Although snow has been the subject or part of the subject of many of my paintings, my feelings about it are as ambivalent as ever. While grumbling about my part of Wisconsin being crushed underneath more than a foot of compacted snow and ice with little prospect of melting in the near future, I came across a wonderful archive of snowflake photos. Wilson Bentley devised a method of photographing individual snow crystals decades before the digital era, using a bellows camera, a microscope and a background of black velvet. These photos are amazingly intricate and compelling.
Appreciating the mandala-like quality of Bentley's crystal photos helps to keep me on the more positive side of that paradox-where I can take a fresh look at the prettier side of snow.
