct, more remarkably still.
It’s as though the landscape holds its breath.
It seems if you spend enough time here, those sounds somehow become part of the wide space. The haphazard rhythm its own sort of meditation.
How can this be?
Shirley’s Bay, Ottawa River
All images © Karen McRae, 2012
I‘m not sure how long I was here looking at the delicate trails (snails or other invertebrates?) in the sand around my feet before I realized someone had come to join me…
From one the last few days of September.
All images © Karen McRae, 2012
The river holds a lot of history.
Some of it has flowed downstream with the currents and moved on to the sea but some of its oldest history is still here. And when the water is low you can find one of the most striking features visible along the Ottawa River shoreline: The stromatolites on the Quebec side of the river. They have been scraped down by glaciers and eroded by time but the ancient stromatolite bed remnants are still remarkably beautiful and visible.
The seaweed growth on the rock above shows that the stromatolite formations are often covered by water.
These stromatolites are over 450 million years old and were formed during the Paleozoic period when this area was located near the equator and was covered in a warm shallow sea. The stromatolites are built up in layers by cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, and are accretionary structures rather than body fossils.
This cross-section above, of a dislodged and abraded stromatolite shows the many thin biofilm layers that are built up by cyanobacteria (blue-green algae).
Nearby fossil-rich rocks – which are slowly being eroded by the current – exposing various fossil snails.
The Champlain Bridge linking Ontario and Quebec; a striking contrast between the modern and the ancient world.
Related links and references:
Mapping the Shoreline 1
Ottawa River Keeper
Wikipedia:Pangaea
Wikipedia:Stromatolites
All images © Karen McRae, 2012
Map-like surfaces scraped into the rocky shore.
A rare rainy day here, not long ago. It seems as though the entire summer’s worth of rain fell on this one day.
All images © Karen McRae, 2012
All images © Karen McRae
draw and shoot 