About the work

Location: Big Trout Bay, Lake Superior. Northwestern Ontario, Canada.
Notes: Watercolour painting on arches 140 lbs Cold Pressed Paper. This is a painting of a cobble beach with a small butterfly floating on the water’s surface. The clear water suggests the butterfly is gilding in the air, but the shadow of it on the cobbles gives it away. Instead, the butterfly is floating calmly; the white scales covering the thin chitin layers that make up the wings are beginning to detach onto the water’s surface.
2017 The Nature Conservancy of Canada purchased the Big Trout Bay area. Located near Thunder Bay, the property is near the Canadian and American border, just north of Grand Portage, Minnesota. Big Trout Bay is 1,000 hectares of coastal boreal forested land, including twenty-one kilometres of undeveloped Lake Superior shoreline. This protected area is essential to native species such as bald eagles and peregrine falcons, which are species of special concern classified by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. In addition, these shoreline areas provide essential habitats for species such as bird’s-eye primrose, lake trout, coastal brook trout, rare arctic plants, wolves, and moose.