“I love painting snow, whether brilliant midday sun, blue-tinged, snow or pinky sunset snow. I love how blues and pinks hover above the snowy white. I love the snow's power to transform, to turn a plain town into a lovely town, and a lovely town in something quite majestic. In "Crick in the Snow, the lovely village of Crickhowell is transformed into a picture-postcard beauty by the snow and the dramatic background of the snow glistering hills. I live by the sea where the salty sea erodes most heavy snow drifts. Thus I have to travel inland to the Welsh Valleys and beyond to find my snow laden landscapes. In this painting I love the intricacy of the hedge rows climbing up the hills, the lacy threads of winter hedges, the patterns and the line and shapes. It has a "brueghelian" Christmas feel. All that is missing is the sleighing children, and the swirl of ice skates. I love the warm colours of the houses in the foreground contrasting with the cold blues in the distance countryside. The habitable back-lit with the inhabitable. This heightens the feeling of Christmas, all wrapped up in each other's shops and homes, and lives; reassuringly, comfortably, necessarily away from the icy outside, the outer reaches, around this human fire of company. This is a painting of a winter community as well as winter community more generally.” Discover Emma Cownie's Advent Calendar promotion: https://www.artfinder.com/artist/emma-cownie/sale/
