On the left you see January: The Return of The Hunters (1565) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, a Renaissance painter from the Netherlands best known for his landscapes populated by peasant scenes. He is often credited as being the first Western artist to paint landscapes for their own sake rather than as a backdrop for something else.

Three men in brown with tall poles and a pack of hounds at heel descend a hill. Snow drifts and birds lead them home to their cold and silent town. Surrounding them are depictions of winter activities: burning straw, ice skating, workmen with ladders possibly clearing snow. It may be early or late in the day, but we can still relate to the ambiguity an overcast winter sky often brings when attempting to sense what time it is.

In Germany, as well as England, landscape was the finest achievement of Romantic painting. Caspar David Friedrich (1774—1840), the most important German Romantic artist, painted The Polar Sea in 1824 after a dangerous moment in William Parry's Arctic expedition of 1819—20. Anthony Janson describes the scene below in his seminal History of Art as, "piled-up slabs of ice as a kind of megalithic monument to human defeat built by nature herself." Surely after the winter we've had in Northeast Kansas, with the ice storm and subsequent blizzard which blew snow drifts up past the middle of my front door, we can relate to the feeling of helplessness and isolation when man is overpowered by natural forces.

Which brings us to Andy Goldsworthy (b. 1956), a British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist, who uses natural and found objects to create both temporary and permanent sculptures which draw out the character of an environment. The materials used in Goldsworthy's art often include flowers, icicles, leaves, mud, pinecones, snow, twigs and thorns. He often uses only his bare hands, teeth and found tools to prepare and arrange the materials. Below on the left is Snow Drift and on the right, Shadow Stone. Because much of Goldsworthy's work is temporary and subject to temperature and changing weather conditions, photography is an integral part of documenting the existance of his work.One thing that attracts me to Goldsworthy is how he manages to leave evidence of a human presence within the landscape, but man's footprint is non-invasive, most often temporary and almost always so subtle it risks going unnoticed. Shadow Stone, which the artist installed within England's Yorkshire Sculpture Park, allowed visitors to lie down just long enough for the falling snow to capture their body's outline. How many times this winter have we left our human tracks in the snow, paths through drifts, snow angels and men?

An old bicycle near my apartment, after removal by the trash guys, left a perfect outline of its shape in the snow for just a few hours this morning. Which reminds me I need to publish this article before the weather changes again and we're no longer thinking of snow.

For your reading...

Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (Moses Collection 745.67 TRE)
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (759.9493 BRU)
Caspar David Friedrich (759.3 SCH)
Wall: at Storm King (731.463 GOL)

...and viewing pleasure:

Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy/Working with time (DVD—730.92 RIV)