The Noble Train of Artillery 1946

Tom Lovell has painted a scene here, "The Noble Train of Artillery", with what looks like oil on canvas, though I don't know when. You look at this scene and can imagine the difficulty he had, how the painting may have emerged, shifting, changing, coming into being through intuition. The scene depicts farmers and soldiers struggling through the snow hauling canons. You see the white snow. You see the dark brown oxen and feel the chill, the weight of the canons, the heft of the animals. What might he have been thinking about when he made this? I imagine the physical act of painting must have been hard. There is a lot of detail here. Look at the strain on the faces, the details of the soldiers uniforms, the way the snow is rendered. It's all so carefully planned. Painters are in a conversation with one another across time. They respond to and are inspired by other artists. You don't know why Lovell made this, but it embraces ambiguity. It allows for multiple interpretations over fixed readings. What does it mean to you?