It’s almost time to say goodbye to winter. What a kind and brief winter it’s been. I know that the unseasonably warm temperatures are a symptom of of our dying planet, and will bring increased disease-bearing insects to our summertime, however this warm and relatively snow-free season of darkness was pretty tolerable to my body.
I painted this landscape back in February as an embrace of this particular winter. The mud, the excess water, the dead gray ground, all things which I normally see as an inconvenience, can also be beautiful and exciting transitional elements. The world is moving again; the water that was (briefly this year) locked up in ice is flowing again through the river, the stream, and all that muddy soil.
Painting is a lovely winter activity to undertake in a cozy home. In this leisure piece I maintained a looser style, which I’ve been practicing through abstraction. I tried not to overwork anything, and to preserve elements of the under-painting which manifested themselves early and effortlessly with well placed medium and the swipe of a knife. You can view a larger image of the painting for now in my portfolio.
