Don't have time to paint the light on the snow in the yard outside my studio doors. Something magical about how light plays on snow and how it reflects moods with the changing daylight hours into the night. These are digital sketches done when I had time.

At the AGO and even at the National Gallery in Ottawa, some of the paintings that captivate me most are the studies of snow by the Group of Seven. I may be doing a book tour to Flin Flon in Northern Manitoba in late February (my 3rd visit) and I will be looking forward to sketching the black spruce and snow. The north may not be an easy place to survive in (speaking of -47 with wind chill today) but you cannot beat it for poetry of light, line and form.

Speaking of black spruce and the north, I highly recommend Joseph Boyden's "Through Black Spruce." Perhaps because I used to fly north through Moosonee to Povungnituk, and even spent a few days there on a reading tour, I find that book beautifully written, so evocative of the place. I could feel the cold, see the ice on the Moose River or the light over James Bay. Wonderful characters, beautifully written (reapeating myself). Oh how I want to return if only it were not so expensive! Soon I hope.

I wish we coud send every school child north to experience it at least once in their life, to meet the people and to feel the land.


I left the trees out of this sketch...made me feel the light more.