memory of snow and dusk

10x6 pastel on somerset

This is a memory of last night's sunset sky, set inside a second memory of snow. I couldn't sleep so I  slipped into the studio late last night.  Ahhhhhh. It felt so good.  I just sat down on the floor with my heilman box and dreamed this vision. 
Now more from A History of American Tonalism 1880-1920 about the differences between Impressionism and Tonalism (regarding memory, continued from yesterday)-
Both begin with the data of place and moment- the quasi-scientific recording of light in the outdoors-but the Tonalist tended to record his vision through memory, or memory notes, for later use in the indoors. In the studio, as the memory or afterimage held in the mind's eye was put down on the canvas, the art object itself began to make its own demands;thus an internal dynamic took over and the artist had to ultimately satisfy the dictates of the art object. The original inspiration, the impulse to capture form, color, and tone,took second place to the formal values required by the work of art.at least in the exacting determination of the artist............

It was, too, the kind of art that lives and breathes, that emerges from memory, imagination, and association: the felt life that decades later mark Rothko was essential to his disembodied art.

9x9  watercolor dusk