White Winters - How Artists Portray the Coldest Season

"Branch in the Snow" Andrew Wyeth

"Winter 1899" Edvard Munch

"Snow Scene at Argenteuil" Claude Monet

"Winter Landscape" Wassily Kandinsky

Snow--I have seen a lot of it in my day, from my years as a child in New Jersey, to the tumultuous tons of snow that landed in upstate New York in the winter (and even in May!) during my college years and the early part of my career.  Living in Raleigh brought ice but an occasional whopper of a blizzard.  No one would drive in snow in the Triangle area if they grew up in the South -- no one knew how. And, of course, the snow was for the most part, white.

But white snow is not so inspiring to many an artist.  We love color, texture and there is more than one way to add color to the fluffy white stuff as you can see by some of these classic winter paintings by the masters that I have shared above.

Below are my remembrances of cold days in upstate New York.  They are both small fleeting pieces of work in watercolor - perhaps because I was always ready to leave the crisp frigidity of Winter for warmer places.

"Winter Sunset"
Watercolor by Krys Pettit

"Early Winter Afternoon -Tioga County New York
Watercolor by Krys Pettit