Maple Sugar Painting

Maple Sugar is part of Paula McHugh’s series of paintings inspired by the titles of American and Celtic fiddle tunes and folk songs. This painting depicts a man carrying buckets of maple sap to make into maple syrup. Inspired from the Canadian fiddle tune Maple Sugar, breakfast isn’t complete without a healthy application of maple syrup on pancakes, waffles, and oatmeal. Sugar maple, red maple, or black maple trees are tapped by drilling holes into their trunks and collecting the sap into buckets. Maple sugaring parties take place at the start of the spring thaw when the sap is boiled outside in large vessels to evaporate the water and thicken the sweet sugary syrup. And that’s when the fiddle gets tuned up to play this popular old-time tune, a two-step in Ontario and a polka in western Canada.