"Foggy Morning" -- plein air oil painting -- 11x14" on stretched canvas

My friend Heiner Hertling has an apt name for the color of Michigan winters: sour-owl-shit-brown (lovingly referred to as "sour-owl"). This winter we've been suffering from an especially bad case of sour owl here in southeast Michigan. Oh, for just a bit of that wonderfully reflective snow! Many painters have fallen into a depressed funk, only curable by spending an afternoon in a roomful of red poinsettias. Since Thanksgiving we've had a light dusting of snow, melted after a single day. Mostly it's been in the mid-40's with cloudy, drizzly skies. This past Saturday morning we woke to a thick fog, so dense you could easily imagine the Hounds of the Baskervilles, leaping out of the soggy underbrush to rip out unsuspecting plein air painters' throats. My buddies and I drove to a horse staging area just east of Kensington Metropark and proceeded to paint fog paintings. This clump of white pines appeared to be the only thing I could see that had any definable shape. By the time I'd gotten to the end of this painting, the sun was rising behind these pines, beginning to burn through the fog. The brushwork reminded me of Russian artist Nicholai Fechin's loose style. Stay tuned for more adventures with the sour owl....