Winter Landscapes > In recognition of the season, browse through these landscape paintings and find yourself in a moment of joy.
In recognition of the holiday season and winter itself, take a moment to browse through these landscape paintings by Gregory Packard.
“Perhaps the deepest root in my reasons for painting is joy,” says Packard. Maybe, like Packard himself, you’ll find yourself in a moment of joy.
On Painting, and Joy: Winter Landscapes
By Gregory Packard
www.gregorypackard.com
If I were a branch on that tree, it would be my desire to create little blossoms of color that you can bring into your life and home, which daily enable you the opportunity to experience and be reminded to look for joy.
Joy is unique among the good things in living. It is one of the differentiating qualities in life if you allow yourself to recognize it. Different from a state of being such as happiness, which often requires real work or some prerequisite of your doing, joy is unpredictable and unburdened.
Needing only your recognition, joy is a gift offered up in the smallest and largest moments of our daily lives.
Remarkably, joy can be experienced on our saddest, rainiest, darkest day if we are just willing to look for it. Like a sunburst, these moments are not meant to be permanent. As life itself, joy is fleeting. It is when a caterpillar first opens her wings, when the golden sun breaks through the stormy clouds, or when the sheer power of the storm excites you to the core.
It is when the leaves of autumn shimmer in the steep angle of afternoon light, when “nature’s first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold,” or, when you recognize something nature brings forth that reminds you of a recently passed loved one as if it was that loved one embracing you.
These are moments that are entirely gifted to us — and if we give ourselves permission to experience them — these are moments of joy.
These are moments I attempt to cultivate in my paintings. I believe in the intrinsic value of this work. In large part I have dedicated my life to it, and it is my sincere hope that this work inspires you as nature herself does me.
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Packard’s work is pretty impressive! Especially liked “A Quiet Still Place.”