Bleak

No Fishing K Howell 2013 Pastel on Paper 14cm x 21cm

I've been neglecting this blog something terrible, but in the hope of returning to some kind of pattern, I'll post something from early January that I left unfinished in order to address Other Things:

Winter without snow still confuses me. I love the stripped landscape, the cold aspect, the shape of the bare world. But a little snow would be nice.

Many rainy days result in liquid paths that stream through the valley, washed out and colourless, like the sky. In a word, Bleak.

The word Bleak is amazing, and I didn't know that it can also refer to a small silvery shoaling fish of the minnow family, found in Eurasian rivers. That distracted me completely, and in the time it took for me to return to the post, we'd had two generous snowfalls.

Complaining to the universe sometimes gets results.