"THE STILLNESS OF WINTER" by Aaron Schuerr

“I'm excited to share a new painting that went through a long gestation. I shivered my way through a field study a year ago on an overcast afternoon with a high temperature that barely reached above zero. A month or so later I started a studio pastel. After a first pass I decided it would be more interesting as a sunset, so I layered over darker blues in the snow and introduced warm color in the sky. Though I liked the idea of the painting, I just wasn't able to pull it off. Disappointed, I set it aside, thinking it was not salvageable. Then, after nearly a year, I took another look and imagined a solution. I decided to have another go at it. I took a dry brush and removed the top layers of pastel from all but the larger trees. Then I gave it a good coating of fixative before performing surgery. Most of the work involved removal and simplification. I opened out the middle ground, simplified the sky, darkened the background hills, and reworked the water and icy bank. After two long days of work and uncertainty, I came out the other side relieved and happy. This is what I meant to say! It's fairly common for art enthusiasts to assume that landscape painters stick to the script. While I have learned to paint accurately, to match color for color and tone for tone, at the end of the day I'm after the truth of experience. How does that landscape make me feel? How do I convey my experience of place in a way that transcends mere fidelity to the subject? That's where the adventure begins..." - Aaron Schuerr