The North Wind Has a Voice

The changing sound of the seasons.

George Morland, A White Horse Sheltering from a Storm, c1790.

I was sitting on the bench by the sheltered, south-facing tack room on a sunny but cold November day, listening to the sound of the North Wind. It struck me how different it sounded from the chattering South-Westerlies of earlier in the year.

Giving character to this boreal weather isn’t new—he features in many myths and traditions. Of course, I know the sounds are shaped more by what the wind encounters, bare trees, the back of the stables and lack of crops, than by the air itself. Still, it was fun to let my mind wander for a moment.

I thought of Wuthering Heights, Hardy’s remote Wessex roads, and Njord, the Norse god of wind and sea. I found some artwork inspired by the wind.

How would you creatively represent the wind?

Benjamin Miller, The North Wind, 1928..

John William Waterhouse, The North Wind, 1903.

Here is an opportunity to feature one of my very favourite pieces, an artist very familiar to any of my watercolour students, I am a big fan of Andrew Wyeth.

Andrew Wyeth, Wind from the Sea, 1956.

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