Everyone has their own take on landscapes with snow. My mother saw it one way and I saw it slightly differently. The first view is a 12″x 9″ oil on canvas board unsigned and undated but I know it is my mother’s work, M.E. Snelgrove. I titled it First Snow because sometimes late in the fall, when some of the leaves are still in full colour and have yet to fall, the first snow comes. The river has yet to freeze and the colours of the leaves are reflected in it. In northern Ontario, Canada, where I spent many years the snow would come in November and not leave until April. The winters were long and very cold. People were forced to shovel their roofs to keep them from collapsing.
Below is a 16″ x 12″ oil on canvas board painted in 1976 by me, L. Martel. There is a great French Canadian musician who wrote the song “Mon Pay” (“My Country” in French). His lyrics stuck in my mind when I painted this picture. “Mon pays, ce n’est pas un pays, c’est l’hiver” (My country isn’t a country it is the winter). In Canada our winters can be long, cold and hard to endure. But in that cold our resolve is tempered like steel is with heat.
