Autumn Evening

I spent some time in my studio this afternoon, hell bent on making a painting, no matter what it was. I got out the paints, laid out the palette, got a canvas panel, and just painted. No thought, no plan, just paint and see what comes of it. It is always a learning experience in some form, whether it be a color discovery or time that I get in touch with my child who plays with paint. Tonite's painting must have been influenced by the season. The cool nights, the leaves changing color, the shorter days and ever so dark mornings. Perhaps I have caught my students anticipation of Halloween even though they are teens. They still have the excitement and the playfulness of the younger children, only they know they are getting to old to partake in the door to door trick-or-treat festivities.

Before delving into my paints, I went on a nice walk around the perimeter of our local track and wistfully enjoyed the sights and sounds of the football team drills, the track team coming in from a run, and I had a flash of those painful days of adolescence. I was not the popular girl; in fact, I was a wallflower, an intellectual artist geek. I had no boyfriends in high school, but had many in my little private world. I was not a part of the sports world till much later, when I had some faith in myself and what I could do.

But it was so easy to take that trip back to the past, to a fleeting memory of a period I would never want to revisit. I smiled to myself, and took myself home ready for a workout in the studio and was thankful that I could enjoy that jaunt to the past, and leave with a Mona Lisa smile.

To Autumn, Halloween, and being forever young! Patti