At an antiques show this past summer, I came across a vivid seascape painting amid the rows of booths jumbled with aged treasures. The oils glowed as they streaked across the canvas bringing life to a fishing boat resting on the water beside a solitary tree and a shoreline blanketed in grasses.  Ocean waves provided a backdrop until the horizon melted into the warmly colored sky.  Its brightness struck me and I found that I couldn’t stop looking at it.

Nearly every other ocean painting that I have ever seen depicting fishing boats or the sea had been much darker with gray skies, weather beaten wooden structures, and blue gray, sometimes stormy waters. But this painting was bright and alive.  The artist had seen and drawn out the life and beauty in the scene.  Where other artists had seen a dull gray ocean view, he had seen light and vibrant color.

I have found that it is the same with winter. After many months of browned grass, leafless gray trees and frigid white snow, the season loses its charm and quickly becomes ugly.  But there is still beauty in the snow draping the trees after a flurry, light in the shortened days as the moon and stars become clearer and brighter with the fallen temperatures, and color in the orange yellow sunsets, rosy tips of tree branches and diamond rainbows reflected in snow crystals.  Winter has a beauty all its own that is always present.  I need only to open my eyes to its beauty and I too will see in color.