Snow, and Lack Of

6x6 inches, acrylic on paper

The other night I sat with a large group of retired friends for Friday night fish fry, listening to the hardiest of the group bemoan our lack of snow so far this year.  I had to bite my tongue, having already declared my lack of enthusiasm for football, about my similar lack of enthusiasm for snow. I didn't want to be ejected from the table.  Despite my northern European genetic background, and despite having lived almost sixty-one years in Wisconsin, I don't like snow.  I don't like being stiff and cold, don't enjoy being afraid to drive on icy country roads or nervous that I may slip and break one a bone.  When one long-time friend and happy grandmother said she was thinking of organizing a sledding party - once snow actually falls - I just chewed my potato pancake and smiled.  For me, sledding is only a memory.  As a child I dragged my little sled up the small hills on the farm, and once, wanting more of a thrill, hauled an aluminum saucer onto the roof of the chicken coop and slip off the snowy incline onto a pile of plowed snow near the driveway, but that was when I was more resilient.  I also slid down hills at UW Whitewater on fiberglass trays from the cafeteria, but that was when I was dumber.

Anyway, I decided to attempt a painting based on a small 1935 black and white photo I found of my mother and her older sister.  They are standing outside in a dim and snowy landscape, bits of snow falling past the camera lens.  It was interesting, mostly fun, and frustrating.  The little girl in red is my mother, and the painting actually resembles her.  The older girl is  OK in a general way,  maybe a little old looking, but she in no way resembles my dear aunt.  I wish I could have tweaked her features more, but I feared overworking the painting even more than I had already.  At least the girls call to mind a time a place, and painting them gave me time to imagine their life between the two world wars, on a cold day in Wisconsin.

The Snow Man    
by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Small Landscape, and Some Good Advice

6x6 inches, acrylic on paper

I took a photo of our family farm across some late summer fields back in about 1998, and have tried several times to paint the scene.  This little landscape is loose and imprecise. I concentrated more on having strong contrast at the focal point and good color choices than I did on reproducing reality.  Oddly, it has more of the feel of the place than paintings I worked much harder on. 

I've been working through an anthology of poems assembled and introduced by Caroline Kennedy entitled She Walks in Beauty: A Woman's Journey Through Poems.  This one called From a Letter to His Daughter, by Ralph Waldo Emerson,  gave me some things to consider about the sensibility of looking forward, rather than backward. Of course his daughter was much younger than I am.

Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities
no doubt have crept in;
forget them as soon as you can.
Tomorrow is a new day;
begin it well and serenely
and with too high a spirit
to be cumbered with
your old nonsense.

This day is all that is
good and fair:
It is too dear
with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on yesterdays.

The Red Steps - Another Miniature Acrylic Painting

5x5 inches, acrylic on paper

I seem to be back in a miniature mode.  I've had a small vintage black and white photograph that I got from our local consignment place, and it has been calling out to me lately.  I liked the child with his or her jaunty cap and casual posture.  I also like the way the siding, railing and steps all led the eye right to the figure.  This little painting has more intense color than some of my other miniatures painted from vintage photos.  It occurred to me that just because we cannot see bright color in these images, that doesn't mean it wasn't there.  I also liked the bright sun that makes the child squint.  In the original picture the parent's shadow is clearly visible, but I eliminated that as a distraction here.  That shadow is there often in old photos, because the cameras people had at home for snapshots typically did not have flash attachments.  They needed the sun to get a good clear shot, and they often ended up as a shadowy part of the photo.