Snowy Fields

by Elizabeth Adams

A series of charcoal landscape drawings of the artist's childhood home, done in the winter following her father's death, lead to a reflection on identity, place, grief, and the artistic process. The book also includes a perceptive essay by Michael Szpakowski on Adams' work.

This book is a limited edition available by ordering directly from Phoenicia Publishing.

96 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2023

About the author

Elizabeth (Beth) Adams is a writer, artist, publisher, and editor. She is the founder of Phoenicia Publishing, an independent press, and the former co-managing editor of qarrtsiluni online literary magazine. Her latest book, Snowy Fields, pairs her charcoal landscape drawings with her writing about place, loss, and change. Losing Touch by Magda Kapa (Phoenicia, 2021), Dave Bonta's Ice Mountain: An Elegy (Phoenicia, 2017; and Annunciation (Phoenicia, 2015) are all books which she edited, designed, and illustrated. She is the author of Going to Heaven, (Soft Skull Press, Brooklyn, 2006) the story of Bishop Gene Robinson and the debate over ordinations of gays and lesbians; numerous essays on religion and spirtuality; and the editor and designer of numerous books. She has been writing a blog, The Cassandra Pages, since March, 2003. Beth grew up in the rural northeastern U.S., has a degree in classics from Cornell, lived in Vermont for thirty years, and currently resides in Montreal with her husband, photographer Jonathan Sa'adah. She is a member of PEN Canada and the Association of English Language Publishers of Quebec.

Reviews

[Janet Eshenroder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don’t make my mistake of thinking this is simply a lovely little book of sketches and essays about snowy winter fields.

The book begins with the words of Tomas Tranströmer about getting away from the city to walk through nature, perhaps to find a single object, a precious stone that touches a truth hidden inside us, capable of changing everything. Oh, yes. I relate to that. Nature brings me back to myself, connects me with some deeper reality.

Next came drawings, 20 beautiful sketches in charcoal which reminded me of being a child sitting in long car rides across state to visit relatives (back in the days before freeways, if you can imagine such a time). I would gaze out the windows at farmland, at forests and meadows, and I would snap mental photos of their beauty, holding in my memory and in my heart, until the next scene appeared.

I marveled at the author’s charcoal sketches, each black and white creation a peaceful and beautiful scene. Each showing depth and movement which pulled the eye from the vantage point out into the distance, with soft lines or gentle curves.

It was when the essays began that I realized how naïve I had been. The author’s gift with words washed over my preconceived expectations. Each photo had its own story in old memories. Each was related to dealing with letting go not only of the grief of losing loved ones, but of losing parts of our lives that now could only be visited and experienced in memory. Each photo pushed her creative nature to search for new ways to present images. This was her interior journey about reaching gently backward through grief and healing, finding precious stones, and searching within for new ways to express the deeper truths she will carry forward.

Her gentle honesty and openness carried me along, not only with her internal journey, but with what also lay within my past. The grief and healing process cut deep. It did not slice across my heart or rip open old wounds. It did not break down barriers one puts up around losses to protect from memories of suffering and sadness. It was more like the sun shining and a warm wind blowing across the frozen landscape, melting the cold and bringing out the hidden jewels that made the memory special in the past and make it worth cherishing

Still, I thought the author had made a mistake. The essays should have come first, to warn that each sketch carried a history that meant something. Then, I would have enjoyed the sketches from a different viewpoint.

I went back to the beginning. The warning had been there in Tomas Tranströmer’s words. Now, I looked at the sketches. Instead of admiring them, remembering similar scenes from my own past, I found myself searching the shadows, studying the magic of the image itself.

Is this not how we tend to see reality? Sometimes we barely notice our surroundings or consider the past. When we do look, we skim over the surface image. We wrap our reality in words to create comfortable feelings. How often do we look between the comfortable and painful memories to find the hidden stones that have always been part of the landscape?

I turned from the book with an open heart better able to appreciate the details of the past that made memories special. That provided different lessons to be carried forward.

This book is 76 pages long. I mark it as one of the few books to open my awareness so gently and profoundly. As such, I put it above hundreds of other books that I can say opened my eyes to some new aspect of reality within myself or within the world outside.