Winter Pines

9x12, oil/linen panel

Plein Air painters are weather fanatics, visiting the Weather Channel often, checking the doppler radar, and the five day forcast. All this in order to predict the perfect times and conditions for painting outdoors. We keep track of things like the times of sunset and sunrise, when the moon will be full and how windy it will be. All these weather elements play both a practical and aesthetic role in our work. I knew that the sun and clear skies of this morning would not last all day so I made sure I was out painting before noon in order to take advantage of the marvelous winter sun and icy cold clear skies. I love evergreen trees, espcially in winter they seem so stately and dignified rising out of the snowy ground, green and verdant oblivious to the cold and the rest of nature slumbering around them.

I THINK the hemlock likes to stand
Upon a marge of snow;
It suits his own austerity,
And satisfies an awe


That men must slake in wilderness,
Or in the desert cloy,—
An instinct for the hoar, the bald,
Lapland’s necessity.


The hemlock’s nature thrives on cold;
The gnash of northern winds
Is sweetest nutriment to him,
His best Norwegian wines.


To satin races he is nought;
But children on the Don
Beneath his tabernacles play,

And Dneiper wrestlers run.

Emily Dickinson