How To Re-Think Winter

Around 70 of these intensely atmospheric, expressionist works by artists from Scandinavia, Finland and Canada are being showcased in a new exhibition, Northern Lights, a cross-Atlantic collaboration that debuts at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland, before travelling to New York’s Buffalo AKG Art Museum in August.

I am always so astounded when my “summer” friends make it back to the mountain in late Spring, who all think I am some kind of super hero because I toughed it out through the winter.

But winter is one of my favorite seasons. It gives me time to retreat in a world that steadily marches on through all 4 seasons. Winter, and it’s beautiful snowy days allows me to reflect and ponder. I get a break from the ordinary hustle and bustle and I find it a comforting time of year.

When colors and shadows are this vivid it allows me to see parts of nature, as well as, parts of myself, that would otherwise go unnoticed. There becomes a depth to my senses that is invisible other times of the year. It is a type of character that woos me into its embrace.

The way the snow wraps its winter cloak around the rock formations and tree limbs. The way my patio furniture takes on new contemporary designs when blanketed in white. The world becomes an expression of abstraction.

And I love the quiet. There is something, scientific about why, after a snowfall, it shutters the noise in the world and its solitude becomes peaceful and addictive.

But I also love the way the sky sparkles in a blue only seen on a bluebird, or the depth of the ocean. A blue so powerful, no filter is needed. The ground is swallowed up by a vast marshmallow sea into the far distant horizon. The peaks glisten and sparkle and I feel content in a way that Spring and Summer cannot duplicate.