Falling Snow
acrylic on canvas
24" x 24" x 1.5"
Available for purchase from Freshwater Studio & Gallery, Dillon, MT
This winter, I've been aching for peaceful, snowy days that make the world a lot quieter and hot chocolate all the more delicious.
Since it's mostly just a rainy mess out here in Washington, I found a lot of my atmospheric inspiration from reading a poem by Joanna Klink called "Porch In Snow." It helped to put me in the right mindset for this painting. Originally featured in Klink's amazing book of poetry called Circadian, I first came upon "Porch In Snow" in an absolutely outstanding anthology called Montana Women Writers: A Geography of the Heart (seriously...this is an amazing book. I highly recommend it). Klink is a professor of graduate creative writing at the University of Montana-Missoula.
I just want to share a few lines here to give you an idea of how lovely it is...but you should read the full version via Google Books' preview of Montana Women Writers here. I hate to excerpt from poetry, since the poetry gets so mangled as a result...it's especially hard to share a brief excerpt of Klink's poetry, since every line is so darn good.
"There you are, snow filling the air,
in the midst of silence [...]
Winter, there is no prayer but this,
to hold fast in the time of few choices.
An animal moves through the backyards, its eyes
precise and lit, the premise of everything I believe"
-Joanna Klink, excerpted from "Porch In Snow", from Circadian (Penguin: 2007)
Isn't that just stunning? I hope you'll check out Klink's work and find as much inspiration in her poetry as I have.
Kristin Jurist Haakenson
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