Fall Husks
October 2010
The low light of Fall has re-entered the painting space in Brook Hollow these days. Its low angle usually projects the balcony pickets onto the canvas, a texture I usually work to “not see” but it’s made me think this morning about shadows.
I finished a three part series which used some faded blooms of iris and lily today too. Its not that the partially-dried flowers represent anything; I enjoy them for their variable translucency, delicate inner structures, and colors that persist through the drying process. They also just “are.” I don’t form them or idealize them, they just “are” and this “are-ness” is something I enjoy in the painting/assemblages. It’s a factor I can’t control, and have to try to read in order to make the next action. Maybe it is a form of dialogue with something that’s past. The iris bloomed one day, was cut and sold then next and the curls of the petals, the delicate veining beneath the surface, all were part of its life and being able to concentrate on that and appreciate it helps me to try to keep it “alive” in some sense on the canvas. Odd isn’t it?
Fall is a time of harvest for many people, and I can see that the walking through the fields (does a John Deere combine “walk”?) discovering and collecting the grain, fruits and vegetables is maybe the origin of walking door to door collecting candy, a symbolic sharing of our “bounty.”
There won’t be many trick or treaters stopping in at Brook Hollow tonight I don’t think. The bowl of candy will have to find another home (wake up incentives for my lecture’s attendees!) and it’s a bit too bad to not be able to share my “harvest” of milky ways and twix (twix being especially hard to pick from the twisty twix twee) but I’ll look for other ways to share.
The low light of Fall will get even lower come the holidays; we’ll share the longest night and celebrate it, making festival from fear with lights and food and gifts made with the time we don’t have to spend tilling our fields and tending our crops. In some ways, the fact that most of us don’t till or tend, or if we do, we till and tend on top of a full time job can take most of the pleasure out of the seasons. Maybe these days the best gift to give is our time.
In the meantime, holiday making season is upon me, time to get producing for friends and family! Maybe this year, in this economy we should put a tiny bit of time in on a gesture, instead of taking that parttime job to afford purchased gifts…let’s put ourselves in our gifts instead of our credit line! Now I have to think, which sister is a right spiral and which is a left? What to make for an accessorizable daughter? What to make for a minimalist? How can I ship a table to a brother? And what is the form of box for a handmade truffle? Somehow these questions make me think of all of you, and fills the cold husks of fall with warm memories. Thanks!
Think of each other this season, be good to each other, and share your bounty (not the paper towels!).
enough