The Color of Snow
Make that plural--the "colors" of snow
If the interior of your house has white walls, you’ve probably noticed something curious: most of the time, they aren’t really white at all. Instead, they pick up the color of any light that happens to fall on them. In my studio, for example, the walls are white, yet as I type this well before dawn, an incandescent floor lamp turns them a warm yellow, while a desk lamp casts a cooler, bluish glow behind my computer. Later, when sunlight slips through the window and reflects off the mostly red carpet beneath my easel, the wall will take on a soft pink. And if I walk through that light wearing my blue fleece jacket, a brief, intense blue will flash across it.
I like to think of white as the “chameleon color”—it picks up the color of whatever’s around it. I try to remember this whenever I’m out painting snow. Although my brain likes to believe that snow is white, it never is.
