Come for a Walk

 

I'm never cold when I venture out on my daily walks, no matter how cold it gets. The ski pants and the hood help, as does dressing in layers. I'm seldom out for more than 2 hours, but I'd be warm for a lot longer than that. Stopping to make drawings is not a problem (I do remove gloves, and sometimes remove hood and hat when I get too hot).We're into the latter part of January now so this is the very coldest part of the year, but in the last number of years I've made friends with the cold...and it now seems that this is the time of year when I make the most paintings. At the moment the snow is too deep to walk for very long off the beaten trail, but if I follow some snow shoe paths, or pick wind-swept areas,  I'm all right.

 

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Walking....

Walking......
All the paintings I make are based on walking. You feel different when you walk, your mind works on things in a slightly different way....the humblest of activities, and perhaps the most important.

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2:00 p.m, January 3

2:00 p.m., January 3 (Sold)
...walk and the day will warm you. Acrylic collage painting on gessoed thin birch panel 7.5 x 12 inches.

Process is always a mystery, something that can only be determined by working through each individual picture. I worked on the collage part of this for a long time, so many steps were done in the sky, and it wasn't gelling, so I peeled a good portion of the sky off, repainted it fairly quickly before working on the middle ground. The idea that 'taking off' is as important as 'adding on' is always appealing to me. An oil painter might scrape off...an acrylic painter will often reduce a whole area by overpainting.

When the weather gets very cold, a polar parka with a deep hood, wind pants, a hat that tightly covers the head including ears, are essential. I usually wear layers underneath this as well. The deep hood of the polar parka is important because in strong wind all you have to do is face the ground for a while to avoid windburn. I'm good in all winter weather like this, and will often sit in the snow for long periods once I've built up warmth by walking for about half an hour. Today is very cold, and as I was returning, a young mother waiting for the school bus to deliver her young children, asked me how I could possibly walk in this weather. It's not hard, and it's very comfortable.....walking in the winter is beautiful!

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