The Beast at Gooseker

Although the recent spate of bad weather entitled 'The Beast from the East' brought traffic disruptions countrywide  and if the media is to be believed 'massive chaos', it brought a welcome change for the landscape artist. I enjoy these winter lanes and snowdrifts, primarily because of the general absence of green that tends to dominate. I am moving away from the security blanket of mixed greens and opting to utilise various yellows as a substitute, but some yellows mixed with a variety of blues / greys / blacks can also prove as thuggish as a spattering of pthalo green (yellow shade). When I look at the Dales, in normal (cloudy) weather, all I see is varying shades of grey with a greenish tinge, why therefore do I resort to hurling vast quantities of sap green and viridian in to emulate what I think I see. Maybe this is the part of the brain that says 'paint what IS there' rather than 'paint how you ACTUALLY See it', maybe if I had ever had an art class these questions could be answered and rectified... regardless, as I have always thought, the snow comes like a clean sheet...

Although when the snow goes, there's just a muddy mess!

Snowdrifts-Gooseker: Oil on Board, 10" x 8"