Thoughts on Painting
Posted on 9/27/2016 8:12:57 AM
By Christine Marx
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Lambertville Autumn
Bucks County is an amazingly beautiful place. The start of every season reintroduces me to the beauty it has to offer. It's like a reset button, and everything is new again. The East Coast seasons do not whisper, like the ones I grew up with in Northern California. You don't have to go searching for leaves changing on a few streets in San Jose, or up to the Sierra Mountain range above 3,000 ft. It is just about everywhere you turn, sometimes for a brief period, and sometimes for a long, showy month or 6 weeks if we're lucky. It is the kind of overwhelming beauty that prompts me to charge both batteries for my camera, grab my coffee, and head out driving around the backroads of Bucks County snapping hundreds of photos each day.
I feel so fortunate to live here, especially this time of year. We have been here 10 years, and every year I say "we're heading North to see the early fall color change!" And every year, life gets away from us and we don't go. This year, I have finally booked a few trips north of here into New England to get an early start on absorbing this beauty. I am taking a class with Hai-Ou Hou in New Hampshire the second weekend of October on "Expressive Landscapes" which I am beyond excited to attend! Bad planning on my part meant that after I booked the workshop and then went to book a hotel everything was full within a 100 mile radius. Thank goodness my friend from high school, Dana, has a ski house 7 miles from the workshop and she very kindly offered for me to crash there while taking my classes. She must have known ALL the leaf peepers would be there that weekend, lol! So she is making it possible for me to not sleep in my car, which makes for better paintings and a much more comfortable weekend. A huge thank you to her and her husband!
On another weekend we are going up with all the kids and their husbands to Sleepy Hollow to do the whole Halloween celebration that my mother introduced us to when she came to visit a few years ago, and wanted to go see it. Tarrytown and the whole area really get into Halloween. It's festive, with a lot of entertaining things to do. And it's beautiful, with many cool breweries and restaurants. It's also only a 30 minute train ride from Manhattan, so my daughter and her husband can easily join us. The only thing I have yet to fit in this October is a trip back up to Salem, Mass. I went there when the girls were very young, and it wasn't during Autumn. It's been a bucket list item for me for the past 20 years and I hope to squeeze that one in as well. I guess that depends on how long the season change is this year.
So, inspiration aplenty for me when I get back in the studio after these road trips! I cannot wait to share with you the results of my workshop and hope it translates into some nice work on the canvas.
Keep those paint brushes dancing!
Chris
