Kesler Woodward

Inexorable Winter

Snow at Denali
©Kesler Woodward 2006
Watercolor
20" x 28" (image)
30" x 37" (framed)

This spring I painted an image of Denali in early September, one year when snowfall drove me from Denali National Park earlier than I had intended.  This image is of the mountain just a few weeks later--not really winter, as the light is still strong enough to cast sharp shadows and there are still bare spots on the mountainsides, but the light has become more wintry, the days shorter, and winter's arrival is much more obviously inexorable. 

I've always been fascinated by the onset of winter, by the way its coming may differ from year to year, but is so inevitable. As the occasional snows become more regular, the days shorten, and light gradually fades, the world seems to hold its breath, bracing for the deep cold.  Winter holds sway more than half the year in Interior Alaska, and the heraldry of its annual arrival is both ominous and beautiful.

Dawn Light, Ending Snow
©Kesler Woodward 2006
Watercolor
20" x 28" (image)
30" x 37" (framed)

It may be just my imagination, but it seems to me that the weather often changes right at daybreak.  Snow ends, or begins, just as night turns to day.  It's a magical hour in any case, with the first rays of direct light illuminating the forest, and when the dawn is accompanied by parting clouds and the snowfall gives way to blue sky, I always think it's like an epiphany. 

Snowfall

Falling Snow, Deep Winter
©Kesler Woodward 2006
Watercolor
20" x 28" (image)
30" x 37" (framed)

Dry snow.  Wet snow.  Soft snow.  Hard snow.  Snow in February, May, June, September.  Snow with no wind.  Snowing sideways.  Snow in the forest, at the glacier, in Denali Park, on a marsh in May. So many kinds of snow.  So many kinds of light. So many places.

I have been doing other things as well, like painting Mt. Rainier and even completing another couple of images of animals, but I keep coming back to exploring snowfall.  My show at New Horizons Gallery in Fairbanks opens November 3, and I really do think it will all be images of falling snow.

Contrapposto
©Kesler Woodward 2006
Watercolor
9 1/2" x 6 1/2" (image)
20" x 17" (framed)

Contrapposto is the Italian word for a human figure standing in such a way that the shoulders are twisted off-axis in relation to the hips and legs.  It's something that happens whenever we walk, or even stand naturally, with weight more on one leg than the other, and it's something that was captured in Classical sculpture and then lost until the Renaissance. I've noticed that many of the birch trunks I'm attracted to depicting have the same quality--a kind of twist that makes them seem even more like bodies, posing naturally and fluidly as they grow toward the light.

There is a beautiful little grove of birches near the Park Headquarters at Denali National Park, and I have painted individual "portraits" of the trees in that grove several times.  One of those birches is seen here in falling snow, in the wan, gentle light of a late February day.

DeLong Lake, May
©Kesler Woodward 2006
Watercolor
6 1/2" x 9 1/2" (image)
17" x 20" (framed)

Friends in Anchorage live on the western end of DeLong Lake, right on the edge of town very near the airport.  I love watching the birds, moose, and changing seasons on the lake and wetlands right outside their window.  The scene could be a hundred miles from the nearest town.  Here, in the light and foliage of May, a fierce flurry of snow.