Impressions of Fall

Have been out walking our road for many hours through the changing of the season. At all different times of the day - morning, noon, early evening, dusk.


Have taken a whole lot of photos of the trees and their incredible colors. None of them seemed to speak to me. And then I thought, what is it about the fall that makes it so beautiful. For me, it is the overall impression of the different colors and how they make layers and patches within a particular landscape or frame in my head.


And so for a few days, I decided to set my camera to manual focus and to blur the photos on purpose. This exercise was so much fun because the way the colors were recorded on my camera was actually how I thought they were looking in my head.


And then I started thinking about Monet as he lost his eyesight at the end of his life and painted his waterlily series at Giverny. Would he have painted that landmark series of great art like that if his eyesight had not been going? And how would he have painted leaves changing in autumn in New England?


What do animals see in the wild as they are whizzing down a hill in pursuit of something? What does a person with limited vision see?


When I took an oil painting class about a decade ago, the teacher always told us to squint - to see what we were getting with the paint - to not get lost in the details. I think this is what these photos do - they show the sheer beauty of the layers of color. All of the different color values of the leaves on an individual tree build together to make a single image or impression.


If I were to take these same photos today, they would be grey and brown as all the leaves are falling off the trees.

We will have rain for the next few days and November will surely be upon us. Boy, I will miss the color. I will get be looking to feed the color addiction with my knitting and hopefully some painting and other creating.


As I was driving here to the Town Hall to post these photos, I started thinking about my knitting and in particular felting and how that technique also softens an intense colorful Fair Isle pattern and mutes it down and makes it lovely and impressionistic.


Something for you all to ponder as you go about your day.