still life sewing table

October has always been my favorite month of the year. No matter where I've lived across the country, I've always managed to experience it as a golden time ~ amber and ruby-splashed trees, vibrant against sparkling cobalt skies; the air ever crisp with the scent of burning leaves and coming winter chill. That beauty will forever be tinted by sadness now, as maybe it always was, for it was a year ago today that we lost my sweet mother. I was therefore not unhappy to awaken to find that gray skies and a light drizzle had replaced the ubiquitous California sunshine ~ I prefer it when my internal and external landscapes combine to form a unified whole , and I always enjoy the company of ghosts in the rain. I spent the hours peacefully, painting on my little patio, protected from the damp.


I ran into a lot of trouble though, mostly having to do with color. I couldn't find the shade of pink I wanted for the floral highlights, nor the desired tone for the table's shadowed areas. I struggled with the essence of the Happy Buddha, casting a possibly fatal shadow upon his continuing joy. Muddy the pigment, spoil the mood. Somehow, I just couldn't find it.


But I'd taken a photograph of this grouping a few weeks ago because I loved the way the late afternoon sun playing through the lace curtains scattered long, eggy ovals of yellow and gold across my mother's sewing table. And I wanted to capture the way light seemed to come from within the vase itself to dissolve it's material boundaries.

I didn't quite hit my marks. I tend to overwork things and I'm trying to let that go. But there'll be other dancing, eggy-yellow globes and glowing turquoise vases after all, and the more you try the better you get. Or so I'm told. In the meantime, I enjoyed a wistful, rainy day custom made for music and melancholy, and for just a few hours material boundaries were, perhaps, transcended.