Forest Park, 10×10 Soft Pastel

Despite living in Alabama, where we may see a bit of snow each year, we have had an abnormally snowy winter. Because schools, roads and businesses close on snow days here in the South, we have had plenty of extra opportunities to rest, to stay home with our families, to enjoy warm fires and watching the snow fall. I usually find these late winter months deflating, entering “the winter blues” around early February, but this year the icy air, the bleak skies and the gray hours seem more restful than usual. Patient.

On a recent trip to St. Louis, where we saw snow on the ground for the whole 9 hours, I took a photo of a frozen river in Forest Park. The simplicity of the scene and the colors in Monet’s Snow at Argenteuil inspired this rendition of the landscape as it rests in the long patience of winter.