January 13th, 2014
Cox Reservation, Essex Greenbelt
Essex MA
Oil on Canvas, 16 x 20 in
(sold)

It was a bright, mild day (though not as mild as I had dressed for – just because it’s above freezing does not necessarily mean you can go without a jacket.) David had been to the Sargent exhibit at the MFA, and noted that only rarely did Sargent paint sky. I was thinking of all the paintings of his I’ve seen, where you know what kind of day it was by the reflections of the sky you see on the leaves, buildings and clothing of people in the painting. The snow is kind of a “painting without sky for dummies” tool – because wherever the yellow light of the sun is cut off by a lump of snow, there lies a nearly perfect reflection of the sky color directly above it. You can achieve balance by including the reflections throughout the piece, which do in fact occur, if less perfectly, in shadows on stone and branches.

I decided not to change much from what I had in the first picture. Was painted with a lot of gusto – decided to keep the energetic feel of it rather than strain to make every detail perfect.