The site of the Climate Change Conference, COP29

Baku, Azerbaijan

watercolour and marker

©2024 Charlene Brown

This painting is a composite of pictures found on the internet. I’ve never been to Baku (and won’t be going for COP29) but I got petty close in 2017 when I was in Tabriz, Iran, an 8-hour drive away

The next major international UNFCCC* event is the Climate Change Conference, COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan, starting in a few days on November 11. 

At the heart of this year’s negotiations is the post-2025 climate finance goal, known as the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG). High-emitting, wealthy Global North states, like Canada, owe a “climate debt” to Global South countries, who have contributed the least to climate change yet are facing the brunt of its impacts. Climate finance is essential to the energy transition.

*UNFCCC stands for United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Convention has near universal membership (198 Parties) and is the parent treaty of the 2015 Paris Agreement.Ba

Another pair of greeting cards

Lake Minnewanka and Mt. Inglismaldie
watercolour card
©2024 Charlene Brown

This version of Lake Minnewanka was on a Thank you card I painted several months ago.

Semi-abstract version

This card was painted using a technique I outlined in a 2018 blog post about abstracting landscapes I’d paintedpreviously.  (When painting the much smaller greeting card however, the initial rough drawing is done with masking fluid, rather than oil pastel or crayon.) As in the 2018 abstract, I’ve introduced the ‘Hundertwasser’ effect on the deciduous trees.

 

More greeting card paradigm shifts

Camping at Two Jack Lake
watercolour and ink on a greeting card
©2024 Charlene Brown

Semi-Abstract version

 

 

 

 

 

In a blog post on June 16,  I mentioned that I have tried to see and paint things differently, shifting away from realism toward abstraction.  I also said that “sometime soon” I would try painting pairs of greeting cards of the same location, one representational and one semi-abstract (but recognizable), at the same time.

Since then I finished and wrote about the paintings I started on a cruise to Alaska and later re-wrote a series of blog posts on the pschology of creativity.  It turns out that now is the soonest I could manage to start writing about my planned paradigm shift.

I sent the first ‘Camping at Two Jack Lake, above, to one of my granddaughters for her birthday.  She has actually been to this campground near Banff many times. The other went to my sister, who is an artist who prefers to work abstractly herself ─ and is just about the only person I know who prefers my less representational paintings.

 

Top Ten Future Disruptions in Society, Economy, Environment, Politics, and Health

Fig. 1 from Policy Horizons report 

According to a (dismal) 2024 report, Disruptions on the Horizon by Policy Horizons Canada:

“Predicting the next big upheaval may not be possible, but it is crucial to explore possible disruptions and anticipate potential future scenarios. Even seemingly distant or improbable events and circumstances can suddenly become reality, while overlapping disruptions can lead to compounded societal impacts.”

The impact and likelihood of 35 possible future disruptions, categorized into five domains: society, economy, environment, politics/geopolitics, and health, is shown on the chart above.  Only four appear to have any good aspects:

• The North experiences an economic boom,
• Geo-engineering takes off,
• Biodata is widely monetized, and
• Indigenous peoples govern unceded territory.

I have my doubts about geo-engineering, and was relieved to see it is not among the most likely disruptions listed in the report (see below). In fact, only one of the ‘possibly good’ disruptions, Biodata is widely monetized, is listed among the 10 most likely occurrences. 

Unfortunately, of the remaining nine ‘most likely’ four also make the ‘highest impact' list:

• People cannot tell what is true and what is not
• Biodiversity is lost and ecosystems collapse
• Emergency response is overwhelmed
• Cyberattacks disable critical infrastructure

The chart at the beginning of this report summary also shows the time when the disruption could occur.  This is represented by the shape of the icons and is divided into time segments of 3-5 years (triangle), 6-8 years (square), and 9+ years (hexagon).

As well, the report presents a hypothetical timeline showing when the top ten disruption, (roughly, those in the upper right quadrant of the above chart) will occur. I have not included this timeline as I think it’s misleadingly precise about highly speculative opinion-based numbers.

Drawn and quartered in Seattle

Medieval stretching apparatus
Photoshopped™ photograph
©2024 Charlene Brown

On September 27, I flew to Seattle (23 minutes on Alaska Airlines), cleared U.S.Customs and proceeded to the Departures floor to check in for my flight to Madrid where I was to begin a two-week Art Gallery of Greater Victoria tour of Spain.  Here is what happened instead.

In the middle of the main concourse I turned slightly, but the thick treads on the running shoes I was wearing (because they were too big to pack) grabbed the polished floor and did not turn, even slightly.  And I did a face plant over the suitcase I was rolling. 

An agent from the nearby Delta desk cautioned me against trying to get up, called 911 and, most importantly, stayed with me (answering questions from the many people milling about) until the paramedics arrived.  An ambulance took me to St. Anne Hospital where it was determined by several x-rays and a CAT scan that I didn’t have a concussion but did have a fractured radius in my left arm.  

An ER doctor warned that for their next trick they would be using the Medieval torture apparatus pictured on the left.  Soon I was strung up to five chain mail cylinders which grabbed and held the fingers of my left hand, stretching my suspended (and weighted) arm while the parts of the radius were prodded back in line.  The pain was nowhere near what I was expectng after that grizzly introduction. Apparently their bone-setting expertise includes highly skilled management of expectations.

The next day Alaska Airlines accepted my return ticket to Victoria (dated today, Octoner 16), and put me on the first available flight home.  

 

Canadian Railway Architectural styles

 

Railway Chateau architecture

watercolour and crayon

©2011 Charlene Brown

The Chateau Frontenac, pictured here, was built in 1893 and is probably the most flamboyant of the Canadian railway hotels built in the Railway Chateau style. This evolved as a distinctly Canadian style of architecture, using towers and turrets and other Scottish baronial and French chateau elements.

Railway Pagoda architecture
watercolour, crayon and ink
©2013 Charlene Brown

This view of Banff includes the Banff Park Museum (on the far left) in the famous shot straight up Banff Avenue to Mt. Cascade.

 The museum, a National Historic Site, was designed in the late nineteenth century ‘railway pagoda’ style favoured for the initial cross-country railway station building construction in Canada..

This will be a page (pretty much the last page, actually) in the book I’m putting together called Time Travel with a bag of crayons.

This is not Spain

Nivernais Canal in Auxerre

watercolour sketch

©2024 Charlene Brown

In early September I was preparing watercolour paper for some painting I hoped to do during an Art Gallery of Greater Victoria art tour to Spain, when I received some lovely photos from my daughter who was making her “hilariously slow” way along the Nivernais Canal south-east of Paris.  Her shot of Auxerre seemed especially paintable, and although it wasn’t the same shape (see below) as the paper I had ready for the Spanish trip, I scrunched it into a square and painted it anyway. 

Little did I know, it would end up standing in for the whole series of paintings of the Spanish trip ─ on which I only got as far as Seattle.  More about that next week…

UAPs in Ancient Egypt

Temple of Seti I bas reliefs

Photoshopped™ photograph

©2024 Charlene Brown

 The temple of Seti I at Abydos in Egypt, considered to be one of the most beautifully decorated Egyptian temples, contains many bas relief friezes at ceiling height.  The one shown below, contains the (in)famous “Helicopter Hieroglyphics” (just to the left of the centre of the photo) that is featured in the above computer painting.

The apparent but unintended UAP* content is a palimpsest, resulting from the reuse of the bas relief panel.  This sort of appearance, with the original still partially visible, occurs when a sculpture was started by one pharaoh (in this case Seti I) then plastered over and altered under the direction of another (his son, Ramses II).

*unidentified anomalous phenomena, formerly known as UFOs