The Churn (2006)
Take me back to dear old Blighty
I had hoped to have a snowy winter while living in England in 2006. Being from the San Francisco Bay Area, snow is something you have to make an effort to get to. It’s not that it’s terribly far away, it’s just never on your front porch. We used to get driven out to play in the snow as kids every once in awhile, en route to Reno.
Well it did snow a number of times in England, which was great. unfortunately it never seemed to stick, melting upon contact even after a few hours of it. So I never got the snowscape I hoped for, that I was looking forward to painting en plein-air.
The other problem is that England really is as cloudy as its reputation makes it out to be. That’s never good for lighting even if I like hiding from the sun otherwise. So one sunny day we went for a walk just outside our village. There runs the River Churn, though it is really more of a rivulet at that point. Eventually it joins the Thames. It’s a pleasant little stream that winds its way around the hills. There wasn’t much particularly wintery about it though, so I picked a spot with a nice barren tree and got to work.
