Winter Sun and Thawing Snow: A 1000ft Perspective on Nature's Beauty

Winter Sun And Thawing Snow, Watercolour.

I remember snowdrifts up to 10 feet deep. One April I filmed the local farmers digging out five feet of snow that had filled in the only route out of the village.

I loved it and I hated it, living up there 1000 feet above sea level. I could see for 40 miles from my studio window, but that was often 40 miles of rain. When the nice weather arrived it was heaven on earth, but most of the time it was damp. Our house was on the edge of the Moor and when I say edge, I mean stepping out of the door and within 5 minutes you were striding in open wilderness. There wasn’t much to paint out on the moorland, but it taught me a lot about composition and what you can and can’t do with design. This place is where walls found their way into my paintings, not by choice or deliberate consideration, but because walls were often the only features in an otherwise blank landscape. It started whilst I was out looking for something to paint and I learned that if I got up close to the walls, I could fill compositional space with long diagonal shadows, and the toppings formed dynamic dancing patterns in the sunlight. Sometimes broken down walls created lost and found lines. They were also useful for leading the eye towards an alternative part of a scene. Then there’s the detail, found in the twisted wires and sheep netting. Farmers here have always cut a corner or two and the general deterrent to escaping stock leaping through tumbledown walls is to staple out a mile and a half of two strand. That was it right there. The wall, the angles, the shadows, the textures and the barbed wires. They may be walls to most people, but to me they are a compositional delight, and I love drawing attention to that unseen aspect of this landscape. One critic once told a gallery he thought I was unhappy because I painted dark shadows. "And why is he stood in a ditch?" Well, artists have to find a viewpoint somehow.

Finding subjects from nothing

Discovering design elements

Winter up there was something else. After 11 years of life at the edge, we got used to the place being three degrees cooler than town, just a few miles away. We could be in a snowstorm at home, but down amongst the shops and cafes, people would be wearing summer clothes. I remember snowdrifts up to 10 feet deep. One March I filmed the local farmers digging out five feet of snow that had filled in the only route out of the village. During another winter, someone broke down in their car and left it at the side of the road but the relentless snow storms filled in around it and over it. When the ploughs and tractors finally cut through, there was a snowdrift with a window in it and it remained like that for weeks until the thaw gradually revealed the rest of the vehicle. Winters could be harsh and we often had snowfall into April.

Cutting through after heavy snow, March 2013

Living next to the moor was a bit like living on a sponge. The peaty uplands, saturated with rain seemed to draw in moisture, and if it wasn’t raining, they’d pull in the clouds instead.

Any snowfall was often slow to thaw and I loved the change from a totally white landscape to a landscape dotted with patches. The snow that built up under the walls remained the longest, leaving the landscape hatched in white lines. My painting winter sun and thawing snow records one of those beautiful days where winter is gradually merging into spring. You can feel it, you can see it in the colours and you can hear the excitement in the birds. Sheep calls drift on the breeze and you know that soon the snow will be gone and new life will arrive for another year. Then at sun down, ice patches begin to grow again and the air tangibly freezes, forcing you to throw another log on the fire and wait just a little bit longer. Out in the wilderness you become attuned to nature like this. It’s more noticeable than in the suburbs. I can see how the farmers and land workers of long ago would become attuned to recording time by the arrival of birds, by the sky, by the stars, by temperature, by birth. I always remember the feeling I had when spring was finally here and I heard the first call of the curlew. I knew autumn was arriving when skeins of honking geese passed overhead in huge wavering vee shapes. But living next to the moor was a bit like living on a sponge. The peaty uplands, saturated with rain seemed to draw in even more moisture, and if it wasn’t raining, they’d pull in the cloud and threaten it instead. Cloud like this can hang over the Pennine hills for days. There was always a distant edge to these grey skies, and I’d look out at the view and think of the lucky souls enjoying the sunshine 40 miles beyond.

My painting 'Winter Sun And Thawing Snow' doesn’t record a pretty composition. In fact, I never set out to look for classic views that might perfectly adorn a calendar. Instead, I record the gritty reality of life a thousand feet up on the backbone of England - a hill farm huddled into the land, bracing against the relentless South Westerly weather, but here, basking in a moment of rare winter sunshine.

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Winter Sun And Thawing Snow, fine art print

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Paul Talbot-Greaves RI, Artist, Author, Tutor

Paul Talbot-Greaves is a member of the Royal Institute Of Painters In Watercolours, and has been painting and writing for 30 years. He writes many articles for The Artist magazine (UK), has four practical art books published and has contributed to various others. He is represented by numerous galleries based around the North of England. He can be found on Instagram and Facebook where he regularly posts up to date pieces and inspirational stories.