Study for Autumn
This week I worked on a drawing for one of the figures in a larger work I would like to complete in the next year.  I got the idea for this part of the piece in fall 2007 after I came back from Italy, on a Divinely gilded evening in the mountains of Western North Carolina on a motorcycle ride with my husband on Hwy 9.  If you are close to the Blue Ridge during sunset in the Fall you know just the color palette that inspired me. Its funny how certain ideas just don't leave you alone.  This one is still emblazoned on the back of my eyelids when I close them two years later; the the impression was so vivid. Sometimes you can't just stuff it down (as if you want to) and ignore it any longer and you've got to try to give birth to it.  Here is a detail of the charcoal "Study for Autumn." Stay tuned for more on this work of art as it develops.

Golden Hues
Two weeks ago I painted with some other artist on a dewy morning at Warren Wilson College.  The season was just starting to turn.  I went back to the spot yesterday to see the leaves on the tree had already fallen.  October is such a transient experience here.  You hardly have time to realize that harvest has come, the wind is picking up and rearranging all the falling seed pods, and soon you will face frosty mornings aglow with the violets of bare trees stretching away forever over the mountains.  There is so much reflected glory in these mountains!

Remembering Pouzilhac, France
I was in my studio moving things around, and I rediscovered a few drawings that I did a while ago when I was in Europe that I have never shown, so I thought I would share one with you.  The single lane roads wind on forever in the countryside of the Dordogne region in France, and it is easy to lose yourself in an afternoon search for a great spot to work.  You might run across French hunters and their dogs on chase for the wild boar, the boar itself, or just rows and rows of grape vines.  This little lane caught my attention, and I am looking forward to getting back and giving it a go with oils when the sun is setting.

Enjoy this art and any thing else you see that should be made into art whether in Nature or your Imagination.  There are so many great masterpieces in the world to see it will take a life time to enjoy them.  Let your eyes feast away on all there is to see, whether great or small.