Have Heart (Original, Signed and Framed)

Original oil on canvas

A1 85cm x 60cm (unframed)

This painting is for the coming winter, for about being prepared. 

Each year I romanticise about winter, which really is a time for home, the idea of retreat into a cosy sanctuary to rest up.  In modern life this is a challenge, being busy - a kind of badge of worthiness, when stillness would do rather well.  If only work hours could be reduced to a mere handful, giving time for that biological need for slowing down, but obviously the world needs its many services and economic enslavements!

Anyway, a handful of human beings make the world bonkers, sad and forever instil a strange desire to seek something that doesn't exist, not at least in the places we are currently looking. When is enough, enough? When can we take a rest?

For this painting I took inspiration from a photograph my brother took of my Dad, walking with his wide brimmed winter hat catching the falling slow.  The aim I had as I painted in the figure was to create a duality -  are they looking ahead, or have they turned to face the viewer. 

Snow creates a unique stillness, it blankets the land absorbing sounds and crunching underfoot.  How wonderful to have this experience out in nature, celebrating the cold, embracing it, maybe in the low crisp light, knowing that you can return home to the warm, to lamplight and cups of tea.  Nature (and the pace of nature) and home, these are the things that matter, and without getting out in the cold of winter how can the sweetness of spring and summer unfold so nicely. 

By accident, when painting a snowflake I noticed it was heart shaped, so this makes the title.  Despite everything, despite the dark and the cold - have heart and find rest from the noise. There is still so much that is good and beautiful going on and carrying on all around us, like falling snow.

"In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.” Albert Camus