A painting day in the snow

I am on a painting trip in Vermont with a big group of artists. We have been out today and it is real cold and continues to snow on us. There is Renee Lammers and Barrett McDevitt.

When it is snowing it is pretty hard to paint outside. It turns your paint mixtures on your palette into something Barrett compares to grated Parmesan cheese. Here is Mike Graves working from the deck of an unused covered bridge. You have to find a shelter like an awning or a bandstand or picnic shelter in order to work.

Here is T.M. Nicholas working on a big canvas. It quit snowing so we moved to a hilltop overlooking some barns and houses and went to work. There was a cold wind blowing and it was gray, occasionally we got some light but it was pretty severe.

But within an hour or so, it turned into this. For the next couple of hours we worked from snow covered palettes and kept blowing the snow off of our paint. It is real difficult to control paint when it is like this, it turns into glue. We were determined to get something for our efforts so we cursed and worked and cursed some more until our boxes were filled with snow and we were painting with as much snow as paint.

I made this. Not my finest hour by any means, but I did manage to get the canvas covered. I will probably use this 18 by 24 inch sketch to make a painting in the studio. I have some information and an idea, but I don't like the design well enough to continue without redesigning the thing.

Here we are back at our cabin in the evening. That's T.M. Nicholas with Katherine Raynes.

This is from front to back Paul Goodnow, painter and master framer, John Caggiano, Barrett McDevitt, and Barbara Lussier.
Tomorrow, we hear the sun is going to shine. Perhaps I won't have to fight so hard to make a painting. Today was very trying indeed.