The monochrome tones of this painting are quite a departure from my usual use of color, bright lighting and shadows. I wanted to do something different from the snowy barn in sunshine that I most recently completed. And I admit being influenced to try a primarily gray painting after seeing the oil paintings of an artist I met on Christmas Eve, Phillip Anthony, who does exquisite landscapes entirely in black, white and grays.
Still inspired by our recent snows, I’ve painted another barn, this time in the midst of the storm. Lack of light limits the range of colors our eyes see. If you’ve ever done scuba diving, you know that the deeper you go, less sunlight filters through the water (especially the red end of the spectrum), and fewer colors are visible. I love the way this phenomenon is described in the lines below, which you might recognize as having been recited at the end of the Moody Blues’ 1967 recording “Nights in White Satin:”
Cold hearted orb
That rules the night
Removes the colours
From our sight
Red is gray and
Yellow white
But we decide
Which is right
And
Which is an Illusion
– From the poem “Late Lament” by Graeme Edge, drummer and lyricist for The Moody Blues”
In this new painting I set the horizon line high, since the sky was less interesting than the foreground. Other than mixing black and white, my palette was limited to Raw Umber (a dark brown), Burnt Sienna (rusty brown), Jenkins Green (in the foreground tree boughs), and a little Quinacridone Red (for the metal fenceposts) – all toned down by mixing with black and/or white. I think the warm browns add just enough interest to make your eyes go to the horses, within the otherwise gray landscape. I used a lot of very light gray, even on the snow on the ground, so that when I used pure white it would show up a little better. As the final step, I held my breath and spattered fine drops of white over the entire painting, hoping I wouldn’t ruin the whole thing!
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| “Before” I spattered with white to create the falling snow. |
I chose the title “Let It Snow” after thinking of the Christmas carol by the same name. As a native of New England, I know snowstorms can cause lots of problems, inconveniences, danger, and even tragedies. These days I am fortunate to work from home, and I can stock up on food and essentials before a storm, and we’ve cut and stacked plenty of dry firewood to keep the woodstove going… so I don’t have to drive anywhere until the roads are safe. Here in Tennessee, the snow rarely gets very deep, and usually doesn’t stay on the ground long enough to get dirty and ugly… although our recent January storm lingered for a while. So I’ve been happy to have the snow and see the beauty it has created in my woods.
If you’ve visited me, then you’ve passed the barn in this painting, on the left before my driveway gate. The end I’ve painted is facing the little yellow farmhouse; the end more visible from the road is leaning considerably!
Technical Note:
I drew in the fine lines of the woven field fence which enclosed the barnyard with a .01 tip Pigma Micron permanent black artist’s pen. It was a subtle detail, but I didn’t like how the black lines looked – to sharp and clear. Because the lines of the fence mostly fell against the white snow background, it was easy to tone them down by painting white very thinly over the lines. Can you see the difference? It made the fencing blend in with the rest of the scene just as I wanted it to.
