Prince Edward Island – Potato Planters Admiring Baby Kilders

The sea is never far off in Prince Edward Island. Joe Maddix accompanied me on a tour of the coast just three miles from his farm. We drove over a section of a road under construction where freshly scarred earth revealed better than ever its red colour. On the sea’s edge, there were small, oddly located, shingle covered houses sat in clusters, others stood alone, but none had any kind of windbreak to shelter them.

It is this stark, yet colourful, element of Prince Edward Island that I have tried to present in the painting of Potato Framers Admiring Baby Kildeers : the read earth, the green fields, the blue sea and sky. The farmers have paused to watch the kildeers, a ground-nest bird I also knew well out West. Their pleasure in the birds is that hig-and-cuddle feeling onehas toward nature’s babies. Some kildeers have just hatched – little balls of fluff set high on legs thinner than toothpicks. A baby kildeer is a poor escape artist, tripping even over a blade of grass. The mother, meanwhile, tries to attract attention away from the abby by feigning a broken wing.