An Ode to Winter
An Ode to Winter
When that first winter breeze blows through the trees you can feel the magic in the air. Chilly weather has an inimitable way of bringing people together: we yearn for warmth, love, and connection, and the holidays deliver with big family meals, gifts of gratitude, and a purposeful slowing down of time to enjoy it all.
Whether or not you’re surrounded by snow-capped mountains and crackling bonfires, winter has something whimsical to offer no matter where you are. To welcome the season, we’re delighting in a curation of art, design, film and poetry that explores this holiday feeling:
LEFT Something about the cold kindles a creative fire within artists grappling with its intensity. William Kurelek's Wintertime North of Winnipeg (1962) is one of many paintings inspired by his years growing up on a farm near Stonewall in the 1930s. | Courtesy: sothebys.com
RIGHT Postman of the Wilderness (1921) by Arthur Heming who — having been diagnosed with colour blindness as a child — worked for most of his life in a distinctive palette of black, yellow, and white.
This is a good world.
Only a few go mad.
Who made the sky knows of our love.
LEFT Halldor Arnav Ulfarsson & Pernille Louise Klausen's mushroom shaped igloo. Created at the Snow Show, Finland, 2004 | RIGHT Snow sculptures by Alain Bernegger
A Microscopic Time Lapse of Snow by Slava Ivanon to the tune of Aphex Twin
Sohrab Hura’s series Snow (2015 - ongoing) explores Kashmir where time flows from the first flakes through the coldest days of winter to the eventual thaw. He explores Kashmir’s duality as a spectacularly beautiful landscape and a place of conflict, contextualised by his initial blindness to the political reality as an outsider.
Sweet Winter, a short film directed by Mary Oldlife & Hugo Bravo with music by Yan Volsy
Darn-it, Himêya’s latest collection, offers sumptuous quilts with stitched detail in serene tones to keep you warm and calm through the cold nights ahead.
Winter (especially December) is a time we associate with the holidays, but there’s more to it than Christmas and Hanukkah. Numerous traditions are celebrated around the globe, honouring the change in seasons and the arrival of winter. We leave you with one such heartwarming ritual: Donghzi, a Chinese celebration of the Winter Solstice as an inspiration to welcome the new year.
It is related to the philosophy of Yin and Yang, where Yang symbolises the positive and Yin the negative. It fosters a wish that the positive will manifest stronger after the Solstice — longer daylight hours and an increase in positive energy flowing in.
Families celebrate by gathering together and enjoying a large meal which includes dumplings, in part because of the ancient legend that a sympathetic physician once fed the poor, homeless people of his town dumplings to keep their ears from getting frostbite.
