Changing Views

So there was a day this March when I looked out at the freshly fallen snow and realized that it was time to make a print of the view. I had thought about it many times during the past six years that I've been printmaking, and in fact many of the trees and limbs in my prints are modeled after those in my yard. Doing a whole landscape, though? It was time.

I knew the view would be changing. There were trees in it that had to come down and I was planning on clearing out some smaller ones, now that the screen I planted a month after moving here fourteen years ago to block my neighbors to the east was reaching maturity.

While I was carefully penciling it in, I started thinking about other things, mainly that this would be a print that I would give to both my children who grew up with this view as a reminder of all the beloved snow days we've had here. All the nights gone to bed with pj's on backwards and inside out and a spoons under pillows to help make the wish of a snow day come true. Oh the screams of delight once school was cancelled, when suddenly a morning that would have been filled with making lunches and taking turns in the shower and going off to work was turned into a sleeping-in, kicked back lovely time of going nowhere and doing nothing.

Doing nothing, that is, with the exception of enjoying the view and the quiet and the peacefulness. I can hear it now. This is it.

Snow Day

The print was a challenge. It's a reduction printed moku hanga style and it's large at 21" x 10". If you are a printmaker, you can see that it was a challenge. There's a lot of detail in the background and all of those limbs. There were some frustrations! I'm guessing there were between 15-18 reductions and around twenty impressions on this edition of 28. I lost track along the way, during the month it took to print. Actually, I think the daffodils were coming up by the time I finished.

Now, though, we all have something to carry with us through life, wherever it may take us, to remember the view and those special days.