I've been thinking for a while about doing a winter painting. I've always been impressed by paintings of snow. Some favorites are William Glackens' Central Park paintings, John Twachtman's Connecticut Shore-Winter and Winter Harmony, Ernest Lawson's Snow Scene, Robert Nisbet's Connecticut Winter Landscape, and Hobart Nichols' Winter Landscape with Stream.
One of the amazing things about snow is the color. You think it's white, but when you really look at it, there's a lot of blue. It's subtle, but it's there. You can see the blue more obviously in ice, like in this photo I took in Thomaston:
I normally paint scenes of Waterbury, but I took a great shot at Hammonassett a couple years ago. It reminds me of a Twachtman painting. I'm sure it will look nothing like a Twachtman when I paint it, but that's what will be in my mind.
Another Hammonassett shot I might paint someday:
Of course, it's Waterbury in the winter that I really want to paint. Over the years, I've hunted for good snow scenes during and after storms. The Green looks best with snow and Christmas lights combined, but it took a while before I could get them together.
Winter scenes are tricky, mostly because I'm looking for city scenes, and cities tend to be bleak and brown in the winter. It's definitely not a subject I can paint during the winter--far too depressing! In the winter, I like to paint summer scenes (like the one I'm currently working on every Friday in the window at Goldsmith's). The winter scenes will have to wait for summer.
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