Ever since I first started painting when I was a kid I’ve wanted to paint a snowman painting that seemed convincing and realistic. I think the typical snowman painting, such as the picture on a greeting card, would show the kids in wooded setting with a cozy cottage in the background, and the children would be adding one finishing detail such as a scarf or hat to the otherwise finished snowman. In my scene I didn’t want a cottage with sparkly yellow lights or heaps of fluffy snow because I wanted a scene that felt more like my experience and like my childhood. With my paintings I’m not interested in painting an ideal or perfect world. Instead I’m searching for hope and beauty in an imperfect world. Rather than use the ideal landscape of the greeting card I chose to set the scene in a slightly stale suburb with some patches of crunchy melted snow. The magic in this painting isn’t in the setting; it’s all in the kids’ imagination. The snowman doesn’t exist yet as a finished character with a hat and scarf and corncob pipe. Instead he exists only as the spark of an idea, as potential to be discovered. I think this painting is important to me because my artwork feels like it’s in a place a little like the snowman in the painting. I have a lot of ideas and ambition for many series of paintings, but right now it feels like it’s all in my imagination, like the spark of an idea, and like potential that’s yet to be discovered.
My first snowman, age 5
