Four Seasons, Winter

Frosty blues and warm browns spill across this canvas like ice cracking over quiet water. Paul Jenkins painted it in 1972 as part of his "Four Seasons" series, and this one stands for winter. Rather than showing us snowdrifts or frozen trees, he chased the feeling of the season through color alone. His method was unusual: he poured thin, watery paint straight onto the surface and steered it with tools like an ivory knife, letting gravity pull the pigment where it wanted to go. Sharp dark lines cut across the composition like bare branches or the edges of thin ice, while the pale washes pool and drift toward the bottom.

An American painter who found his footing in the 1950s and 1960s, Jenkins was often grouped with the Abstract Expressionists and the Color Field artists. He believed colors could hold emotion and even something close to spiritual meaning, which is why he titled so many works with the word "Phenomena," as if each was a small event unfolding in nature. This winter piece leaves plenty of room for your own imagination, since the shapes never settle into anything you can name. It works best not as a picture of the cold but as a way to sense its stillness.