Regarding Winter Snow --- Day 6/313

Walk: No
Distance: PT exercises, Yoga, Pedal (1.5 hr)

Claude Monet, The Cart, Snow Covered Road to Honfleur, c.1867, oil on canvas

This morning Ciwt talked with a friend who has a picture perfect cabin on a rural Wisconsin lake. 

Her friend was looking forward to a strenuous snowshow hike in the idyllic snowy landscape.

Then she looked out the window at the thermometer: 40 below.  Sensibly, she and her husband abandoned their long holiday weekend in the country and, sensibly, headed back to their city house and called Ciwt from there.

Meanwhile, after all these years in San Francisco Ciwt's image of winter life has almost become a Monet painting.  Vividly portrayed but seen from the comfort of the indoors.

Before Monet, snow in winter paintings was white, period.  Just white. Not particularly memorable. 

The term "Impressionsim" of which Monet became 'The Father" was just a gleam in art historians' eyes when Monet began developing his ability to capture real snow with his brushes.  Standing outside to the point of endangering his health, he noticed snow's constantly changing surface, its variations according to light, its irridescence and the way it reflected the blue sky above and how it looked when the earth melted into it.  All these things.  And with a build up of a myriad of white tones and blended with violet, ochre, and blue he brought snow to vivid - and memorable - life.