Winter Sunshine!

The mild winter continues here in northern Scotland! While this has unfortunately meant dreadful weather and flooding in England, up here it's been a beautiful period. This painting is 'Winter Sunshine on Ben Aigan'. I walk past this view every day and have been waiting for an inspirational moment to paint it. Today, nature obliged as the sun lit up the middle distance, making the whole landscape shine! Ben Aigan and Ben Rinnes, at right, still show a covering of snow but the distant woods on Ben Aigan shine a golden green colour. The trees are beautiful at this time of year and the dark colours of the foreground trees enhance the sense of distance and recession, which was my main motivation for this painting. I love these wide open spaces and the majesty of the mountains which form such a graceful backdrop to so many scenes in the area. I hope the muted foreground, of stony ground turned over for the winter, leads the eye into the middle distance and the gap in the trees, beyond which the land is lost in the warm glow of the sun. I really like this one, and I've only just kept my wife from keeping it for our own walls!

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