Goldfinches on Thistle — Gallery Canvas Watercolor Glen Loates is a member

Glen Loates is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts whose botanical range extended from exact scientific illustration to evocative landscape impression

A botanical study combining two forest floor plants — False Solomon's Seal with its arching stem and paired leaves

the whole composition breathing with the specific quality of early May in a mixed hardwood forest

the focus is entirely on the three small bodies

1987ISBN: 0865051860

Goldfinches on Thistle — Gallery Canvas Watercolor Glen Loates is a memberThree goldfinches work through a thistle patch a male feeding on a spent seedhead at left, a second male perched on the right, a female arriving from above with wings still open. The thistle is rendered with the botanical precision Glen brought to all his plant subjects: the spiny bracts, the purple bloom, the white plumed seeds drifting into the composition from the milkweed at left. This 1988 watercolour is more complex than the earlier single bird