Morning chill
As soon as winter arrives, and with it the first snow, painter Michael Godfrey is immediately drawn to a Lewis Carroll passage from one of his Alice books: “I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, ‘Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.’”
Winter in all its glory will be on view in a new two-artist show—winter’s Embrace, featuring Godfrey and painter Robert Moore— opening February 18 at Trailside Galleries in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Godfrey lives and works in Maryland, which experiences noticeable shifts from season to season. “In the mid-atlantic region we have four distinct seasons of which winter is my favorite. I paint my local region and areas from Western states,” he says. “The snow season in the East differs from the West. In the East we tend to get wetter, heavier snowfalls that stick and cling to everything. This effect, along with lighting situations, I find mesmerizing…snow has the ability to transform an ordinary scene to something extraordinary. I’m always amazed at this. The reflectivity of snow is a joy to paint. The key to painting a good snow scene is in the understanding that one is looking at a ‘blanket’ of frozen beauty where the hues are influenced by all surrounding elements. This influences how snow appears to the painter.”
The painter will be showing vignettes that are “intimate in scope.” Works include Fresh New Snow, which shows a pair of snowladen trees bending toward one another as if part of a family unit, and Winter’s Enchantment, which has a warm glow that is building behind a delicate snow scene. “I am fascinated by the silence that a heavy snowfall can bring,” he says, adding, “…snow acoustically dampens sound, and if I can ever paint that…”
Moore, who works out of a renovated warehouse in Declo, Idaho, was inspired by the Rocky Mountains. “I am drawn to the patterns and shapes created by the snowladen mountains as well as by the forest elements which are plentiful in our area,” he says, adding that he is guided by the words of
one of his teachers. “Dan Mccaw, my mentor and instructor…would say that each painting would contain the embers used to ignite the next painting.”
The Idaho artist paints with a thick impasto that leaps from the surface, often creating a shimmering effect as the paint spikes and curls from the canvas. His use of color is noteworthy because the artist is colorblind, a fact that has never hindered his work or methods, whether it’s is a bright summer scene or a mostly white winterscape.
“For me, being colorblind, the painting of snow is easier than a summer painting. With the snow I can focus on any complementary color scheme and I know it will read as snow because of the light value. With a summer scene I have to be constantly aware of and identify the mixing of the hues,” he says. “I view the painting of the snow as simply being one of the masses within the composition. That snow-mass will separate by value from the neighboring masses but it will have a good deal of variety within itself as the form turns toward or away from the light source. I look for that mass to have unequal distribution within its shape. It is that variety which will provide character and interest.”