Two days of “wow moments” this week to enjoy from the Pacific Spirit Park, Vancouver, as we start the long weekend. Hope yours is one full of love and joy.
photography
summer bounty
An end of summer bouquet from the garden for the first of the month,
with gratitude as always to our frontline heroes.
efernally grateful
Efernally grateful to the majesty of the Pacific Spirit Park that has been a sanctuary of peace and beauty throughout the challenging months of Covid, as it was again today on this eve of the new month ahead.
🍁🍁🍁
family is everything
So many great memories from a wonderful family week…
…especially cousin time…
…and ending today with the artist at work in the studio with her own original leaf creations from start to finish.
We miss them both already and hope we are together again soon.
❤️❤️❤️
sunflower heaven
The Chilliwack Sunflower Festival in British Columbia’s Fraser Valley was the perfect place to visit today in these challenging times to enjoy fields of sunflowers of every kind together with wonderful gladioli and dahlia bonuses.
oh the joy
beauty and the beach ❤️
spirit leopards
Shadows in the Pacific Spirit Park.
from spirit bark to spirit dark
Spirit Bark
On today’s third anniversary of the horrific terrorist attack in Barcelona this recent painting of bark from the magnificent trees in the Pacific Spirit Park serves to re-introduce my post from three years ago entitled “From Spirit Park to Spirit Dark” in which my painting of the park that day became transformed into a memorial for all those so tragically lost, as we remember them once again on this sombre day.
From Spirit Park to Spirit Dark – August 18th, 2017
Spirit Dark after Guernica, in progress
Spirit Park
The evolution of today’s post:
The Pacific Spirit Regional Park in Vancouver is a beautiful jewel in our city, a place of peace and tranquility that I have posted about many times, and as recently as this week’s Photo Challenge from The Daily Post. On our last visit there one of my photos inspired me…
…to set up a number of sheets of newsprint on the studio wall and see where it took me with charcoal, crayon and paint.
I was happy that the image was progressing well and was close to being finished…
…and then yesterday morning came the news from Spain of the horrific terrorist attack killing and injuring countless innocent men, women and children from all over the world, enjoying a summer’s evening in Las Ramblas in Barcelona. The images were heartbreaking, and one particularly was unforgettable, a baby’s stroller abandoned on the sidewalk and a child lying motionless in the street.
I shall never forget the first time I saw Picasso’s Guernica in New York in 1965. It has haunted me ever since, and those images from Barcelona immediately brought it back to me. It is perhaps one of the greatest works of protest art ever created, painted by Picasso after the attack on the city of Guernica in 1937.
Suddenly my Spirit Park in the studio seemed a million miles away from the reality of the carnage and horror happening across the sea, and images relating to another time in history started to appear amongst the trees together with that stroller and that beautiful innocent child.
As I send sympathy and condolences to all those suffering from yet another crime against humanity, Spirit Dark in some small way is my way of protesting these evil times.
One more photo from that morning in the park perhaps allows me to end with a ray of hope in our dark world.
Post Script 17.8.20
Two years ago in October 2018 visiting the Reina Sofia in Madrid was a special day on our memorable trip to Spain, the highlight of which was seeing Picasso’s Guernica for the second time in over fifty years having first seen it in New York in 1965. Once again, standing before the painting, it takes one’s breath away with its impact as an artistic statement against the horrors of war and of man’s inhumanity to man. Sadly so little seems to have changed in our present times as we see dictators and autocrats across the world continuing to demonstrate that same inhumanity as they terrorize their own people and attempt to prevent democracies from flourishing. To my American friends all I can say is VOTE.
The painting was finished this year.
Ooh, Shiny!
Three years ago today I responded to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge with images from what you all know is one of our favourite places, the Pacific Spirit Regional Park here in Vancouver. By way of today’s photo from yesterday’s walk in the Park here is that post from three years ago that shows how this special place continues to be such an important part of our lives.
that’s the spirit – August 16, 2017
Ooh, Shiny!
Diversions, distractions, and delightful detours.
For this week’s Photo Challenge from The Daily Post we are asked where do we find our “Ooh, Shiny” moments. If you follow The Changing Palette you will know one of my favourite walks is in Vancouver’s Pacific Spirit Regional Park, and when the sun is out it’s all about those Ooh, Shiny moments, whether it be the height of the summer, as it was just a week or two ago…
…or in the cool, clear, colorful days of Fall, as I posted in October 2015
In tomorrow’s post I will revisit a day on which the beauty of the park suddenly became transformed in the studio to a place of pain and anguish in response to a never-to-be-forgotten terrorist attack, the third anniversary of which is tomorrow.
a fallen frontline hero
I took this photo at the Canadian National Vimy Memorial dedicated to the Canadian soldiers who fell at the battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917. Today I would like to dedicate it to a fallen colleague who was murdered on a modern day frontline in his walk-in clinic in Red Deer, Alberta. I did not know Dr. Walter Reynolds but I have no doubt he was as much a hero to his patients as the soldiers who gave their lives in Northern France all those years ago. I send my deepest sympathy and heartfelt condolences to his family, patients, colleagues and friends. I know we are all grieving with them. Dr. Reynolds and his family were very much in our thoughts as we walked today in the Pacific Spirit Park here in Vancouver.
thechangingpalette 