Pear Light

I’d like to talk about Pear-light.

Pear-light is the sad, poignant watercolour yellowing of this seasonal shift into autumn. Sun spreading between citrine pears & leaves smoky brown at the edges. Richer yellow of wasps, drunken sailors swaying from pear deck to pear deck. I especially love it. The sun is lower in the sky, earth is looking over her shoulder at summer as it passes. It feels like the sadness I have felt, knowing I’ll never grasp youth again.

The color palette is the lime humbug.. deep chocolate stripes of twigs in fading citrus shades. It is the butterscotch of mellow sunshine pouring over kitchen surfaces and still warm stone beneath our feet. It is the surprisingly fresh dew in-between toes when I go out to feed the birds, the grass determined to defy each mowing, standing upright, sentry-like, permitting only worms and insects to move through. It is the snarling bramble whose thorns are tougher, the brittle nettles, unaccommodating on brown and freckled ankles, spitefully spearing with poison, leaving fizzing welts. It is the softening roses, golden and bronze as petals fade, reminding me of beautiful women past menopause; still scented, still radiant, but fuller, and somehow more tender and fragile than their youthful memories. Perhaps we judge the older rose less beautiful than the tight bud, but remember how an old rose can flower into November, where a bud needs the nurturing heat of June.

We are experiencing some beautiful extension of summer, this September, and I can’t help but feel some gratitude for this mercy, in what has been a challenging year so far.

My family is shifting again, children making footprints in new directions, their small universes expanding, while I find myself at my desk once more, aching for time to draw and paint. I have some projects for the winter months, including a collaborative adventure on greetings cards, and a few commissions to work on, but otherwise, my work is academic, completing forms and courses, on my way to becoming a qualified teacher for post 16s, and counsellor, as well as a psychologist. Being an artist is a state of mind, as much as an occupation, for me, and it is just one of the gowns I slip into.

I have a run of prints of October Walk and Autumn Orchard available at the moment, as well as various art cards. I hope that if you feel inspired by my words and paintings, you will feel inspired to see things as I see them, on your walls, perhaps, or gift them to another.