Let It Snow!!

I am hoping your holidays were lovely!  I always think of the week between December 25 and New Year's as a bonus week; not quite the old year (everything completed for 2014) and a hiatus before starting a new one.  I like to review, re-live, evaluate and imagine new projects or adventures.  It's a quiet time for cocooning,  nesting, or whatever you like to do when your engines are idle and you want to recuperate, refuel and recharge.

So let it snow! ...figuratively or literally. We are hunkered down before a fire reading and sipping and making notes while listening to music.  My husband thinks he loves snow but as his blood gets thinner what he really loves is the idea of snow.  It forces him to slow down, move with care, play a little and enjoy a hot drink.

Along those lines, look what I came across while re-organizing:

I painted this landscape in 1964....exactly 50 years ago.  I believe it is painted in what they called casein paint which predates acrylic.  It was probably from a postcard my art teacher, Barbara Bassett, had as reference.  I was 11 years old and while I may have seen a mountain on vacation once or twice, I know for a fact that I had never seen, touched, tasted or walked in snow.  I wonder why either of us would suggest I paint such a thing?  These days I believe that the more engaged one is with the subject at hand the more authentic the rendering will be.  JMO (just my opinion as they say.)

Fast forward to another snow painting, this time rendered in pastel and now from the vantage of having experienced snow many times.  I loved this afternoon, we went out driving to see how the country side looked in its chilly, white coat and I wandered across this bridge with the sun at my back.  I took many photos of the light sparkling on the river filled with chunks of ice and it wasn't until I downloaded the pics that I noticed my shadow in the water.  This was equally fun to paint but I definitely had a sense of what I was trying to capture.

There was a huge gap in my childhood painting and when I resumed the craft many years later.  But there are  lessons from those early years that come back to me even now.  I was fortunate to have had those classes for they taught me to see.  Maybe painting snow made me want to see it, to travel, to experience things I saw on postcards?  Who knows?  But those lessons did introduce me to a lifetime of pleasurable pursuit.

Thanks Mom and Dad, and thank you Barbara Bassett!

Happy New Adventures,

Cindy