Winter Moon
Over Red Bird
in Aspen Forest

About the Painting

Three tall trunks rise through the full height of the painting, and their white bark is built from layers of cream, gold, violet and gray that give each trunk its round shape. Bare branches reach across the sky with a line of snow along their upper edges.

The moon hangs at the upper left, a pale gold disc set in a sky that moves from blue to rose to lavender. In the middle distance, smaller aspens stand in a row against dark green pines, and the red bird perches on a branch at the center of the sheet, the brightest color in the painting. The ground rolls in soft drifts of violet, lavender and cream, with a path of darker color winding between the trees.

Aspens are known by their smooth white bark marked with dark scars, and Donna’s trunks carry those marks in violet and gray. A stand of quaking aspen grows as one clone, its trunks connected by a common root system.

Donna lets the snow drift across the painting as tiny flecks of white, scattered over the sky, the trunks and the pines. The blending in the sky, where one color dissolves into the next, sets off the crisp edges of the trunks in the foreground. A few warm leaves still cling to the far branches in touches of rust and orange. The trunks are the lightest shapes in the painting, and their pale columns set a steady rhythm across the sheet, like the pillars of a quiet hall.

The painting belongs to The Winter Room, where it hangs with three other winter scenes. Donna signs her name at the lower right, in the lavender snow. In the viewer, the bird rewards a close look: a few strokes of red and a dark eye are enough to make it feel alive.