Chaos on the B6479

A combination of snow and sheep bring Upper Ribblesdale to a standstill. These are Salt Lake cottages, some railway houses on the Gauber Road, the B6479 near Ribblehead. I know its a bit of tongue-in-cheek embellishing the news reports of how Britain comes to a standstill the moment a little bit of snow falls, which I have emphasised by the use of a caption (not to everyone's taste). While painting this I was reminded of watching BBC's Breakfast time last winter and the producer had an outside reporter standing at a crossroads in some suburb reporting about a heavy snowfall which hadn't really happened. The poor chap was desperately finding something newsworthy about the pityful amount of snow that had fallen; so much so that the cameraman had focussed on a word that was written in what was left of the snow - the viewer could just make out the word 'help'  on the grass - no doubt scribed by the reporter himself.

Chaos on the B6479 - Oil on Board 17 1/2" x 12"

I honestly am trying to avoid the parallels with Peter Brook, however its very difficult to get a non-Brookish look to a painting of the Pennines in Winter without echoes of his skill; so here I embraced it yet again and added the title, which I think in this case adds another element to this painting. The use of a raw umber ground also helps here in bringing the various tones out. The good thing about these winter scenes is it forces the use of a very limited pallette, and focus more on the tones, the red of the sign returns it from the monochrome.