Snow Scenes

Snow scenes are my favorite things to paint. I have been painting them for three decades, and for me, the ultimate snow scene is created during the snow storm—the snow mixing with my oil paints as I work. In this way the painting is an artifact of the weather—imprinted with the fingerprints of snow. On February third through the eleventh, I worked on a series of large snow scenes, I had to time my paintings sessions with the snowfall. The first day started out cloudy and it was supposed to snow, however the skies cleared. I knew a snow storm was coming the following day so I set up to capture it and was thrilled to be out in the thick of it. The snow encrusted painting as I worked, then in the studio, as the snow melted out, it revealed the painting underneath. Snow mixing with the oil paints creates a sandy texture and the snow is imprinted with casts of the snow flakes. These paintings are truly aesthetic records of the day.

Feel free to use the magnifying glass to examine the rich paint surface, to see the imprints of snow flakes, the granular texture caused by the snow mixing with the oil paints, and the craters left as the snow melts and evaporates out of the paint film. There are also inclusions of fir needles and other material that accumulated as I painted.

In 2016, eleven of my paintings were acquired by two museums, several were snow scenes painted during snow storms as these are. At that time the Curators wrote some remarks about the paintings, which I have included on the title cards of the two large pieces.