How Small We Are...

...but it's the details that make the bigger picture.

"There is a clarity about September... the sun seems brighter, the sky more blue, the white clouds take on marvelous shapes; the moon is a wonderful apparition, rising gold, cooling to silver; and the stars are so big."

Faith Baldwin

The harvest moon hangs low in the sky. “Quick, look, there…” calls my OH, pointing skywards. For once the stars and the app tracking the space station have aligned, and we get a glimpse of the station as it hurtles through the night sky… I think of the people on the station, orbiting the earth 16 times in a 24 hour period; all those sunrises and sunsets….

A few days later, with a thick, grey blanket of cloud cloaking the countryside, I grumble, “I would just be grateful to see one sunrise.” It isn’t until much later that I notice the folds of clouds parting to reveal patches of blue. I hastily head out down the lane…

Everywhere I look, there’s a profusion of berries; hips, sloes…luscious jewels glistening in the sunshine. Old Man’s Beard clambers over the hedgerows and verges, pure white goblets straining skywards. I walk on, nodding to cyclists and dog walkers, the drone of a light aircraft performing aerobatics overhead.

Eventually I arrive at my destination… Sunshine in a field.

There’s something so joyous about the bobbing ‘faces’ of the sunflowers, something so uplifting. My mind drifts to those marooned on the ISS: I wonder if they’re missing earth and all the bounties of the seasons.

Elsewhere, stems and stalks are straw coloured, leaves flutter to carpet the ground in a patchwork of yellows, ambers and reds… The remnants of summer lay scattered; a solitary feather, husks of corn along the track, a nest - its tangle of scaffolding still firmly woven…a blue eggshell, shattered…

As I make my way home, I glance across the fields…

…taking in the autumnal scene. The distant stubble field, the brown earth. There’s definitely a sense of change…

"The windows are open, admitting the September breeze: a month that smells like notepaper and pencil shavings, autumn leaves and car oil. A month that smells like progress and moving on."

Lauren Oliver

Other things I’ve been enjoying:

• ‘Between Two Seas’ - Rebecca Hooper’s Substack about life on a small Scottish island wedged between the North Sea and the Atlantic.

• My yoga class with Ann’s Yoga Lounge - not only is it great exercise, but actually going to a class as opposed to doing one via Zoom/YouTube, is so much better for connecting with people, as is the coffee afterwards!

• Watching re-runs of the Sky Landscape Artist of the Year on Sky Arts.

• Getting my hands in the soil, planting spring bulbs. There’s always something so ‘hopeful’, a ‘looking to the future’. Small papery skinned bulbs surviving the dark winter, before erupting into jewels, bringing light and joy…

• I’ll admit there have been times when I’ve felt like pausing/ending this Substack, but I found this from Chez Hanny so encouraging…

• I love the gentleness that is Harpreet M Dayal…

• …and the moodiness of The Mood Chasing Photographer

• For the most part, the colour blue features strongly in my work, and I love this from Rebecca Solnit:

  “The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. This blue is the light that got lost. Light at the blue end of the spectrum does not travel the whole distance from the sun to us. It disperses among the molecules of the air, it scatters in water. Water is colorless, shallow water appears to be the color of whatever lies underneath it, but deep water is full of this scattered light, the purer the water the deeper the blue. The sky is blue for the same reason, but the blue at the horizon, the blue of land that seems to be dissolving into the sky, is a deeper, dreamier, melancholy blue, the blue at the farthest reaches of the places where you see for miles, the blue of distance. This light that does not touch us, does not travel the whole distance, the light that gets lost, gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is in the color blue.”

  If you want to read the whole essay - The Blue of Distance by Solnit, click here…

• I’ve also been enjoying going from one thing to another - variety! I’m still experimenting with the landscapes, but then I’d an idea for a floral composition so dived into that…which didn’t work out as planned…

  

  but there were parts I liked…

  

  …which lead to the start of another idea…

  

  …that’s how it goes at times!! This will probably sit to one side for a while, as I return to the landscapes…eventually I might finish it!! Did I enjoy splashing around - you bet!!

Until next time, happy painting!