WINTER MEDICINE AT -7°
I’d been searching through the dark, wet, grey winter of 2019 and couldn’t find it. My search continued through the entire month of January, 2020. Still it wasn’t to be found. My spirits were as dark and grey as the season. The artist within just couldn’t stir. The fire had gone out. Some would call it “painter’s block”. I’m certain my lack of artistic energy would be better diagnosed as “SAD” or “Seasonal Affective Disorder”. I just couldn’t find it within to paint. I longed for the light that I paint, but this record long winter of rain and drudge denied that light. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t stir the spirit.
Then, at coffee one rainy morning, my friend Tom Hierck changed all that. He’d been out to Lloydminster, Alberta on business and he’d come back with some photographs of the cold, still winter he’d experienced while there. As soon as I saw his photograph of the old cabin in the steel blue snowy field, the bright light of that Alberta winter acted as a spark to my artistic energy. It was the light that did it. I’d been craving that light, and I’d paint that light. It would be my first painting of 2020.
Even though, he told me, the temperature that day had been -7°, that simple, still scene was truly medicinal to me. As I painted over the next two weeks, that exercise of “painting the light” healed my spirit. No longer was I lacking the creativity of the artist. In fact, I found myself compelled to paint. Already I was composing my next painting even as I created this piece. That winter scene of a cold Alberta fence line and solitary cabin in the crystal, sparkling snow had truly been a powerful tonic. It launched me into 2020 such that by mid-February, when I finished the piece, I was full of the positive, creative energy so necessary to me as an artist.
Painting that bright Alberta winter’s light, from me, truly was “Winter Medicine at -7°”
