Thomas Merton doesn't have anything to do directly with snowy landscapes, except for the following. In a book that I am reading, Lost in Wonder by Esther de Waal, she writes, "What is peculiarly distinctive about Owen Merton's canvases, exhibited in London galleries in the 1930s to the acclaim of the critics, is how uncrowded they are. He leaves empty space so that it is as though he invites the viewer in to share his experience."
In The Seven Storey Mountain, Merton wrote about his father: "My father painted like Cezanne and understood the southern French landscape the way Cezanne did. His vision of the world was sane, full of balance, full of veneration for structure, for the relations of masses and for all the circumstances that impress an individual identity on each created thing. His vision was religious and clean, and therefore his paintings were without decoration or superfluous comment, since a religious man respects the power of God's creation to bear witness for itself. My father was a very good artist."
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