Winter Sunrise on Path – Stephen Remick

If you are in the UK, you will know that we have diverted our moaning about the weather from it being too cold or wet, as it has been too hot and muggy.  Thankfully the weather has now broken and we are back to grey skies and rain, but for a couple of weeks there, us poor Brits didn’t know what to do with ourselves as the temperatures reached 36 degrees celsius (97 degrees fahrenheit if you’d rather).  We are really not used to this type of climate, as being a small island in a slip stream the weather can change several times a day, so this extended period of sunshine is literally unheard of for us.

With this in mind, I have picked a painting which will remind you of our more natural weather (she said tongue in cheek).

Remick is a painter based around New Bedford, Massachusetts.  He paints scenes of the landscape around him, portraits of those he comes across, and moody skies.

Trying to research Remick is a little like trying to find hens teeth, with very little documented about his personal life, aside from some details in passing, about how he wanted to show his children they could be anything they wanted when they grew up, even if they had to live a double life… he did this by painting houses during the day and painting canvases at night. You have to admire the determination of someone who works a job they don’t want so that they can fulfil their dreams and they do so much to achieve them.

With a lack of personal detail about the artist, I will swiftly move on to the painting. At first glance, I have to say, I took these paintings as stylised photography – granted heavily edited, but nonetheless, I thought I was looking at a photographer. It was only when I really started to look did I realise that Remick produces paintings.

This particular painting really struck me. There is an eeriness to just fallen snow. There is an odd silence that comes with it and light reflects from it in a certain way. This painting really encapsulates the feeling of a snow fall and a sunrise over it.

I urge you to just glance at this picture, before you really look deeply in to it, as in that glance you will find that moment – that beauty of a deep snow fall. I am not talking about the rubbish I usually see in England where the grass can still be seen sprouting through the white powdery snow and within 10 minutes kids have gone outside and run all over it, turning it to a brown mush; rather I am talking about the dense snow fall where you look out of the window and decide that staying in on the sofa, curled up in a blanket with a warm drink would be the better choice than braving the biting beauty.

You then notice the pink hue of the sky, the light of the sun, bouncing off of the smooth reflective surface of the snow. The trees while right in front of you are picked out in silhouettes, adding to the eeriness of the day break.

Remick paints in acrylic on canvas and while this painting looks incredibly realistic a lot of his work are more embolic of surrounds and how man and nature coincide together. Weather features highly in his landscapes as he follows this surrounds through the seasons.

If you want to see more of Remick’s work, you can find it here

What do you think of Remick? Why not tell me in the comments? Like this post? Why not share it?