Unexpected Influences

A couple of posts ago I spent some time looking at Peter Bruegel the Elder. When I say looking I mean just looking, no thought, no analysis and precious few words. In that post I mentioned I would be making sketches of our lovely new snow. This I did. Whilst gathering material on the Friday afternoon, I was struck by the different attitudes there exist towards snow. I was out and about, freezing cold and having a lovely time. Meanwhile, there was a queue of cars going nowhere along the Egham bypass, full of warm but unhappy drivers.

I came back and sketched my sketches with no thought of Bruegel. After all, our work could not be further apart stylistically.

It was only while watching the programme mentioned in my last post that I saw the link. I don't mean the fact that if rotated through 180º the shapes become similar, but that it addresses the same theme from a different point of view.

The program featured Grayson Perry speaking about Hunters in the Snow. For him, the painting is about the drudgery and hardness that is snow in the absence of shelter and security as epitomised by the weary hunters in the foreground, contrasted with the background showing the wonderful, magical playground that is snow when you have the option of heading into the warm at will.

In my picture the same contrast has been rotated through 180º.

The trees that line the bypass are painted as slushy, used up snow that half swallows up the almost ghost-like vehicles with their invisible drivers safe and warm but trapped and fed up. Meanwhile, the viewer is unencumbered by metal and dual carriageways, with an expanse of pristine snow beckoning them into the cold - in other words if I were in Bruegel's painting I would be an ice-skater looking up at the hunters returning through the trees.

This link was entirely subconscious, but now I have noticed it it is inescapable. It just goes to show paintings are a fabulous tool for exploring and digesting, and if made with this in mind they can go on surprising their maker long after the paint has dried.

This treatment of this composition has legs, and I will work it up into a proper painting in due course.

Between running round like a loon enjoying the new snow and recalling the hardships of winter for the furry things that have neither central heating nor supermarkets yesterday, I thought I would bow to the inevitable. Just as the Fairy tale of New York is everywhere at Christmas, now is the season of Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Frozen water, fresh snow and a "can't work so we might as well play" attitude is just about right for Egham right now. I saw an estate agent in a suit standing in the falling snow showing off his brand new sledge to some excited colleagues - kudos! Who cares how hard things are, wrap up warm and arse about! I proclaim this as someone who has but one miniature wood burning stove for heat. I know very little about Bruegel but this young lady who is apparently somewhere with proper winters has picked one intriguing highlight - the bird trap.

Anyway, whilst I was out yesterday I gathered some material, so the plan for the weekend is to do a couple of decent oil sketches to see if there is potential there or not. Egham bypass in the snow, smudgy and wet-on-wet, with dirty greys, earths and yellows. Who was it who described car lights in a traffic jam as rubies and diamonds? There'll be a bit of that going on too.