color catching

october field

Autumn, jewel-like, can bedazzle at any moment:  asters flash from out of a shadow, goldenrods light up out of the browning grasses, sky-blue becomes bluer beside the gold.  A tree turns crimson between field and sky.  The jewels startle us and lead the fields in jumping.  Autumn is leaping in the fields.

I've tried to get this small painting jumping if not startling.  Maybe your eyes move around in an odd and syncopated way, darting around, their haunches and belly catching and dragging amid the fields and colors.  Do they?

spectacle

asters in late september field

Much in the fields are drying out, slowly browning.  Yet appearing like this reddish phrase appears in this text,  clumpsof asters  are like emergent jewels peeking out of pockets.  Oh my, bedazzling.  They do not need to move in the light or breeze; still, they can surprise us, startle us, start our hearts.

The small painting is pastel on paper.  I tried for the "startle" effect.  The final, top strokes of color in the field cover much of the detail and some of the asters, and these final strokes are bright.  I keyed these strokes bright, high, fuller of hue than the field's color because the asters are so rich in hue.  If the field's color here were duller, the asters would, I think, become gangsterish, comicbook-like, too toomuch.  Nature has a much wider range than painters do; still, we do what we can to be in the conversation, as fully participant as we can.