Secluded

There are times in the normal hubbub of daily life that you need some peace and quiet, a time to rest and recover. None of us is immune from personal hurts and challenges in life and today it seems more than ever.

The steady deep freeze has given way to March weather: waves of warmer days punctuated by cold snaps. I am more than ready for the fresh greens of spring and the smells and sounds of nature coming back to life.

In this Claude Monet like pond, I tried to capture the gentle calm, the richness of the flora (the fauna is hiding waiting for me to be gone) and the tranquility. Take deep breaths and tread softly.

Acrylic, 24×30 on gallery wrap – $800

@Istvan Jobst

Boiling long into the night

A trip to the sugarbush is a fun family outing in early spring. Hay rides through the maple woods and demonstrations of the sugar shack operation, finished off with sweet treats to taste and takeaway, all make for a lovely day of fresh air and mild temperatures.

This all belies the long and hard work (perhaps like a lot of stuff on the farm) that goes into making maple syrup. Cutting plenty of fire wood to feed the fire (can’t run out in the middle of a run) is a great way of developing muscles and aches and pains. Tapping when the time is right. It may take 40 gallons of sap to make just 1 gallon of syrup. That’s a lot of trees and trips from tree to collector to evaporator. When there’s a good run of sap, boiling will continue well into the small hours of the morning and there’s little rest between feeding the fire, topping up the evaporator, keeping a close eye on the temperature, siphoning off and also checking outside to see the sparks have not started a fire in the brush. I love maple syrup and maple butter! You have to appreciate the work that has gone into it.

Acrylic, 16×20 on gallery wrap – $355

@Istvan Jobst