My walk to-day was fraught with so many delightful sensations and sights that I am at a loss to know how to express them so that they will convey the almost yearning feeling of spring that possessed me when I experienced them. The weather was in every way suggestive of deep feeling and deep imaginings - clear deep blue sky, warm sun, with just enough chill in the air to give it a certain early Spring tang that stirred one peculiarly.
Beyond E. Aurora on Hill above Olean Rd, painting – the first trip painting outdoors since last August...
The sky a heavy oppressive yellow. Smoke a heavy dull blue pours upward with difficulty into the thick air, and collects in a long flat cloud at a certain height – forming a curtain over the dirty black-windowed houses and bluish white ice.
All day on the “Fading Winter Sun” (1917 36 x 48).
Snow patches under moonlight glow like phosphorous –
At our feet the film of snow shines clear, there are a few weeds; as the field recedes, the bushes grow denser until at the top of a swell it is black
The first real “maple-sap” day – a light freeze in the night – the sky a deep blue, a tang to the air. It is wonderfully thrilling – and chafe at my debility due to the cold.
A tough & spirited jury session. Divided pretty clearly into Right (Bouché & Hopper) & Left (Poor & Rattner) with myself in the center – My sympathies inclined to the Right but I tried to harmonize the opposing views….Roberts again expressed the hope I would go to Rome as artist in residence – when I asked him what I needed to do he said “Just write me that you want to go – that’s all there is to it.”
…[February 18, 1952]: Thoughts & discussing about going to Rome. Neither of us really want to go, but wonder if we are silly not to.
To early service. P.M. – Lying down – the NBC concert – Beethoven 3rd Symph. + V. [Vaughan] Williams two piano concerto – rugged noble music...
Two slightly cold days. An easy wind and ceaseless sweep-away of cold blue clouds. The ground does not freeze, except at night a filmy crust. Today at times it snowed - a peculiar ghostly, snow as if we imagined it.