Walking Into the Light

"Walk Into the Light", 18x24" mixed media on canvas. Available. 

Canadian Winter. One of those things you just have to learn to deal with, should you choose to live in Canada. It doesn't get light until 8 or 8:30, it's starting to get dark by 4:00 (depending on where you live and what month it is). And when it is "light", it isn't really... its dim and dreary. The only time you get that wonderful, bright winter sun is when it's minus-hell-has-frozen-over cold.

We had two wonderfully sunny days this week. Only one of them was -15°C. I miss the sun. No matter how many winters I live through, I can't seem to really adjust to it. 

I go through this stretch of time every year, from early January until late February, where I feel like crap and can't seem to motivate myself to do much of anything. It's actually a thing... It's called Season Affective Disorder (S.A.D.), and apparently effects a pretty decent sized chunk of the population. I have a sun lamp that I use in my studio when I'm working  and that helps a bit, but it's one of those things that you have to use every day to see a difference. I have not been painting every day... somehow I've got a billion other things to do and can't seem to plan my time very well. Just the same I've gotten a few pieces finished that I had hanging around, so I'm marking them up as "the first of 2019". It helps me feel like I'm actually accomplishing something instead of just going around in circles. 

When I was working on this piece, which has been in progress since late summer, I was trying to capture the feeling of being in a dark forest and walking into the blinding sunshine. I kept putting it away and then going back to it, changing the entire thing every time. It's way darker than I had thought it would be when I started. I had visions of this lovely, cool blue-green only around the edges, but it didn't work. I kept closing it in until I had the feeling I wanted, but then it was so dark that I had to go back in and add some metallic and lighter tones to brighten it up.

The greens also disappeared when it started getting really cold outside. It was the week between Christmas and New Years when I picked it up again and covered the whole thing in a blue glaze. You can see some bits of green poking through here and there if you look really closely, but now it's mostly blue and purple. It's colder, feels more like winter, but I do get the feeling of moving from dark into light. Which is in line with the whole days getting longer and brighter thing that I'm SO looking forward to.

I'm surfing around online and dreaming of warmer weather... found this article about a town in Italy selling homes for 1 euro with a condition that you have to renovate the place. How nice would it be to start a little community for us Canadian artists desperate to escape the dreariness? Of course I don't have the money to actually do it, but it's wonderful to dream.....