This is a 12x24” oil painting on a gallery thick (1.5”) birch wood panel.

I shot the reference photo during a September cottage weekend in Muskoka with some of my best friends a few years ago. That weekend was a hilarious whirlwind of giggles, boating around Muskoka, looking at famous people’s cottages and listening to the geese sing as they flew by.

When I think about what autumn in Ontario feels like, I think of crisp, foggy mornings, golden sunlight filtering through the sunset-tinged leaves, overcast days and cozy socks and the chorus of Canadian geese singing their anthem overhead as they head south for winter.

When I scrolled past this picture in my reference photo album and remembered I had a 12x24” birch panel hanging out in my studio closet, I knew I wanted to harness some of that quiet, nostalgic fall aura. The original photo is a wide landscape shot, I cropped it and then organized the tallest tree 1/3 of the way across the scene for a pleasing adherence to the rule of 2/3rds (in my humble opinion). When I saw that there were 5 geese, I Googled what a musical group comprising five members is called and thought “Quintet” was the perfect title.

A signature look of my work is how the painting wraps around the edges of the panel by a 1/2”, the remaining depth was left the blonde birch wood. The entire piece, edges included, is coated in a satin varnish.