The trees outside my window are gray skeletons this time of year—bare and spindly in the brown grasses of unraked yards. They cast intricate shadows in patches of sunlight on the wall along my staircase. But for the past few weeks, the sun hasn’t risen high enough to move the light beyond the third step.
In a little over a week our planet will tilt on its axis away from our star as far as it will go. For those in the Northern Hemisphere, December 21st is the longest night of the year and the beginning of the winter season. On the shortest of all days we are granted a few mere hours of sun that stays low in the sky, casting light that is brief but beautiful.
Adam Gopnik wrote for The New Yorker, “In the past two hundred years we have turned winter from something to survive to something to survey, from a thing to be afraid of to a thing to be aware of.” The bare branches on the trees are a sign of dormancy, not death. I like to think of winter as a dormant time in my creative practice. As part of the natural life cycle, nothing flowers fully at all times, and that is as true for artists as it is for hydrangeas. In a world where we are relentlessly connected and bombarded with other people’s news and lives, the pressures to do more—make more, exhibit more, win more, publish more—can be overwhelming. This winter, I will take my cues from nature and embrace an artistically dormant period.
I will still go to work, spend time with my friends, and publish Don’t Take Pictures, but as I draft my resolutions for the new year I am not aiming for more accomplishments but for more inspiration—to read more books, see more movies, and generally spend more time out in the world and less time in the studio and in front of the screen. Creative projects have their own natural cycle and the season dictates not one’s amount of creativity but their amount of creative time. This period of dormancy in the quiet, dark season, makes space to allow something beautiful to blossom in the spring. The longest night is almost here and soon the world will grow a little brighter for a little longer every day.
Kat Kiernan is a photographer, curator, and the Editor-in-Chief of Don’t Take Pictures.
