Frozen Watercolors

Below is a series of thumbnail images of some of the frozen watercolor paintings by Paul R. Panton. Click on any of these images to enter the larger gallery view which also provides further details of the paintings. (NB all prices displayed in the gallery are in Canadian Dollars).

I stopped to paint just off the shoulder on the old Trans Canada Highway a mile or so east of Melbourne in the Carberry Sandhills. Seems to me it was October 1974. It was cold—minus two or three degrees—, but I left the car door open and kept the car running as well as the gas heater in my 1969 Volkswagen Bug. And I was sheltered from the wind because I had set up my camp stool close to the car. I brushed in a bit of sky and foreground and as I began to work into the pigment with pencil some delicate feathery patterns began to appear as if by magic in the still wet, painted areas. I was amazed at the effect! It was incredibly thrilling to be seeing the ice crystals growing there before my very eyes! This was the first frozen watercolor. After that it took some experimenting to discover just what weather conditions were necessary to encourage the frost effects, and frozen watercolors were not a common part of my output in the mid-seventies though some did begin to appear seasonally from that time on.