If on a Winter’s Night: A Reflection on Light, Stillness and Distance
My pastel painting If on a Winter’s Night began simply with the image of a house in the snow. I wanted to paint something that you might see on a Christmas Card. However, as I worked, something else crept in. The scene started to feel less straightforward, both peaceful and a little uneasy. I realised as I moved to the foreground, the real subject wasn’t the house at all, but the perspective.
The house is seen through a gap in the trees, as though from someone’s hidden vantage point. To me, this is what gives it its tension. We are close enough to feel drawn toward the warmth of the window light, yet held back by the darkness of the foreground. The eye is invited, but we cannot follow.
Looking In
I kept wondering what kind of gaze this is. Are we friendly observers, pausing to admire the glow of home on a cold night? Or are we intruding, watching something private from the safety of the woods? That ambiguity became the heart of the painting.
The light in the windows might mean comfort, or it might mark distance. It depends how you see it. I wanted that uncertainty to remain unresolved, so that each viewer feels a quiet unease beneath the calm surface.
Between Dusk and Dawn
The time of day is equally uncertain. The sky could belong to dawn or to evening; I layered pink and blue tones carefully so it never quite commits to either. That in-between light mirrors the perspective itself, everything held between two states, between invitation and restraint, approach and retreat.
The Work of Pastel
Pastel is an intimate medium for this kind of image because it records hesitation. It rewards softness but punishes excess. To keep the sense of distance, I had to let the paper breathe, not overblend, not force the light. The sky was built slowly, with fingertip blending and a fine balance of warm and cool hues. The snowfield, by contrast, needed texture, so I dragged broken strokes over the tooth of the paper to catch flickers of colour beneath the white.
The trees at the edges were scumbled in thin, cool tones to frame the view without closing it off. They act like curtains that both reveal and conceal.
The Story That Never Arrived
At one point I imagined adding two children running toward the house, one having dropped a glove in the snow. That small human trace would have tilted the story further: are they running home, or running away? In the end, I left them out. The picture didn’t need them. Their absence keeps the tension alive. Something has either just happened, or is about to.
The Perspective as Meaning
More than anything, I see If on a Winter’s Night as a painting about perspective, not just visual, but emotional. It is about being near warmth but not inside it, seeing beauty but not touching it. That distance creates both safety and threat depending on where we stand.
Closing Thoughts
I loved painting this piece. It was technically demanding, particularly as I had no reference photo. But it was also emotionally quiet, and pastel proved the perfect medium for that balance. What began as a winter landscape became something more, a study in the way perspective shapes feeling, and how the act of looking can be as powerful as what we see.