~ Autumn Soul In The Aisles Of Nature ~

"We are slow to discover the real glory of things gifted to us, and not until the shadows of decay begin to gather in the aisles around the objects that we love, do we see their unfraught beauty. In the realm of nature's Spirit, the brightness of Autumn's soul and its shadow that sweetly surrounds all cherished things, melts away the veil revealing the glowing jewels of beauty and loveliness that were always lurking in there, in all those dimming aisles of nature, and we fully discover the beauty of Autumn's soul at last." ~ Jack Mountain

Autumn is my favorite season of the year, for it reminds me to give thanks for the passing of all old and familiar beauty that lurks around me. There is sadness in a sense, but also acceptance that new life and opportunity will repeat, and my soul will get to rediscover and give thanks all over again next year. Photographed on Mt. Humphries, in Arizona's Coconino National Forest, near Flagstaff during early October. This really is a wonderful forest escape.

There is no manipulation here. This abstract's long up and down sweeping and chunky brush strokes are deliberately created in camera, while dragging my shutter vertically, like panning, but with a deliberately very slow shutter speed creating a long exposure as I paint my pixels up and down. While swirls are not present, this impasto-like style of the lines, and heavy usage of yellow was reminiscent to me of Van Gogh. Indeed, I hold the color yellow as dearly as he did, and sometimes I wonder how much for the same reasons.

While I'm working with aspens and not sunflowers, it matters little, for his sunflowers and all their varied states of wilt and discordance were truly just variations on the yellow theme, like my obsession with the aspen. Struck by many dark obsessions caused by depression, yellow was meant to illuminate van Gogh’s days. A psychologist could suggest that the painter clinched to this color in order to find the light that will draw him back from the darkness in his desperate moments.

Impasto is an art term used to describe thickly textured paint that is almost three-dimensional in appearance. Using an impasto technique often leaves visible brush strokes in the finished painting. Many times, those brush strokes are actually more important than the subject matter itself and it truly is Vincent Van Gogh's style.