Snow and Ice

What I have seen in South Dakota is influencing what I see here in Minneapolis. Last winter while walking in the parking lot of my studio building, I recognized I was surrounded by snow piles that resembled some of the valleys and mountains I had been painting out West. 

Although these “false” mountains were created by snow removal equipment, they had an unruly presence that was both natural and wild. The contradictions that these piles represented, this urban disposal of “nature,” attracted me to them. I was confused and elated. Snow had the power to reframe my surroundings.

As a painter I saw that snow reflects what surrounds it. It is a colorist dream and nightmare. Every surface asks for a new mixture of color, and snow will appear flat if one doesn’t work hard at these mixtures. Forms emerge when paint value and hue are carefully controlled. 

The visual qualities of snow relate to those of water. Water is never the same. It reflects, shines, slides, flows and finally freezes. Snow, water's frozen cousin, has many faces too: opaque, translucent, light, heavy, reflective and even blinding. 

Urban snow has often been disturbed; consequently, it is not the neat white blanket that you see in the natural world. Instead, it reveals the messy tracks of what has passed over it. It holds the frozen impressions of what happened like a memory.

I like how snow obscures and abstracts the forms of the city simplifying the complex visual stimulus around us. Yet it reveals as much as it conceals. Reducing the world to a palette of grays, whites and blues makes for a pleasing harmony. 

Looking at snow has made me rethink my bias of only seeing nature in the context of wilderness. It has made me ask “What does nature look like in the city?”