Art > BUGABOO TENS Not For Sale

Watermelon Snow
Watermelon Snow
# 76 oil on linen
12" x 16"
2012

This painting was created on our third and final morning in the Bugaboos. If you look carefully at the snow juxtaposing with the water, you will notice a reddish streak. At first I thought this was perhaps one of nature's battles where one of the creatures had indeed lost. But it was pointed out by our guide Lyle that this phenomenon is caused by an algae, Chlamydomonas nivalis. It is, in fact, a green algae that owes its red color to a bright red carotenoid pigment.