It’s spring outside, and for some of us that doesn’t mean much more than leaving coats in the closet and maybe starting to think about ice cream and summer fruits. But the changing of the seasons is a big, important and dramatic event in the natural world – and it can bring new interest and meaning to your work and perhaps even your life if you start paying attention to it.

For some artists, this is obvious; landscape artists are naturally sensitive to the seasons and the conditions of the world because they have a direct impact on the scenes they paint and the images that are available to them. Even there, though, there may be something to learn. Often artists simply go out in search of a place [...]