A Little Color

Goes a Long Way

This entry is filed under Mattie Walks.

The girl does get bored with the same left-or-right decision to our walks on our one-street neighborhood. I try other sites to break up the daily grind. She likes the cemetery. I like the lake.

That's a view of the lake above. "Fall, Lake Hall". The lake is part of Maclay Gardens State Park, a former estate of wealthy New York snowbirds who wintered in Tallahassee while most grandees chose to roost on Jekyll Island off the coast of Georgia. The estate was ceded to Florida and attracts many visitors during the camellia and azalea seasons. Locals enjoy the park all year around.

Mattie doesn't care as much for it as I do. The trails creep her out a bit. I think she's a suburban girl at heart. Then again, she may be getting scent of a bear or other threatening critter. What do I know?

Lake hall winds around, creating little coves here and there, and the shore is heavily wooded with the region's collection of pines, oaks, sweetgum and magnolia trees. A nice place to be during every season.

And the truth is that the scene above was one of a pretty hot summer. Everything about it is true to the moment except the color of the leaves indicating temperature and season.

The problem I have in seeing so many enticing moments and events in the nature of my environment is ... that those moments stack up. Getting to a painting in its time is difficult. So many impressions amass on the sketch pile that it's often winter before I finish summer paintings, spring before the fall art gets easel time, and so forth.

A counter-pressure comes from galleries asking for works denoting a current season. It's understandable, of course. Patrons are as susceptible to the seasons as I am.

I hadn't yet gotten to this Lake Hall painting and wanted to do it, so what the heck -- it became a fall painting. And the stripe of wind-whipped ripples on the water (which were there in summer) add a touch of chill to the air.

The original moment indicated a cooling breeze.

I'll catch up with other summer lake views soon because the temperature and the leaves are falling.