The winter light here in Ontario is vibrant, but without being warm; it is a crisp light. Everything outside is frozen and grey, so there is no green from the trees, or blue from the rivers to enliven with this light. It is so pure others might describe it as harsh, but I love its unmingled-clearness.
Winter light is one of silence. Not a silence waiting for you to fill it, but a silence that envelops you; making you silent too. We don’t see the sun’s light during the winter often enough here. Huge clouds, which take weeks to pass by, drag along only letting a filtered, foggy impression of light through. I suppose that as the deliciousness of that first egg after fasting before Easter is in some way the results of being without, so to my love of this light can be attributed to fasting from sunlight over many weeks.
It was so good to wake up this morning beside an open window. Everything I love about being in Canada greeted me when I opened my eyes and my room was floaded with the winter light. I was very sick last night and spent the night between wet clothes, painful joints and, worst of all, suffering in a slury of thoughts about what I have done, and have not done, that I drowned underneath. But, waking in the light, all was silence and calm.
Needless to say, today was not a day where I accomplished as much as I might have hoped; but what I did do was well done. Laying the gold leaf for such a small work still took the morning by the time the studio was heated and everything was ready to go. Burnishing the gold went exceptionally well and the two pieces both have a brilliant finish. After lunch I took a slow walk out in the old Mill Run, where I could just exist in the light.