Snow Day, oil on canvas 42x50x2 inches with frame, 2024

Original oil on canvas 42x50x2 inches with frame, 2024

Though its color has fade, the attraction remains,

The fades blossom has not lost it great charm.

The winter wind leads to thought of leisure,

Cooling thought increase in the night.

This February, New York City finally got its wish that had its first big snow after two and half years. I went out to the Prospect Park, Brooklyn and made a number of pastels that day. I use those drawings as base for this painting. Snow is a marvelous unifying element. Seen against snow, almost everything turns dark or linear. A snowy landscape is like a black and white etching come to life. Things become tones, branches become textures, the weight of the ground disappears.

I like to paint the complexity of colors with a variety of strokes, layer after layer. From start to finish, each painting may take more than a month. I paint mainly with the palette knife to produce heavy textures and occasionally, in my final touches, use a brush.