Let it Snow!

The world outside my studio today is a grey, cast-iron caldron of popping popcorn and I am peeking over the rim watching the fluffy stuff jump, swirl and pile up and up.

I wish those white blobs were edible. My lunch date at my friend’s house was cancelled due to this big snowfall and I’m starving. Like her, most of us in Muskoka live isolated at the end of windy, hilly, back roads that are not plowed very often. When it snows like this, we just learn to change plans quickly and sit tight until we can budge.

Thankfully, I don’t have to budge for another hour. Tom Allan is playing Vivaldi and I am reminded just how well Vivaldi and snowy days go together. The two seem to be mimicking each other with their pristine, joyful dances.

It is a great joy just to see the snow finally return to Dorset. It certainly took its time this year and I was beginning to worry that global warming was going to deprive me of one of my favourite painting subjects. I love it when the winter snow dresses the trees like royalty in stately mantles of ermine and lays down a thick spongy carpet over the impassible, debris-strewn forest floor. Snow transforms it into a smooth, white desert that I can stride easily across on racket-shaped snowshoes into the remotest of places.

Winter Garb  by Elizabeth Johnson  24×20″ acrylic on canvas

As I watch the first big snow come down in Dorset, I think of A. Y. Jackson’s First Snow Algoma, of A. J. Casson’s big blobs in First Snow, Grenadier Pond  and of Kathleen Moir Morris’ snow-laden Montreal scenes. Many Canadian painters have even managed to sneak those beautiful snow shapes into their spring and summer paintings. Whether they were put there subconsciously or intentionally, they are there.  Just have a look at Lauren Harris’ clouds and Arthur Lismer’s blossoms in Georgian Bay, Spring. What about Tom Thompson’s Lily Pads? I bet those painters were longing for the snow to come back soon after the spring melt.

A gallery owner once advised me not to paint winter scenes. “They don’t sell,”  he said.  He might have just as well told me not to be Canadian. Snow is the trademark of so many Canadian painters.

My hour is up. I must go out into the popping, dancing whiteness and find my son for his violin lesson. He will be playing a Vivaldi concerto for his teacher this afternoon.

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The Nonagenarian

Recently, I got a phone call from a woman who had seen my exhibit of paintings at the Huntsville Public Library and wanted to purchase one of the paintings. A small, halting voice with a distinct German accent spoke on the other end of the line. As she asked questions about the painting, I clearly recognized the voice. She was the woman who had been singled out at the Concert Association of Huntsville last month because she was celebrating her 92nd birthday. And here she was, still buying original art.

Most of the few people who reach their nineties have already reduced whole households to fit into one small room, bulging with belongings, in a retirement residence. Indeed, my client lived in such a place herself. She explained that she had a spot left on her wall for one of my paintings. Could I possibly get my husband to hang it for her?

There are days when cynicism about the lack of buyers of fine art blows through the cracks of my soul like a winter gale in a draughty farmhouse. But then, there are days like this one, where I am deeply warmed and encouraged by a 92 year old woman who is still walking around art exhibits, still enjoying and responding to art, still vibrant enough to invest in the creative energies of a younger generation, still wanting to own an object of beauty.

What a great honour it is to be the one to occupy that last little square of bare wall in her retirement residence room.