When doing this painting I was standing in the snow out on “the Hill” near the Barn at Pendle Hill, looking north and enjoying the view of this location, which I had already drawn and painted numerous times before. My home was just the other side of the trees; I saw aspects of this particular view and the surrounding setting many times every day in all its variety of season, weather conditions, and time of day, and never tired of it.
It was the second week of February, and for the past few days there had been several moderate to heavy snowfalls, and the presence of this accumulated snow served as a visual foil contrasting the softness, light values, and blue shadows of the snow to the firmer, darker qualities and colors of the trees and landscape.
On a fairly bright Sunday, shortly after the weather storm front had passed through, I started the painting late in the afternoon but had to stop soon because the light was changing quickly and approaching sunset. For the next couple days the weather was a cool gray overcast, and I painted outside from memory, being guided by where I remember the sun had hit various surfaces, creating warm bright highlights, and where the shapes of the trees had dark areas and made cool blue cast shadows diagonally across the snow. This method of working isn’t ideal, but it is common, can be fun, and like many other artists I have used it often in the past.
On the fourth day the weather was becoming warmer, a fog had set in overnight and was lifting by the afternoon when I went out to paint. When I saw the subtle muted tonal colors and softened forms of the trees created by the fog I liked what I saw more than I had liked the bright sunny day setting. As such, I set about working to capture as much information as I could while the daylight was still available. The following days were prime weather for harvesting Maple tree sap for making syrup – cold nights and warm days. They were overcast with a thin very moist haze in the air, it was overcast and the sunlight was modestly strong but evenly diffused, creating a warmer light over the landscape than the previous overcast days. This atmospheric affect on the trees and the resulting color became the new focus of the painting rather than following through with what I had started earlier in the week, and I believe it was the better choice. It is like that when painting, sometimes you end up going in a completely different direction than what you initially intend, but you have to embrace the change wholly and quickly before the opportunity is lost.