Painting outside... it starts to Snow... Smile

Bank and Laurier. January 31st, 2012. - Painting Outside in the Winter... and it starts to snow.

Some days you just do not want to work. You just want to sink into doing nothing. The gravity pulls you into wishing to waste the day. My mind was parked. My soul pushed. With a lot of motivation I managed to get all my equipment into my car.

I knew the weather was going to be temperamental. As it was announced on CBC Radio One the night before and again in the morning. I drove into the city and the song, "I Love Rock n Roll" started to play. Perfect. I was pumped. In the zone.

The parking lot was FULL. So I had to use coin meter parking. I was not thrilled about this. I do not own a watch, nor a phone, no electronic devices. So not way to tell time. So I had to keep mental time. The parking space was 1 hour painting. Enough said. You get the idea.

While unpacking the equipment from the car the bottle of mixing medium broke. So I walked over to the Art Supply store to pick up some linseed oil.

The sky was filled with yellow. Just before it started to snow the sky warmed with this stuffed yellow glow. The clouds were like pillows. A blanket. I did not wish to use yellow. Winter is blue and gray. Spring is yellow. But the sky had this pillow of sunshine. The gaze or abundance of clouds made the buildings seem pastel. With the light being filtered. No direct light. The buildings seemed soft.

I managed to complete 75% of the painting. It started to snow. The wind was strong. It was - 16 degree Celsius with the wind chill. I kept painting as the snow continued to fall.

One of the joys of having so many completed paintings is that you feel no pressure to create anything. You have this sense of liberation. If you make a mess and everything fails. It does not matter. You have more than enough paintings. The creative process can be absorbed in tangents. If the experiment floods, crashes, spoils... little matters. The chance has been taken and the painting embraces risk.

As the snow started falling. The light started to changed again. It was more gray and less yellow. The soft blue / white light with the pillow yellow. The sunshine behind the blanket sky started to lose its effect. The falling sky, falling snow, everything was moving.

It was snowing. And the snow was falling in much. My painting was getting pretty messy. I was going to pack it all in and put everything back in the car. But I really wanted to complete this painting. I felt that there was something really special about this moment. So I moved all my painting equipment over to the Canadian Government Building. There was a shelter. So I moved my setup over there.

I was not sure if the security would have a problem with this. But I did not really care if they did. As you might anticipate or expect from me. So I continued to paint. And managed to complete the painting 100% outside on location. Or should I say two locations.

Thank you

Patrick

NB - sorry the images or photographs taken are not the best. I did not realize that the camera was not on Auto Focus. So they are all a little poor in quality. It was cold and my brain was not thinking much outside of the canvas. I was in a different head space.

www.PatrickJohnMills.ca (gallery website)

www.PatrickJohnMills.com (artist website)