We eat crackers and cheese in our car and we look at the city
oil on panel, 11 × 14.5 in, 2023

Painted on a handmade panel (poplar cradle; baltic birch surface) with stretched muslin and chalk gesso grounds.

When it’s snowing, the cold feels less cold and the sky gets less dark. The light nighttime sky makes intuitive sense—ambient light bounces off millions of white surfaces and keeps everything glowing, a phenomenon called albedo. But I don’t even have a guess for why snow makes a cold night feel warmer.

Between my comfortable understanding of light winter nights and the utter mystery of relatively warm snowfalls sits a feeling I am sure of but can’t explain: being in love feels like sitting quietly above our hometown and watching distant headlights fly down the freeway. If we get too cold, we can turn on the car for a minute.