I am no stranger to winter. I grew up in upstate NY and have many fond memories of "going sledding" and the hot chocolate after we came in and building snowmen and snowball fights (without anyone's eye ever being "put out"). My wife, Gloria, and I are in our 11th Maine winter. But I don't remember, in my 67 winters, seeing so much snow piled so high, shoveling or now, snowthrowing it, so often (and hoping the machine lasts through the season) than I have in the last month or so. And don't get me started on the C-O-L-D! The one positive on that is that heating oil prices have dropped since last year.
What does this have to do with art, you ask. Well, it certainly does put the kibosh on my plein air painting as I can't paint outside below 40 degrees because my paints are affected. Therefore I am confined to my studio to A) work from my photos, B) do some still life paintings or C) finish some of the many unfinished or, as I call them, WIPS (Works In Progress ) that I have strewn about. There is no real simple explanation as to why I have a lot of unfinished paintings other than I am lazy or I just haven't figured out a good end to the WIP....yet. However I haven't given up on it either and, most of the time, I will come to a reasonable conclusion on the painting and it will find it's way to a frame and eventually to a wall.
So I guess, in hindsight, winter does serve a purpose afterall as far as my art goes. It forces me to do two things. One, reacquaint myself with my studio and, two, confront my WIPS and transform them into fully realized paintings. Here's the one I'll work on next. That is once I locate my favorite brush and that tube of cadmium yellow....
What does this have to do with art, you ask. Well, it certainly does put the kibosh on my plein air painting as I can't paint outside below 40 degrees because my paints are affected. Therefore I am confined to my studio to A) work from my photos, B) do some still life paintings or C) finish some of the many unfinished or, as I call them, WIPS (Works In Progress ) that I have strewn about. There is no real simple explanation as to why I have a lot of unfinished paintings other than I am lazy or I just haven't figured out a good end to the WIP....yet. However I haven't given up on it either and, most of the time, I will come to a reasonable conclusion on the painting and it will find it's way to a frame and eventually to a wall.
So I guess, in hindsight, winter does serve a purpose afterall as far as my art goes. It forces me to do two things. One, reacquaint myself with my studio and, two, confront my WIPS and transform them into fully realized paintings. Here's the one I'll work on next. That is once I locate my favorite brush and that tube of cadmium yellow....
One of my Works In Progress
