Blog

The Circle Game

"And the seasons they go round and round

And the painted ponies go up and down

We’re captive on the carousel of time”

I have always loved Joni Mitchell’s song, ever since I was young. Her music popped into into my head just now.  I was thinking about how to describe my experience of capturing my observations of Nature in this very wonderful circular visual diary. Because just saying, “Oh it’s a phenology wheel” kind of puts this into a very nerdy category of Grade 6 science fair projects. Nothing against elementary school science projects.

I would like to think it’s a little more poetic, thanks Joni.

I was inspired in the first place by Marion, a talented artist, craftswoman and gardener in a little village in northern England, who very generously shared YouTube videos on how she created a painted wheel to record small daily observations in her garden, every day of the month.  I didn't know I had been looking for something like this! And so, yes, there are still good things to be found on the Internet, and Marion's World is a gem.

We of a certain age, all know the feeling of time sliding along, a little too quickly, a little too slickly, erasing our moments, our days, our months, our seasons. So I immediately gravitated to the idea of observing something in the natural world every day. First off, it's a practice that connects you to the Real, something that's becoming increasingly necessary in our world today. I keep a garden, but had been spending too little time just being in it, beyond the planting, weeding, watering and maintenance. Too often I was separating myself from my painting practice as well. I needed something to grease the wheels and make me pick up a brush every single day. But most of all, creating a phenology wheel in watercolor has been building my powers of observation and my ability to be present. A walk in the neighborhood becomes a treasure hunt and a mini-science field trip every day.

I have been choosing a theme each month, which presents a different focus and challenge. In August, it's wasn't hard to notice the abundance of what's growing as edible roots and what's ripening on vines and branches. I chose subjects from my garden and also from the plants, trees and shrubs that grow in the green spaces of suburbia and in the parts of Alberta that I visited, feeding the birds and sometimes, the bears. Occasionally, I repeated a subject later in the month, when I noticed a berry changing in appearance as it ripened, or I found it growing a whole different way in a location that was hundreds of kilometres apart. Leaves can also turn color quite a lot in the space of 31 days, and so do some fruits. 

I add to the paintings, a recording of hours of daylight, the low/high daily temperatures and a little indication of the weather, because, well, it's a Canadian thing to do. Last month I drove southward six hours and stayed for a week, so I certainly noticed the difference in the berries I recorded, and the daylight hours. Lastly, the center image is highly inspired from my book collection of traditional Ukrainian folk designs often written in beeswax on eggs, which are called pysanky-- another of my practices. All together, it was a month to dig out all shades of watercolor pigments that don't appear on my daily palette, just to provide that full riot of color that is August.

Next up in September is a daily study of Autumn leaves.