Ayrshire: Fields, Woods and Hillsides in Snow Mixed Media

The canvas is unframed although it can be hung without a frame. A string is already attached. Alternatively it can be framed. It is mixed media, acrylic and oil paint.

This is another painting that was initially done ‘en plein air’ which is to say outside. I was able to park the car in a lay-by very close to Beith, clamber through a hedge and then walk to the spot where I sat on a lump of stone and painted this. Freezing conditions. When it's as cold as that it doesn’t take long before you lose power and sensation in your fingers. It becomes a challenge to even pick up a brush in such a situation.

Subsequently, I worked further on this back at the house in the back garden. There is a photo, somewhere, of me doing so. In it, I am wrapped up in a warm anorak with the hood up. Although cold, it was, nonetheless, good to work in given that the conditions were also dry and bright.

After some years, in 2023, I returned to this canvas and improved it somewhat now using oil paint. Some blues, greens and turquoises have been added into the snowy hillside and meadow and I’ve most obviously added a lot of violet colours into the trees, some into the sky and onto the distant hillside. Brush marks are easily visible. If you look horizontally along the top of the canvas you will see how textured it is and to some extent, in my opinion, the physicality that comes from the impasto method of the rendering of the paint brings other benefits. An example of which would be how it helps to express the form of the land as it sweeps down to the trees.