This isn’t really a winter scene, in my mind at least. In the early, early spring you can’t see much evidence of snow melting in the bush, but it is melting and the water finds its way down into creeks like this and turns the snow darker.
As I write this it’s -16C outside so the image is, at this point, just wishful thinking.
A woman came to me at a show, pointed at this engraving and asked why some barns were painted red. I was a bit embarrassed to admit I didn’t know. The search engine DuckDuckGo was most helpful.
Seems that hundreds of years ago (long, long before Home Depot) many farmers would seal the wood on their barns with linseed oil, an orange-coloured oil derived from the seeds of the flax plant. To this oil, they would add a variety of things, most often milk and lime, but also ferrous oxide, or rust. Rust was plentiful on farms and because it killed fungi and mosses that might grow on barns, it was very effective as a sealant. It turned the mixture red in colour and, Voila! a Red Barn.
Another of Southern Ontario’s iconic Bank Barns, so named because of the earth banked up on one side as a ramp leading to the second floor. The ground level at the back leads into the stables with the second floor overhanging to give some protection to outside animals. I drive past this one often and wanted to do an engraving and now, having done this small one, I really want to do a large one with much more detail.
Except for my Barn prints I don’t have many winter scenes choosing instead to sit in my warm studio and focus on summer subjects.
Here’s a winter scene, one of Northern Ontario’s many frozen lakes. It’s a three colour engraving using only one plate.
Early on in the year I did a B&W, 4.5 x 5, covid inspired print titled ‘Passing Storm’. As we know the ‘storm’ has been what the weather folks would call a ‘very slow moving disturbance.’
When effective vaccines were announced I did a more hopeful, 5.5 x 8 print I’ve titled ‘2012, the view from here.’
Hopefully a bright, cheerful addition will be warranted very soon :- )
It was all happening on paper inside while the cold and storm was happening outside!
I editioned this years ago but something about it always bugged me so it was relegated to a drawer. Two weeks ago I sliced a lot of roadway from the bottom of the plate and all of a sudden the eye was drawn to the barn, not the road!
These are printed in black with an image area of 35.5×58.5 cm (14×23″).
These hay pulleys ran along a track near the peak of the barn roof. The bottom pulley clipped onto a large fork that dropped down and stuck into loose hay on the wagon just in from the field. The rope was attached to a team of horses that would pull the hay up to where it could be dropped into the loft. Hot, dusty, sweaty work.
This is a four colour print with an image area 28 x 34 cm (11×14.5 inches)
This barn, one of Ontario’s ubiquitous bank barns, was in the middle of a field on a sideroad way, way out in the country. It looked quite safe from developers’ bulldozers.
The print is one of a series of larger barn prints, this one is matted to 14×23. The barn was red, honest!
Most printmakers show progressive prints as a sort of educational/interest thing, I’m doing it just to get a bad pun out of my head and into the subject line.
It feels better already.
If you’re around St Thomas between this Friday, November 27 and December 24th you can enjoy seeing the Group Show in Illuminé Gallery. If you’re there this Friday between 7:00 -9:00 pm. you’re welcome to drop in, meet the Artists and enjoy the Opening Night festivities.
Outside the wind chill makes it feel like -30C. I’m back inside now, huddled over my mac for warmth and wondering why my ancestors paid good money for passage from England to this frozen real estate when they could have just stolen a loaf of bread and been given a free trip to warm, sunny Australia.
I spent a (much warmer) day last March wandering around a bush near here sketching the aftermath of a snow storm. This three colour print is from one of the sketches.
There’s a voyeur aspect to train riding that I like; mile after mile after mile of backyards. If you were on the right train you’d see mine. I did the drawing last summer but changed it to a winter scene to cover up all the stuff that was scattered about and to spare me the pain of engraving tree leaves. The lazy way to clean up a yard.
As one of my friends wrote of me, I “don’t do winter too well.” I’m ready to move on into warm weather.
This is the time of year when I pull out the maps and the sketches and gaze longingly, my imagination drifting through islands that are still covered in snow and ice.
May 18th seems a loooong way off.
clive lewis, printmaker 