CHILCOTIN – FIRST SNOW
Every spring for years now I’ve been going with a small group of friends up to the Williams Lake area to fly fish for rainbow trout. It’s absolutely one of the very best times of the year for me, one I look forward to throughout the cold, wet and snowy Sunshine Coast winters. I love my warm, and sometimes frozen spring fishing trips while tenting up there in the Chilcotin area of the province.
During the winter months back here in Gibsons I always watch the weather forecasts with interest. I can see my favourite fishing lakes being blanketed with deep snows and freezing temperatures. I often imagine those lakes I frequent and what they must look like during the long winter months.
In the fall of 2018 a friend of mine from the Sunshine Coast, Bob Field, took a trip to the Chilcotin. His travels took him to visit various spots up in that country but one day in particular surely caught his attention. He tells me it was at a lodge on Eagle Lake. It was only early October but the first snowfall hit with a vengeance. He took some photographs as the dark, heavy clouds gave way to shafts of light that projected a glorious spectrum of colour. The fresh, deep snow served as a brilliant reflective screen of beauty and contrast. When Bob showed me photographs of what he’d seen in that familiar territory I just knew I had to try to paint my impressions.
This painting is just a bit unique for me. Not wanting to change my style too much, I am trying to “loosen up my brush strokes” from time to time. As such, this painting moves me a bit away from what people know as my “normal”. It tells the story though. It gives a sense of the light as I saw it and felt it in Bob’s photograph. Now, as the cold, wet winter shrouds the Sunshine Coast, and as the forecast shows the Chilcotin being blasted by yet another unrelenting winter snowstorm, I’ll have some sense of what my favourite fishing lakes are looking like. All because of a photograph my friend Bob brought me, a photograph of CHILCOTIN – FIRST SNOW.
