Wild and Wonderful Winter Art

// December 19th, 2011 // b-inspired, b-scene, featured // Katherine Sola

Baby, it’s cold outside. For centuries, the harsh beauty of wintry weather has inspired artists. Here are our favourite winter artworks.

Avalanche in the Grisons Here, Turner shows us the awesome power of winter. Tonnes of snow cascade down the mountain, ripping up trees and smashing boulders. The pine trees give us some idea of the scale of the avalanche. Turner is well known for his depictions of the sublime, extreme forces of nature, which I explained earlier. The snow is moving at such a steep angle that it looks as if it’s coming directly out of the sky, about to crush the viewer. A stimulating antidote to twee winter scenes.

Piss Flowers When it snowed, Helen Chadwick didn’t roll snowballs or build snowmen. She made sculptures. Chadwick urinated into deep snow and made casts of the melted spaces. It’s a rather disgusting methodology, immediately bodily. But the resulting forms are abstract and beautiful, like alien fungi or underwater growths. Even if you don’t how they were made they’re recognizably organic. A great example of how art can make the familiar strange.

Blotter I’ve been a fan of Peter Doig ever since his 2008 exhibition at the Tate Modern. Doig is fascinated by reflections in water and ice. This painting shows a typical Canadian winter scene. See more here. But Doig puts his own unsettling twist on the composition. Off-kilter horizontal lines dominate the composition, with clashing patterns in between. There’s no easy place for the eye to ‘rest.’ The horizon is also unusually low, forcing our attention on the lake. Although the boy appears to be standing on the lake, ripples run out underneath him. Is the ice solid? Is the boy about to fall through, or could he be walking on water? Doig’s paintings toe the line between fantasy and realism, so anything is possible.

Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch Clearly, Rev. Walker takes skating very seriously. No slipping or flailing for him. He skims along in perfect balance, arms folded in, looking off into the distance. The indistinct wilderness in the background emphasizes the precision of his clothes and movement. Henry Raeburn transforms the fun and comical act of skating into a controlled meditative exercise. Guardian critic Jonathan Jones wrote that this reverend represents the Scottish Enlightenment, the triumph of Protestant reason over Catholic superstition.

Lavacourt Under Snow What colour is snow? You’d probably say white. But in this painting, Monet shows us how colourful snow can be. Amazingly, there’s no pure black or white here. Instead, Monet uses blues and pinks and greens to pull out the different tones and shapes of a country snowscape. His impression of the frozen Seine, the bleak sky and shuttered cottages make the viewer feel cold over a hundred years later.

Do you need seasonally-inspired artwork? You can have a piece before springtime when you Brief the Exchange.