"Des jardins du Trocadéro l'automne", Henri Rivière

It has rained and I am bent over on a park bench feeling the caress of a cool breeze and listening to my own heartbeat.

The leaves have turned brown. Yesterday they were still lemon yellow, juicy orange, apple red. It is a strange and delicious dissolution.

They fall so gently. Float, really. Sometimes even twirl. It seems a happy dance, though they all end up on the same damp ground. There they will soon crumble, coalesce with more ancient soil, and feed the fruit of another day.

"Ammonite (Abscission)"

White line woodcut (learn what that is here.)
24" x 24" (image), 30" x 34" (paper)
Watercolors on Stonehenge paper

This is my second, large, white-line ammonite woodcut. The first was posted about here.

This is another attempt at resurrection of the extinct through visual art. I wanted the colors to signify early autumn. There is movement and life, wet, breathing, and bulging as it grows. Green grasses bending under a breeze, scented with damp leaves and burnt wood. Before the grey hues of winter arrive, there is an explosion of color. Before we shut ourselves in to escape months of cold, may we dance naked around a bonfire. 

"Delicious autumn!  My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns." - George Eliot

"Late Autumn" by Gordon Mortensen

Yesterday we had our first snow of the season, so it's a white Thanksgiving. Even though winter is my favorite season, I always get a melancholy feeling this time of year because the autumn foliage is so beautiful, but now the leaves are turning the color of mud, then falling to the ground, getting mashed up, and literally turning into mud.

Before winter is officially upon us here in Pennsylvania, here's one of Gordon Mortensen's woodcut reductions. Mortensen's prints are jaw-droppingly amazing in terms of the technical challenges; he often does dozens of layers of color and spends months making a single edition. For me, the result of his painstaking process is that his images of nature seem utterly frozen. Otherwise fleeting moments, here preserved for all time.

If you want to learn more about Mortensen and find his limited edition prints for sale, here's a link to his profile at Davidson Galleries.

I am both drawn to and a little frightened of this place. Are there monsters lurking in the hazy, purple distance? Are there creepy crawlies teeming beneath the smattering of golden leaves? Do equally breathtaking wonders lies beyond the forest's edge, or perhaps there is nothing more than a brightly lit oblivion. What sounds would my steps make if I dare walk across? A crunch? A squoosh? Or eerie silence, as if I were a phantom in a world no longer my own? Like a cake in the bakery's display window, I desire a taste, but am loath to disturb its aesthetic perfection.

"Celebration" by Bridget Mary Henry

Image posted with the permission of the artist. I first wrote about Henry's work in 2012. Check out her website to see more of her work, including an amazing wheat paste installation.  

It is a grey and rainy day, and I need some seasonal color. In the words of Albert Camus that have stayed with me, "Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."  

She jumps for joy, I know not why. But I suppose it is either pride over the accomplishment of amassing such an enormous heap of leaves, or the youthful exuberance enjoyed as one leaps into such a pile. The soles of her shoes are camouflaged against the scratched earth. Footless, she flies.