Wrested from that one brief capsule of moment, that singularity of orchestrated light. It must have been the color offered there, so briefly, in that one single, razor thin slice of eternity. There was hazy sun in the late afternoon. Most of the trees had started to change color or were already in various stages of change. Any one single section of this spot would have been a good section to base a painting on, and there were limitless sections.
You could tell summer had clearly waned. It was getting colder out. I was tooling around on a motorcycle as part of an annual ritual of saying goodbye to summer. I think it was the grays that had caught my eye the most. They're usually the most interesting. They're the colors, in league with the rest, that disappear if you stare at them too long. They remind us of the err in duality, the err in precluding it is us vs. nature. They're the colors with depth and enjoy partaking in some of the qualities of their neighbors. They're the colors in sympathy with the sentiment of the rest of the painting. They are the glue once it all becomes a coherent whole. Selflessly disbanding themselves into shards of a broken mosaic.
But its hard sometimes to pinpoint exactly what it is about a place that makes us feel the way we do. Why would a collection of light and dark spots of color inspire us? Its easy to pick out a main character for a painting when there is a limited amount of material to choose from. So you pick that subject and get down to the business of painting. Its a relatively simple process when you want to focus on just that one element.
There are times though when the collection isn't so obvious; when the arena and the feeling it evokes are elusive in your search for the why. They end up ducking analysis and skipping roll call. We're forced to dig a little deeper into the trove that is ourselves. We find ourselves asking questions instead of faking it. Questions that normally aren't typically found in nature. When its the gestalt of a place that makes us pause and admire it, we're offered a hint at an idea. We're teased with an emotion that is as complex as the branches in a tree canopy.
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