The weather has been positively schizophrenic. Last weekend the temperature was close to 70 degrees – warm enough to eat outside. Right now, as I type this, it is a chilly 23 degrees (-5 C) and snowing.
January 4th was cold and wet, wet, wet. It rained all day; a fine mist of moisture, more like winter in Scotland – Mark would uncharitably say summer! The lake remained frozen but had strange, inexplicable patterns of light and dark.

I deployed the umbrella Mark had given me at Christmas, which is actually intended to protect my sun-hating skin from burning, to stay dry. (I apparently lost my neck in the process..!)
I mainly worked in oil on paper but did the last painting (#4) on canvas. By that point the mist was blurring everything and the picture feels vague and unresolved. I have looked at it every weekend since. I am not sure it will survive.




Mark’s photos, as always, tell the real story, and I confess to frequently thinking, “Now that’s what I should have painted!”

All four paintings are beautiful and although you say #4 is unresolved, I like it as it is – slightly mysterious with hints of what’s hidden by the mist.
Thank you!
I like #4 the best. It does not feel unresolved to me at all.
Okay – good to know! Thanks.
You may have achieved a stay of execution!
These are marvelous! You keep getting better (if such a thing were possible). And so does your subject, who seems very content to be observed….
Thank you! (Referring to the Instagram post I think x)
Actually, rereading this I think you may not be referring to the IG post but rather to Mark’s photography. Perhaps I should have a lie down!
Number 2 is my favourite, but number 4 makes me want to put on my fenrunners!
A large surface of frozen water, you captured it very well.
Makes me realise how much we miss skating here in the Netherlands!
Thank you Mike!
Thank you Liesbeth! X