I’d been wanting to get out and paint a view of the pussywillows in my swamp. I hadn’t done a plein air in months. Tragic! But we’d had a long, snowy winter here and everything looked so dismal. Dry grass, dead leaves. Finally the grass began turning green. Daffodils opened up. Clouds of bright, yellow forsythia! House wrens called from the forest. The first of the turkey vultures appeared. Pussywillows’ catkins opened. This year I vowed to paint them!
But it was so cold here! Snowflakes were falling this morning! Ah — the frustration! I dove into a fit of house-cleaning: sweeping floors, straightening up misplaced items from our recent flooding problem. Ach! When it comes down to a choice between cleaning house and painting — you know what eventually wins!
I ended up setting up down by the creek. I liked the sort-of diagonal of the creek in the background. Here’s a shot of how it looked early-on. As you can see, the sky was still quite overcast. The cold wind blew non-stop. My feet went numb and I had to come into the house for a coffee-break (and to put on more clothes).
Eventually the clouds parted and the sunshine powered though. Ah — the brightest blue showed up in the creek! I had to run into the studio & grab a tube or two of blue. There were even shades of bluish-brown in the mud.
Nothing like a sturdy wagon…..
Margie Guyot Art 