How white is white? Nobody really knows, though it is an optical conundrum that has obsessed artists, opticians, and physicists for ages.

Every house-painter knows that you have to prime exposed areas of a house before they’re painted. Thus sealed, the areas acquire an opacity that is nearly absolute. When he sees the final layer go on, the painter sometimes experiences a minor epiphany. Means and result are perfectly aligned. Good things are still possible.

White as symbol is fraught with difficulty. White signifies purity, even if purity is not exactly possible; nor might it even be worth striving for. Anybody who has ever owned a white house is fully aware of the fact that white houses get the dirtiest, just as snow does. There is nothing lovelier than a fresh snow-fall, as it clings to errant branches and creates fairy-dust patterns when a breeze caresses it. But nothing is more brutally ugly after it mingles with our human stains as well as machine-made leaks and dribbles that can dissolve its purity in a snap.

However, nothing is more intriguing to analyze than a white wall, whether punctuated with clapboard or interrupted with foliage. Reflected light bounces onto it from grass or clay; sunlight scorches or mellows it; shadows fling patterns that widen and attenuate according to the angle from which light spews them out.

Yet when you attempt to “paint white,” you are painting something the ordinary person might consider uncomplicated. It’s just white; what’s the big deal? I must beg to differ. Andrew Wyeth said white reminded him more of death than any other color. (Supporting metaphors like winding sheets and simon-pure gravestones lend credence to this feeling.) Yet I would imagine that Wyeth was thinking along more personal lines. Peter Poskas is among the world’s most captivating interpreters of whitewashed houses - in which his native Connecticut is still abundant. Yet Syrcause, where I lived for a time – and painted this picture – is also a white-painted city. And a snowy one too. Snow may well define the city’s genial attitude to disaster, as well as its exceptional durability. Summers are hot there, but they are no longer than they need to be. Winter is the season that goes on and on, as August – which, in the South, is an entire season - tends to in Tennessee. And while I painted this picture in the summer, it seems an almost wintry thing to me. Wintry with respect to its scary luminosity. Also as regards its fiercesome brightness. When I look at the picture, I feel like I’m staring into the very heart of a white-out, which is a dreary rite of passage in Syracuse, New York.