My brother-in-law, Jack Sandberg, photographs this mill throughout the year. He has a unique opportunity to see it at all seasons because he is on the board which governs it. He thought I would like to paint this photo and he was right!

There were many challenges in painting it. The forest on the right was very dense in the photograph. I had to create a sense of a forest without painting every twig. I also enjoy seeing landscape through trees, so invented some trees on the other side of the hill. Snow is not white in nature, but takes on the colors of everything around it. The swans on the right were also very beautiful and interesting, but if I emphasized them, the focus would split away from the mill. I de-emphasized them by keeping the rendering general and painterly. By the way, the water coming over the dam really was green like that! Finally, the tiny thin lines of snow on the bridge were so intense that they had to be rendered carefully. I enjoyed how the bright sky overhead lit the roof with dazzling white. I don’t have a meaning to this image other than I like to live in it by contemplating each part, kind of like viewing a Chinese scroll painting.