#0608 "February Fence"

 

#0608 "February Fence"
18 X 24 (inches).
Started Saturday afternoon, February 1st, 2003.

I finished my Watershed Farm chores by 2 pm. The family Chesapeake and I felt inspired to paint. We ended up on the south side of the neighbour's property, looking toward the southwest and the fallen-down fence bordering the Coulter's Holstein farm fields. The only thing that really keeps the cows in is the precipitous drop on the north side of the fence line.

I dug into the snow so that I wouldn't fall flat on my ass. My pacing back and forth as I painted turned the slope into ice, and more than once I had to catch myself. It was a mild 4 degrees Celsius and very pleasant with almost no wind. The colours and multitude of tracks in the snow, as well as the lines of the fence, were what caught my eye. There was even a snow roller that had tumbled down off the fence line. I included that as the round disk on the left side of the painting. The roller got hung up halfway down the slope. 

Snow rollers are self-rolling snowballs sometimes called "snow bales," "wind snowballs," or "snow donuts“. The winter equivalent of tumbleweeds, they form when wind pushes snow, gathering it into a hollow cylinder. The Bernoulli Effect certainly plays a role in the initial formation, with the associated pressure drop above the snow surface resulting from a gust of wind. Gravity played a big part in the snow roller that I painted. Bigger snow rollers can travel a couple of feet, leaving trails a few inches wide in their wakes. The wind speed needs a threshold of 50 km/h with gusts. Conditions have to be just right to lift and roll loose, sticky snow over a layer of ice or a harder crust of snow. Snow rollers may be rare, but extremely interesting. 

My Chesapeake managed to break off a limb of a tree. She delivered it to me to throw for her after she had suitably gnawed off the smaller branches. I tossed it periodically the rest of the afternoon until there was nothing left except a chunk of wood the size of a baseball. By that time, it was dark, and we had to bail anyway.

I wish that I had pictures to supplement those memories. I was still using a film camera, so I thought twice before I took any pictures. Digital cameras would make "in-progress" images very affordable, but that had not happened for me yet in 2003. 

Other paintings along this part of the fence line: #0610, #0618, #0629 #0879.  Also see the larger offspring of this plein air sketch as #1084 "The Son of the Fence".

We loved that dog! She was a wonderful character and even a better judge of character. I had to hold her back one day from wanting to eat a bad guy who came up the lane selling stuff. 

This painting was also completed on the day when Space Shuttle Columbia burned up at 200,000 feet of altitude and travelling at Mach 18. All seven of the crew died at 9.00 am EST on that winter Saturday. 

Some memories are happy, but some can be tragic. That's life. 

For this and much more art, click on Pixels or go straight to the Collections. Here is the new Wet Paint Collection. Thank you for reading, and stay well!

Warmest regards, and keep your paddle in the water,

Phil Chadwick