Snowman on Scout Scar by the Mushroom Shelter Time for High Arctic wellies. Snow has come as a warm front rolled in off the Atlantic on a South West wind and met colder air sitting over Cumbria. Overnight snow has capped the stone walls, piling in drifts against the broader base. Sunlight melts the snow on the top-stones and a layer of gleaming water defines a network of pastures. It’s an effect I’ve never seen here before and I’m always eager to see what snow and ice will do.
Rare effect of illumination of field-walls
Virgin snow, and I stride out for Scout Scar with a sense of adventure. Raven and buzzard over the escarpment. Small mammal tracks in the snow, I wonder how wildlife will feed in this depth of snow. Someone has veered off piste, out of the easy channel of footsteps, to the cliff-edge. Might have been me. As footsteps become busier I do not entirely know myself. We are all of a morning, but there’s an overlay of time passing that is beyond my unravelling. Everyone plays Wenceslas’ footsteps, taking the way made comfortable, conforming. Almost everyone, but the curious jink away on solitary forays.
In the film Girl with a Pearl Earring, the artist Vermeer ( Colin Firth) leads the girl to the window of his studio. And looking out at the sky, he asks what colour she sees. Imagine the colours of the skyscape reflected in the snow on Scout Scar escarpment and the ridge above. Cloud and light are constantly changing, and how will skyfall strike the snow? That wonderful silence is lost as snow-crystals compact under their own weight, changing the acoustic property of light and airy snow. Surface snow-crystals melt and refreeze, in a crust that rasps to the touch. Snow is not white. And from the moment hands pack gathered snow hard into the body of the gleaming snowman he is no longer snow. Sturdy and solid, he is iceman perhaps.
In the film Girl with a Pearl Earring, the artist Vermeer ( Colin Firth) leads the girl to the window of his studio. And looking out at the sky, he asks what colour she sees. Imagine the colours of the skyscape reflected in the snow on Scout Scar escarpment and the ridge above. Cloud and light are constantly changing, and how will skyfall strike the snow? That wonderful silence is lost as snow-crystals compact under their own weight, changing the acoustic property of light and airy snow. Surface snow-crystals melt and refreeze, in a crust that rasps to the touch. Snow is not white. And from the moment hands pack gathered snow hard into the body of the gleaming snowman he is no longer snow. Sturdy and solid, he is iceman perhaps.
Heavy rain and a rapid thaw is forecast for later in the day, and overnight. So the snowman who dangled his legs over the outtake wall and the penguin who sat by his side making everyone laugh will, like Humpty Dumpty, have a melting, slithering kind of fall.
Image bottom left. Today I felt, for a moment, as I were transported to Breughgel's Hunters in the Snow painting- if you flip my image over. The hunters stand up on a hill looking down to the village below, with snow-covered hills in the distance. What convinced me was the sound of the hunting horn. It came from the woods below Scout Scar escarpment. When there's a pheasant shoot you occasionally hear a horn sounding.
The central image is my Homage to David Hockney. At the time of this snow scene there was a major exhibition of his paintings in London. I watched a TV documentary and listened to him speaking of his art. He studies the same woodland location over and over, fascinated by the changing light and season. Yes, I'll go with that. My work looks nothing like his but I share his philosophy. Looking and seeing, watching the way the light falls, studying change. This group of ash trees on Scout Scar draws me. They feature in the images in my gallery on a day when banners of stratus cloud hung over them. I return again and again. Right of the trees is an almost branchless trunk that seems to be telling them something and it looks like a meercat. These trees might look young but they're old. Up on Scout Scar they are rooted in limestone clitter, with no nutrients and the rock does not hold water. Look closely and they are gnarled, embattled. In winter, they take on a striking character. The south west wind and sunlight races over the ridge, catching them for a moment in conversation. Then the light changes and the moment is lost.
The central image is my Homage to David Hockney. At the time of this snow scene there was a major exhibition of his paintings in London. I watched a TV documentary and listened to him speaking of his art. He studies the same woodland location over and over, fascinated by the changing light and season. Yes, I'll go with that. My work looks nothing like his but I share his philosophy. Looking and seeing, watching the way the light falls, studying change. This group of ash trees on Scout Scar draws me. They feature in the images in my gallery on a day when banners of stratus cloud hung over them. I return again and again. Right of the trees is an almost branchless trunk that seems to be telling them something and it looks like a meercat. These trees might look young but they're old. Up on Scout Scar they are rooted in limestone clitter, with no nutrients and the rock does not hold water. Look closely and they are gnarled, embattled. In winter, they take on a striking character. The south west wind and sunlight races over the ridge, catching them for a moment in conversation. Then the light changes and the moment is lost.
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