The Alchemy of Winter: A Landscape in Transformation

Claude Monet’s  Mount Kolsaas (1895) captures the grandeur of the Norwegian landscape, where the mountain stands as both subject and symbol, its peaks wrapped in the delicate interplay of light and atmosphere. Monet’s original work is a study of winter’s quiet dominance, where snow softens the rugged forms of the earth, and the sky breathes a cold radiance over the land. It is not just a painting of a place, but a meditation on how nature is shaped by light, how mountains are not simply stone, but vessels of time and weather. 

This surreal symbolic reinterpretation transforms Mount Kolsaas into something beyond a landscape—it becomes a creation in motion, an artifact of both nature and unseen hands. The mountain remains, rising with familiar strength, yet now it is being dusted into existence by an ethereal force. A pair of hands appears above, holding a fine sieve through which snow falls, gently sifting onto the peak below, as if winter itself is being crafted by an unseen maker. 

The sky is no longer merely the backdrop of the scene; it is a canvas in its own right, where translucent shapes emerge and dissolve, where frozen structures seem to take form, suggesting that the very essence of winter is being sculpted in real-time. The clouds do not merely drift—they are stirred, their movements deliberate, as if responding to something beyond natural forces. The hands, delicate yet precise, act as unseen architects of the landscape, orchestrating the fall of snow, shaping the contours of the mountain with each sifted particle. 

The lower portion of the composition retains traces of Monet’s palette—cold blues, soft whites, the muted greens of distant trees—but they are infused with something more. The mountain itself pulses with transformation; on one side, it remains wrapped in winter’s embrace, while on the other, autumn still clings to its slopes, a memory resisting the inevitable turn of the seasons. This contrast suggests that the act of creation is not instantaneous but layered, that change is gradual, unfolding in phases rather than a single moment. 

As an artist, my intention with this piece was to explore the idea of landscapes as something both natural and constructed, both eternal and fleeting. Monet painted Mount Kolsaas as he saw it, as it existed within a moment of time. But what if that moment was still forming? What if mountains were not merely shaped by erosion and weather, but by unseen hands that weave the elements together with the care of an artist at work? 

The act of sifting snow becomes a metaphor for time itself—falling grain by grain, settling into place, covering what was before, yet never erasing it completely. The dual nature of the mountain, caught between seasons, speaks to the idea that change is never absolute, that winter is not an end but a continuation of something larger. The trees stand tall, half-buried, half-reaching, caught between dormancy and resilience, waiting for the cycle to begin again. 

This piece is not just about winter, nor is it simply about a mountain. It is about the unseen forces that shape the world, about the delicate balance between control and surrender. The snow falls, but it is placed with purpose. The landscape shifts, but it does not resist. The mountain remains, yet it is always becoming. 

Through this composition, I wanted to evoke the sensation of witnessing creation itself—not in a dramatic, earth-shattering way, but in the quiet, patient rhythm of time, in the gentle descent of snow, in the slow, deliberate making of a world that is constantly changing, yet always the same.