Acrylic and pastel on canvas

11” x 14”

2019

Everyone does not adore winter like me, some flat-out hate it, and some seem to adopt an optimistic, even romanticized, idea that winter isn’t the worst, because it’s simply the “waiting.” The sentiment is that if we just find enough patience to wait, we will be overwhelmed with the goodness that is coming in spring. But even more beautiful than that to me is that winter is not limited to just the period of nothingness before something exciting…winter is the goodness before spring.

The brilliant colors of summer may fade, but different colors glow in their place, some more subtlety than others, but they are there, simply waiting to be adored. The go, go, go of summer is replaced by the calm and quiet of gently falling snow, crackling fireplaces, and chilly air refreshing our lungs.

So instead of, “get ready, get set, tolerate it until the season you like more comes along,” or simply getting through it, what if we actually embraced the season that feels harder to see beauty in? What if, instead of constantly looking ahead in anticipation of the easier-to-love sunshine, we sat in the moment and searched for the beauty and warmth and meaning of right now?