In love

This week, I finished my painting. I started "September, I Remember" over Christmas, working on a 4-foot-by-4-foot piece of plywood. It was inspired by a run I took in Anchorage amid the birch trees as they were changing color. I had just started running, and it was an amazing run - fast, hilly, long. And I ran with all my heart. It was like my legs had a mind of their own. I felt no pain, just deep gulps of crisp fall air with the sunshine glistening from the brilliant yellow leaves as they fluttered to the ground. The sky was dark, a storm approaching, and made the sunshine appear even brighter. I never wanted the trail to end, and as I ran, I processed the huge life decision that I could no longer go forward as I was, that things had to change. I will never forget that run as long as I live. It was an end. It was a beginning. It was a defining moment in my life, and the lives of my children. It was tear-stained, but also relieving.

And this painting, which now hangs in my dining room, captures all that for me. I am so in love with it, I can't stop looking at it. It really wound up being two or even three paintings in one. The sky is its own element, as is the leaf-covered ground. The tree, which I had never intended to leave white, seems to work so well that way that I will leave it as is, at least for now, and see if it continues to work. I think it will. I still have some work to do on the contours of the ground, but I will figure that out easily enough.

I am proud, inspired, thrilled to have this thing hanging in my house that is so much what I love to look at visually.

And I'm not done. I already know what the next painting is. It's light streaming through the snow covered trees, which I saw today during a wonderfully long ski on Crossman Ridge through a pristine 6-inch layer of fine powder with every branch laden with mounds of snow.

I can't wait to get started.