When Winter Reveals What Summer Hides

Winter in the West strips everything down to essentials. The aspens stand bare, the high country falls silent under fresh snow, and suddenly you can see for miles. This is the season that separates tourists from those who genuinely understand this landscape. The ones who know that winter doesn't diminish the West, it clarifies it.

Our galleries hold winter in forms that never melt: bronze and paint, aluminum and canvas, each piece capturing what David Yarrow calls "the worst weather conditions" that somehow produce the most compelling work.

Yarrow's Winter's Coming puts you face to face with a bull bison in heavy snowfall, so close you can almost feel the beast's breath condensing in frozen air. He shot this in early January 2020 in Yellowstone, alone in a storm just after sunrise, probably closer to that massive animal than park regulations technically allow. The snowflakes between the camera and the subject create exactly the mood he wanted: primeval, unforgiving, and honest. These creatures survived an ice age. They understand winter better than we ever will.

Star Liana York's Fabric of Life: Winter Warmth completes her four-season suite with a Navajo elder couple wrapped in the blanket she wove years ago. This is winter as a life stage, the golden years where hardship becomes story, and the weaving that once kept you warm becomes the thread connecting past to present. Star's bronze captures what winter really means in cultures that have survived here for millennia: endurance, connection, the art that shelters us.

Michel Bassompierre's Winter Shetland presents a bronze Shetland pony, compact and sturdy, the kind of animal bred for northern climates where survival depends on efficiency. His sculpture honors creatures designed for cold, their thick coats and low centers of gravity speaking to thousands of years of adaptation. Winter isn't romantic for a Shetland pony. It's simply life.

Roberto Ugalde gives us winter in three distinct visions. Winter Sunshine finds warmth even in the coldest months, those brilliant blue-sky days when snow reflects light until you're squinting against the glare. Winter on the Gorge captures the dramatic topography of the Southwest under snow, where red rock and white powder create stark contrasts. Winter Hills shows the softer side of the season, rounded forms under gentle drifts among crisp, white aspen.

Stephen Day's Late Winter, Winter Snowscape, and Winter Adobe document how this season transforms familiar architecture and terrain. His adobe painting particularly resonates: those earthen structures that hold heat in winter, their rounded forms collecting snow like sculpture, connecting contemporary New Mexico to ancient Pueblo wisdom about surviving high desert winters.

Mark Keathley's Winter Hunt brings a narrative of subsistence to the season. His oil painting captures the golden warmth of a morning sun as two indigenous men set out to hunt in a snow-covered wilderness, reminding us that winter isn't merely scenic. It's the proving ground where only the fit survive.

Maura Allen's She's a Winter Wonder works in acrylic and charcoal on wood panel, bringing contemporary energy to seasonal subject matter. At 30 by 20 inches, the piece demonstrates how winter inspires artists working in distinctly modern vocabularies, the season's palette and mood translated through current eyes.

Jeremy Bradshaw injects humor into the collection with Winter Blues, a bronze of birds that is both elegant and playful. His sculpture proves winter doesn't demand solemnity. Sometimes it requires acknowledging that, yes, those birds perched in freezing temperatures are probably having second thoughts about not migrating.

Jim Rey's First Snow is translated into a digital print on aluminum, offering collectors flexibility in scale while maintaining the crisp detail this medium delivers. Rey knows winter firsthand from decades outside Durango, and his work carries the authority of someone who's actually been out there when the first flakes fall.

These pieces share something beyond their subject matter. They all understand that winter in the West isn't just cold—it's clarifying. It burns away excess and reveals bone structure, both in landscape and in ourselves. The light gets sharper. The air gets thinner. Everything that survives here earns it.

Visit our galleries to stand before these works and feel winter without the cold. From Yellowstone bison to Navajo elders, from Shetland ponies to winter sunlight on adobe, these artists capture the season that defines who belongs here and who's just passing through.