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I Cherish The Loneliness of Autumn


I Cherish The Loneliness of Autumn
oil on canvas, gallery wrapped
14x18 inches / 35.5x46 cm


I am an October Baby. I spent my birthdays jumping in piles of leaves. I love the smell of leaves fading, the look of them falling to the ground and the sound of their crunch. That day when the wind changes ever so slightly and you know it's the start....it makes me just as giddy and excited as when there is a thunder storm. 

And I love halloween, not in the conventional/commercial sense, but in the mysterious, dark spooky magic that tingles in the air on a late October night sort of way. 

But I have never liked the color orange, except when it is pertaining to Autumn and all that it entails. Then it is the most magnificent color in the world, so warm, so inviting, so special. It's as if the only color that exists in the month of October, is Orange.

I cherish the loneliness of autumn.... 

I am forty, I have become mortal. 
I have no further psychic, emotional, or intellectual need to prolong summer seasons, 
and it is only when autumn begins its play that I can truly focus on the rich and vital life I am living. 
All of a sudden I grow alert. 
October is a hallelujah! reverberating in my body year-round.... 
The air is dusty, it smells of dry pine needles; yet I sense imminent ice in the clear blue sky.... 
How I appreciate everything…fully! 
After all, tomorrow this reprieve will be buried by blizzards, crushed under slabs of doomsday ice. 
I cannot waste a minute indoors! I must take advantage of this gift, wedged so tentatively between summer’s hectic somnolence and winter’s harsh apogee.... 
Each perfect day, I know, is going to be the last beautiful day of autumn. 

~John Nichols (b.1940), The Last Beautiful Days of Autumn

I Cherish The Loneliness of Autumn {2016}
Moon

I Cherish The Loneliness of Autumn {2016}
Pumpkins