Winter and the Genesis of a New Series

Snow flakes are flying sideways on a howling wind outside my office window as I write. It's been an authentic winter here for the past couple of months and I've found it inspiring despite some distractions in recent weeks.

Winter Pines: Hush
12x18 pastel on board

Unfortunately, my husband, Tim, has been very sick for the past five weeks. He caught a whopper cold on a return trip from Chicago in early January. And after four different courses of antibiotics with two frightening and different allergic reactions, he's still not free of a lingering infection and pesky cough. Thus, I've been spending lots of quality time with our dog, Annie, since he has not been well enough to walk her during these cold days. To boot, Annie developed a mysterious limp about 10 days ago, which is also troubling to me since she is my little baby.

Nonetheless, a couple of weeks ago I got the heck out of Dodge and went up to Black Moshannon State Park to clear my head. This was before Annie developed her limp, so I took her along and the afternoon could not have been more magical. The sky was clear, the wind was calm, and there was at least a foot of pristine white snow throughout the woods. Annie and I hiked along the Moss-Hanne trail within the park and I was captivated by the long, blue shadow patterns of the pine trees on the snow.

I just love the whispering howl of wind through the pines. It soothes me. I took a calculated risk and let Annie off her leash (we adopted her when she was 18 months old and we can never quite trust her completely not to ditch us whenever we're outside). Since the snow was deep enough, I reasoned that if she wanted to make a break for a rodent, she'd be impeded by the snow. I could always make the diving grab, right? Anyways, she had a grand time tromping around and I hit upon an idea for a new series of studio works: "Winter Pines." The first piece is pictured above and the second one is already under way on my easel. As I indicated elsewhere on my web site in its description, if this first piece can help transport the viewer to the same beautiful place that I was, then my mission as an artist has been successful.