Tom's Summer Clouds

Summer Clouds, Summer 1916,
Oil on board, 8 1/4 x 10 1/4 in

The challenge of plein air painting is to catch that fleeting moment of inspiration before it vanishes. Capturing the light, colour and essence of a very transient subject in an instant, can be a daunting challenge. This is what keeps artists going out each day to paint en plein air. That challenge is always present. Changes in the subject can bamboozle the finest artist and turn a canvas into an excellent and very colourful fire starter. The Holy Grail is to create a canvas which becomes the artist’s new favourite. 

Tom Thomson was on that quest. He was frustrated more than once. His sketch box was probably hurled into the brush more times than we know. Tom would flick burning matches at his day’s painting efforts. Some of these matches would undoubtedly stick to the wet oils and the colourful flames would release the colours Tom observed and tried to paint, one last time. 

When viewing a plein air work, start with the premise that the sun is on the artist’s back. The harmful UV rays looking into the sun can blind you. If the artist is looking into the sun and especially at sunrise and sunset, they are gazing at the shadowed side of the subject. The shadowed view is back lit, dark and lacking in colours.  With the sun on your back, the artist sees the strong colours of the scene bathed with light.

Summer Clouds, Summer 1916, 8 1/4 x 10 1/4 in

This scene is looking northerly more or less with the sun on Tom’s back. The sun cannot be seen but the greens of the forest are full of colour. The sketch is also another example of a pure skyscape with a very low horizon. The clouds certainly were the subject matter of Tom’s record. 

Cumulus with Significant Turbulence
adding to the lifting of the air parcels

These front lit, cumulus clouds are typical of a fair weather day. The clouds are generated mainly through heating of the earth’s surface and convective lift but there can also be a turbulent mixing component to that lift.  The bases of the cloud become increasing ragged if turbulent mixing and the wind becomes the dominant process to lift those air parcels to saturation. The lifted condensation levels are identical over the landscape and within the same air mass. Note some of the long and level brush strokes over the distant horizon in Tom’s painting. Daytime heating was the dominant lifting process for these air parcels and the timing of this record is probably early afternoon – after lunch. The cloud bases that Tom painted were getting darker suggesting continued lift and greater cloud depths. 

The cloud tops are very white which results from the large number of liquid water cloud drops in the cloud top. These small cloud droplets result from the buoyant lift in the convectively unstable air mass. The clouds are white as a result of Mie scattering which also explains why whole milk is white. A large number of bigger scatterers reflect radiation of all wavelengths basically all directions. Forward Mie scattering is much stronger than the backward scattering and increases as the size of the scatterers increase. Skim milk tends to have a blue tint...

The density of water droplets in a typical cumulus cloud is 0.5 grams per cubic metre. If one does the math, a one kilometre cube of cloud weighs about 550 tons which is similar to the weight of a fully loaded jumbo jet. A typical cumulus cloud is about a cubic kilometre in scale regardless where it might be located vertically in the atmosphere. That is why I included a jumbo jet in my PowertPoint. 

The illumination of the cloud on the left flanks also suggests that this painting was done in the afternoon hours with the sun already past its zenith.  This also fits well with the stage of development in the cumulus. There are too many cumuli to suggest that any are going to develop to the towering cumulus stage. The abundance of cloud blocks some of the daytime heating required for stronger surface based convection. 

The other option to get deep convection requires a short-wave trough in the upper atmosphere and these cannot be observed from the ground until the convection actually occurs. CSI (Creative Scene Investigation) would require the upper air charts from this day to be certain - but there are no short-wave troughs in sight in Tom’s painting!

Vector Addition of the Updraft and the Wind 
Creates the Shape of the Cumulus Clouds
The image of actual clouds reveals the
accuracy of Tom's Record

The shape of the clouds reveals that the brisk wind is from left to right. The prevailing winds with an approaching high pressure are indeed westerly. A west wind in Algonquin during the summer is likely to be a fair weather day. A west wind is also consistent with the cloud shape and a northerly direction of view. 

An exercise would be to match the terrain of a northerly horizon to pinpoint Tom’s vantage point while he painted.

The goal of CSI is to assemble as many puzzle pieces as possible so that they fit together in a consistent picture and story of the record. The more facts available, the more confident one can be in understanding and appreciating the motivation of Tom to record this experience. Tom painted what he saw… 

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil the Forecaster Chadwick

PS: For the Blog Version of my Tom Thomson catalogue raisonné, Google Search Naturally Curious "Tom Thomson Was A Weatherman - Summary As of Now" or follow this link “http://philtheforecaster.blogspot.com/2022/10/tom-thomson-was-weatherman-summary-as.html”

Tom’s Tornado Three - Some Art

Tom Thomson's Plein Air Sketch Box
with Thunderhead inside

In "Tom’s Tornado!" we described the basics of how and why Tom recorded a tornado. The science of that tornado was described in "Tom’s Tornado Two - Some Science". In this post we will summarize the science and add in the art and the plein air experience of that afternoon in May 1913. 

 Early spring is a prime time to create supercells in southern and central Ontario. The strong spring sun provides the heat energy. The jet stream still packs the energy from the northern hemispheric winter  temperature contrasts. That same moderate to strong jet stream can guide energetic low pressure areas north-eastward from the Gulf of Mexico. Those southerly winds can bring abundant heat and moisture with them. The melting snow and rejuvenating evapotranspiration of the local vegetation can provide added moisture to help fuel the convection.  The lakes are still cold while the surrounding land surfaces can warm considerably under the strong spring sun. The resultant lake breeze fronts are crucial for focussing the development of the supercell thunderstorm. 

May 20th, 2022 Version of the Miller Threat Area 
coinciding from when I wrote this Blog

As a severe weather meteorologist, it was my profession to work up the “Miller’s Severe Convective Threat Diagram” in order to predict where and what type of convective threat might exist. The severity as well as the probability of that convection were also big questions to answer. There were those singular spring days when those threat boxes started in Windsor and stretched north-eastward across Lake Simcoe into Algonquin and western Quebec. That spring afternoon before the biting bugs emerged was a favourite time for Tom Thomson (and myself) to paint en plein air. 

I was struck as if by lightning when I first saw “Thunderhead” in an art book. As a meteorologist, the image of the tornado was obvious. During that part of my meteorological career, science was making giant leaps forward in understanding the mechanics of the thunderstorms that generated tornadoes. The term “supercell” was coined in 1985 to label a severe thunderstorm with a rotating updraft. The tornadoes that can be associated with supercells were also being better understood with the new Doppler radar tool. The fundamental signatures of tornadoes were being identified and incorporated into a refined conceptual model. The amazing accomplishment was that Tom had observed and painted those “new” signatures in 1913! (Thunderhead, 1913. Tom Thomson Canadian, 1877 - 1917 oil on canvas board 17.5 x 25.2 cm - 7x10 inches. Purchased 1946. National Gallery of Canada (no. 4631)) 

Tom's sketch box (shown upside down) could be set on his lap
or anywhere that he wanted to paint.
Finished sketches were held in slots
within the box. Simple, safe and easy is how to best
paint en plein air - less to carry and portage!

Tom would have been paddling with his sketch box looking for something to paint before the bugs started to really bite and the fishing got better in the spring of 1913.  A year later he would hurl that sketch box into the woods in a fit of frustration for not being able to paint very well! Tom was en plein air with A.Y Jackson in that fall of 1914. Jackson retrieved Tom's sketch box and cobbled it back together so it could be used again. Lucky thing that he did because Tom's best art was still to come. Jackson would enlist and leave to fight in WW1 after that Algonquin painting trip never to see Tom again.

It has been estimated that a plein air artist makes a couple of hundred thousand decisions in the course of completing a typical work. Tom’s decision as what to paint that afternoon was easy. The weather provided a tornado. The entire supercell would not fit on his 7 by 10 inch panel so he focused on the wall cloud. After that, Tom just painted what he saw in those moments of awe. Remember that making a record of his life experiences and observations was something that his quasi uncle Brodie had advised. Tom included specific tornado characteristics that would not appear in any textbook for another 50 years or more. At the same time, Tom had to make some decisions required to stay alive and out of harm’s way…  or maybe he was just very lucky and had accidently paddled to the best observation point on the southern flank of the supercell. The warm southerly wind being drawn into the heat engine of the storm would have given him a tail wind and the paddling in his dove grey canoe tinted with cobalt blue oil paint, would have been easy. 

I completed two 11 by 14 inch interpretations of “Thunderhead” trying to place the same pressures during their execution as would have been felt by Tom. Both of these paintings, numbers 0886 and 0887 in my catalogue, took me 35 to 45 minutes to complete and I did not have a F2 tornado approaching dangerously close to give me added concern! My simple goal was to have fun and to see by experimentation how long it might have taken Tom. The tornado may have encouraged him to paint even faster and sometimes faster is better. Less is more. I bet that Tom was done in under 30 minutes on his smaller panel. 

There is even more to be discovered in the painting when one tries to copy it yourself. I saw some olive green in the painting for the first time while I was painting my interpretation. Green in a cloud is indicative of very high moisture content in the atmosphere. 

Tom Thomson 1913 "Thunderhead" 7x10 inches

When I teach plein air painting, I emphasize to give highest priority to blocking in the subject pieces that are changing quickly. The things that won’t change can wait. Time is of the essence. Everything in the sky was changing and that had to be Tom's top priority. The foreground would still be there after the tornado had passed - or at least one can hope for that! The wave action in the lake from the strong southerly inflow to the tornado could be remembered. 

In addition, Tom must have been painting this in bright sun and very warm conditions with the wind blowing on his back. The darker oil colours were virtually dry when he rolled on the cerulean highlights of the wave crests and signed his name. He could have even added these the next day of course but I am assuming he painted all of this on location.

Tom regularly did not include titles or even sign his art. Tom's faithful patron Dr James MacCallum (an ophthalmologist) and his friend and supporter Lawren Harris did most of the naming … neither were meteorologists so "Thunderhead" was a leap for them and perhaps more catchy than "Wall Cloud". 

Tom signed this painting so he was pleased… and probably relieved to be alive. What continues to amaze me is that the story of Tom's dangerously close encounter with a tornado did not follow the painting. Thankfully Tom's oils and brush strokes can still speak eloquently more than a century later.  The brush might be mightier than the pen… and certainly the sword. 

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water … another painting and more science next time. 

Phil the Forecaster Chadwick

PS: For the Blog Version of my Tom Thomson catalogue raisonné, Google Search Naturally Curious "Tom Thomson Was A Weatherman - Summary As of Now" or follow this link “http://philtheforecaster.blogspot.com/2022/10/tom-thomson-was-weatherman-summary-as.html”

Tom’s Tornado Two - Some Science

The previous post "Tom’s Tornado!" left us hanging with the roar of the jet plane taking off from the Algonquin forest in 1913. 

The supercell thunderstorm updraft was directly above the wall cloud which was Tom's painting. The wall cloud was moving left to right and the damaging winds which comprise the tornado had created a large area of swirling debris. The roar of the tornado would have been very loud indeed. 

CANWARN Supercell Conceptual Model with the Portion
of the storm Painted By Tom Thomson within the Black Box

The following graphic zooms in on Tom's composition (black box both above and below) within the Supercell Thunderstorm Conceptual Model from my days with CANWARN. I will improve on this Supercell Conceptual Model in a coming post. 

The next graphic highlights the characteristics of the supercell that Tom observed in 1913. The damaging winds of the tornado are in the very centre of the debris bush. 

The cloud debris observed in the centre of the painting (black outline) tells several stories. This "Scattered Cumulus Under Deck" is referred to as SCUD cloud. The "deck" refers to the average convective cloud base which is the lifted condensation level (LCL)  in that particular air mass. Any cloud forming below that LCL must have augmented moisture content from the rain of the forward flank downdraft. Those parcels of moistened air are lifted by the supercell updraft as they orbit the wall cloud. With time, the SCUD cloud will be drawn inward to become part of that grey wall cloud. The distorted parallelogram shape of the SCUD reveals that the wind is stronger in its lower portions. This shear tells us that the wind actually increased closer to the ground and that the tornado was increasing in intensity when Tom sketched in that SCUD cloud portion of his weather observation.

The wall cloud must be moving from the left to the right in order to fit the supercell conceptual model. The brightening on the left (light blue outline) is the rear flank downdraft of the supercell thunderstorm conceptual model. The bright area on the right (red outline) is the space between the updraft and the precipitation of the forward flank downdraft. The heavy rain and hail shaft where already passed and well downstream from the tornado - beyond the edge of the panel and thus not painted. 

The left brightening should be brighter than the right as that air is drier and descending. The cloud pieces on the right (orange lines) are “beaver tail clouds” being drawn up into the updraft and condensing at a lower level to form the wall cloud. Tom even included what looks to be secondary vortices orbiting the large central circulation. These smaller vortices circling around the main circulation (tornado) are very common and referred to as “sisters”.

Note the difference in the colours within the painting. The top half (grey outline) was actually the wall cloud or lowering beneath the lifted condensation level where moisture was lifted into the rotating updraft to form cloud. The colour of the wall cloud is decidedly grey.

The area underneath the wall cloud (dark blue outline) is the actual tornado churning with debris from the forest. This "debris bush" would be filled with pine needles, brush and trees. This area is referred to as the "bear's cage" under a rotating wall cloud. Sometimes blinding precipitation will wrap a tornado on some or all sides completing the "cage" of the bear. Entering that area under the rotating updraft is as deadly as entering any bear’s cage.

The rear flank downdraft actually critically influences the intensity of the damaging winds and thus the tornado. The angular momentum of the rotating updraft is a property of the supercell. Some supercells have more than others and that is related to the heat, humidity and rotational tendency (helicity) of the air mass - all forms of energy. Helicity is related to the veering of the atmospheric winds with height and thus the tendency of a supercell to develop and rotate – enough said. The rear flank downdraft controls the size of the rotation at the ground and focusses the total rotational angular momentum of the supercell into the tornadic winds.

Imagine a very large Sumo wrestler figure skater with an incredible amount of angular momentum. The figure skater can rotate faster by drawing their arms and legs inward. The angular momentum is unchanged but the speed of rotation increases as the arms and legs are pulled inward. For a supercell the rear flank downdraft controls the area over which that rotation occurs. The skater analogy with the supercell means that the tornadic winds must increase as the area of rotation decreases. The rear flank downdraft can pinch the skates of the Sumo wrestler inward. The specific characteristics of the rear flank downdraft can turn any supercell into a dangerous tornado.

Further investigation on the probable Fujita scale of the tornado can be surmised by noting that there was a lot of tree debris. Thus the tornado intensity was at least F1 (120-170 km/h) which causes "intermittent uprooting of trees and trees snapping off at the trunk". An F2 tornado (180-240 km/h) results in large areas of trees uprooted or snapped off. 

Further, if we note the trees at the shoreline and make an estimate of 10 metres in height for the tallest tree, the debris field and tornadic winds on the ground was roughly 4 tree heights wide or about 40 metres. The tornado however was inland some distance from the shoreline so the actual damage path on the ground was certainly wider than 40 metres. However as stated below from the study of thousands of tornadoes, a typical F1 tornado has a path width up to 50 metres while an F2 tornado damage path is typically 50 to 175 metres wide with a path length of 4 to 15 kilometres. I think it is safe to ascertain that the tornado that Tom painted was in the F2 category. It is very likely that the damage path was wider than 50 metres.

University of Chicago Professor 
Tetsuya Theodore Fujita (1920-1998)
The "F" in the tornado rating scale.

Tom's tornado was likely F2 in intensity and packing winds of at least 180 km/h but not more than 240 km/h. This being said, trees are not a useful  damage sensor for tornadoes above F2 intensity. An F2 or stronger tornado removes the trees in its path. If you want to measure more intense tornadoes, one needs vehicles, homes and man-made structures. This is a weakness in the original Fujita scale as an F5 tornado ripping through a forest would do the same damage as a F2 tornado. The path width and length would likely be very different but perhaps not. 

Since I initially wrote this material in the early 1980s, I was using the 1971 tornado research work of Professor T. Fujita. I actually met and briefly visited with Dr. Fujita once in an elevator in Atlanta, Georgia but that is another story. The new Enhanced Fujita scale was adopted in Canada in 2013 and it includes more damage indicators but the basic science remains the same. 

The vortex of the tornado is similar to a cream separator. The aerodynamic balance of forces on each object determines where it ends up in the tornadic circulation and debris field. The strength of the updraft carries light objects upward easily. Larger and heavier objects get quickly sorted outward by the centrifugal force. The science and stories of the weird distribution of tornado debris can fill several libraries let alone a few brief blogs. I would like to include more science but will save that for other posts.  

Tom must have been pleased with this sketch. He signed it and Tom didn't autograph many of his records. Tom's paintings were simply observations of his journeys - something that his relation Dr. William Brodie had suggested that he record and collect. Very few people have painted tornadoes en plein air. I have done a couple of wall clouds but no tornado on the gorund. Next week in "Tom’s Tornado Three", we will focus on the story behind the art of "Thunderhead". 

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water … 

Phil the Forecaster Chadwick

PS: For the Blog Version of my Tom Thomson catalogue raisonné, Google Search Naturally Curious "Tom Thomson Was A Weatherman - Summary As of Now" or follow this link “http://philtheforecaster.blogspot.com/2022/10/tom-thomson-was-weatherman-summary-as.html”

Tom’s Tornado!

Tom Thomson in his dove grey canoe, packed
and ready to paddle away from his campsite

Imagine that you are in Algonquin paddling on a quiet lake with your paint box looking for something to paint in the spring of 1913. You hear the roar of a jet plane as it taxis for lift off – a real problem in 1913! What do you decide to paint? Some decisions are easy - especially if you are Tom Thomson. 

Tom had his standard small panels on board (so to speak) measuring 17.5 by 25.2 centimetres or almost 7 by 10 inches in his units (and mine). The entire cloud was too large to fit on the small canvasboard so he elected to make a composition out of the noisy part of the storm that was tracking left to right just in front of him and to his north. 

Tom Thomson 1913 "Thunderhead" 7x10 inches

Several miracles happened very quickly that afternoon in 1913. The first was that one of Canada’s finest plein air artists was paddling in the right place at just the right time. The second was that Tom had the required materials to record the unusual and rare event that he was about to witness. The third wonder was that the resultant record of the event was called “Thunderhead” and not “Tornado”. And perhaps the luckiest miracle was that Tom was not killed by this tornado.

The Brodie Memorial Portrait" 1914 by
Owen Staples (1866-1949) funded
posthumously by his students, 
fellow scientists and friends

I don't believe that anyone really understood the true motivation behind this painting. Quite simply, the sketch is Tom's weather observation of an EF2 intensity tornado. Tom called his sketches "records" of what he saw. He collected these observations in the same way that his relation Dr. William Brodie collected specimens. Dr. William Brodie was a cousin of Tom's dad (Tom's father John was also something of a naturalist.). Dr. Brodie was 9 years older than Tom's father and one of the finest naturalists of the day. He was the director of the Biological Department of what is today the Royal Ontario Museum from 1903 until his death in 1909. Tom collected specimens with Dr. Brodie, who gave him the rudiments of a naturalist's training. Thomson learned from the passionate Dr. Brodie how to combine the keen and enthusiastic observation of nature with a sense of reverence for its mystery. He would need all of those skills on that afternoon in 1913. 

Ernest Thompson, the award winning wildlife illustrator and naturalist was best friends with Willie Brodie Junior. Willie’s father was the same Dr. Brodie related to Tom Thomson. When Seton was preparing for a trip to the west in 1881, Brodie advised him to keep a daily journal saying “you will be sorry if you omit this, you will value it more each year.” Seton’s daily journals covered the following sixty years of his life and can be found in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Tom Thomson most certainly received the same advice but Tom was more pictorial and used oils and brushes instead of words… but I digress – there is a tornado bearing down on us! 

Tom Thomson at Lake Scugog ( T. H. Marten), Thunderhead Painting, Tornado Meteorology

A tornado is associated with a supercell thunderstorm which is essentially an atmospheric engine that converts heat and moisture energy into motion. A supercell can be long-lived (at least an hour) and are highly organized and characterized by a tilted and rotating updraft. The rotating updraft is key and can be 10 miles in diameter and up to 50,000 feet tall. The following graphic is the one I used in my severe weather training sessions for CANWARN and emergency response groups. I presented those talks for many years and enjoyed them immensely. The meteorology of a supercell is fascinating and requires considerable study which is beyond the scope of this story. This won't be on the quiz. 

CANWARN Supercell Graphic

There was certainly a supercell thunderstorm towering above Tom’s composition. Tom was too close and the cloud was much too huge to fit on the canvasboard. The accompanying graphic is from my PowerPoint presentation and all of those important features will eventually be described. This might take two or even three blogs to explain. In the presentation it takes about five PowerPoint slides full of arrows and sound effects. There is no requirement to make everyone a meteorologist but I do wish to relay sufficient information to convince you that Tom painted exactly what he saw – his art is a natural wonder. 

I used my paintings based on Tom’s sketches in the draft
of my “Tom Thomson Was A Weatherman” book. 

Tom was looking northerly due to the fact that most convective cells move from the southwest to the northeast over Ontario and specifically Georgian Bay and Algonquin. If this view had been looking toward the west or southwest, Tom probably would not have survived the “record”. This is Tom’s very accurate and detailed observation of a tornado. Most people probably would like to see a tornado before the die … but not just before the die. (I have used this line many, many times...) This tornado would have killed Tom had he been directly in its path and some of the finest art in Canada would never materialized.

The subject of the painting is actually the wall cloud underneath the rain free base of a large, supercell thunderstorm. These storms are more common than you might think and often go unobserved in the wilds of Canada. The tornado itself is hidden in the dark blue of blowing debris beneath the wall cloud. Remember that the tornado is the damaging wind and not the cloud. The striations in the edge of the wall cloud are pronounced and are the result of the strong associated rotation of the wall cloud. The roar of the tornado would have been tremendous but that could not be recorded in the oils. 

Annotations Superimposed on Tom's Composition and Placed within the Appropriate 

Portion of the Supercell Thunderstorm Conceptual Model

The thunderstorm updraft is directly above the wall cloud. If this was a cyclonic (counter-clockwise rotating) wall cloud which is by far the most likely, the winds in the foreground would be left to right. Air moistened by the rain that fell ahead of the tornado is drawn upward into the updraft. However this moisture laden air forms cloud at levels well below the lifted condensation level of the air mass. As a result, the base of the wall cloud associated with this high precipitation supercell, must be lower than the average base of the supercell. This is the main effect that forms the cloud lowering referred to here as the wall cloud.

I think that is enough for today... but stay tuned, there is much more to say about Tom's Thunderhead. I will explain all of the characteristic details that Tom painted that prove this was a tornado. Some of those features were not really understood until decades after that spring afternoon in 1913. 

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water … 

Phil the Forecaster Chadwick

PS: For the Blog Version of my Tom Thomson catalogue raisonné, Google Search Naturally Curious "Tom Thomson Was A Weatherman - Summary As of Now" or follow this link “http://philtheforecaster.blogspot.com/2022/10/tom-thomson-was-weatherman-summary-as.html”

Tom Thomson Was A Weatherman

Canadian Plein Air Artist Tom Thomson fishing
at Tea Lake Dam 1916. Photo Lawren Harris

I started doing presentations about the art and science of Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven in the mid 1980s. I started with overhead slides and quickly embraced PowerPoint (PPT) - a fine piece of software well ahead of its time. I did not keep count but the number of presentations certainly number in the hundreds. That mountain of material grew into a book that nobody wanted. 

Outdoor Canada 1994 Article... I was a columnist for a while.
Editor Teddi Brown was very kind and supportive. 

What I propose to do now is to publish portions of that book, a blog at a time. The subject matter fits nicely into "Naturally Curious". In a couple of years of Science Tuesdays, also now known as Naturally Curious Tuesdays, the result will be an on-line book of sorts. The information that I have spent a lifetime gathering and writing about will not be totally lost. 

Much has been written about Tom Thomson and I hesitated for decades to jump into the fray. People are very passionate about Tom, his art, his story and of course his mysterious death. Passion is good as long as it is tempered with an open mind.

I have decided to make a positive leap - there are some contributions that I am in a unique position to add to the study of the Thomson body of work. Not much has been written about Tom’s motivation and inspiration to paint what he saw. I may have the answers to those questions. Of course, I may not and the reader can be the judge of that. My years as a professional meteorologist (starting in 1976) and a lifetime as an artist have given me both the science and the curiosity to really examine what Tom was doing and why. I focus solely on his creative life although I do have informed opinions about the other stuff. I simply wish to share the positive information by constructively building on the body of knowledge about one of Canada’s greatest artists. I also want this to be fun … and passionate! Nothing is worthwhile without passion.

Thunderhead 1913

In the application of Creative Scene Investigation (CSI) to Tom’s art, I wish to prove beyond any doubt that Tom was at the very least, a weather enthusiast. We could count up the number of skyscapes versus landscapes and apply some statistics but as Mark Twain once said, there are "lies, damned lies, and statistics". Mathematical statistics may convince some but I want to support my proof that “Tom Thomson Was A Weatherman” on a more fundamental basis with a direct connection to the reader. This can only be achieved by delving deeper than the pigments and into the hidden clues painted in plain sight.

My interactive "Thunderhead Slide" from the PPT 
detailing an EF2 tornado - complete with 
sound effects and animations. 

Secretly, my ultimate goal is that the reader develops a new way to look at the weather and art – Creative Scene Investigation. It is really not hard to do. CSI might open up another realm of appreciation and maybe unlock the key to better understand the motivation and inspiration of the artist. By doing so, it may also inspire the reader to nurture a deeper appreciation of the arts and the natural world. It could possibly inspire a desire to protect the natural environment for all of its inhabitants just when the globe is facing its biggest crisis since the days the earth was covered by super volcanoes.

“Thomson’s work would be a fine study for some competent critic, but anyone attempting it should be familiar, not only with every phase of his work, but with the country too, lakes, rivers, weather; have them in his bones … “ Thoreau MacDonald was the son of JEH MacDonald, Thomson friend, Thomson co-worker and Group of Seven charter member

“Write what you know.” Mark Twain

Warmest regards and keep your paddle in the water ... let us start this particular journey through Canadian weather, art and science...  

Phil the Forecaster Chadwick