Evening Fencerow

"Evening Fencerow" (oil on birch panel 8 x 10 in.)

26 December 2025 finds me stopped on the road alongside a tangled fencerow, a few kilometres northeast of our home in Bishops Mills. Evening light on a snowy field glows warmly through an energetic screen of Buckthorn bushes where horizontal stems of Virginia Creeper follow the pagewire. This is where an old fencepost marks the end of the old rail fence, here mostly fallen down and snow-covered. The snow in the ditch beside me is rumpled up and poked through with spiky winter stems and tufts of dead grass. 

I was late getting out to do my traditional "birthday painting" this year, as we'd had an afternoon visitor. Prowling the country roads near home, desperate to find a suitable scene, I found it difficult to decide between this one and a simpler vies of snowy fields angled across by more distant hedgerows.  I decided to risk the more exciting challenge of the near fencerow. 

I took a few reference photos and starting painting just as dusk was beginning to fall under heavy overcast  at 4:00 pm. I hurried to get the board scrubbed over with an irregular mixture of darkened red ochre. I was smearing the main shapes of snow and dark bushes into it and finally had to stop when it grew so dark that I could hardly discern the colours. I turned the dome light on to pack up, and drove home to be surprised by the arrival of another friend, with roast chicken and a birthday cake... so the finishing of my  painting in studio was delayed for a couple of days.  

This painting was purchased on 5 January, 2026, even before I managed to post it here - this encourages me to get out to do more winter en plein air.

Stay tuned,

Aleta

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