Oh, the warm and luminous colors of autumn when the foliage on the trees and bushes as well as the fallen leaves carpeting the ground appear to be all aglitter! With the days still warm in early autumn and the nights cool and crisp, the vivid colors of nature on display can be breath-taking.
In this mixed-media, acrylic, oil and oil pen painting, on 100% archival, cotton fiber paper, I used an abundance of gold to depict an autumn season all aglitter. I combined these colors with light blue, ochre, bronze, yellow and white. Available at my online gallery – https://ellenpalestrant.com/product/autumn-aglitter.
The variations of the colors of autumn – of fall – with all those fallen leaves is emotive. One can’t help but marvel at the seasonal color ranges we are privileged to witness in our natural surroundings. Much depends on the geographical locations, that is, weather factors affecting an area such as the dampness or sogginess of the summer season. A wet season followed by an autumn with lots of sunny days and dry weather, will result in the most vibrant palette of fall colors, especially if the nights, too, though cold are not yet frosty.
Much of the colors that we, as individuals see, also depends on how we perceive color: How similar are our color perceptions? Interestingly, our perceptions are never entirely in the present moment but also drawn from our huge, varied range of stored, past experiences and neural activity constantly on-the-go…a vast subconscious, we do not know. In terms of autumn, they are drawn from our past experiences of that season, possibly in different locations. The autumn we see in a moment in time is influenced by our past emotional experiences of autumn and our varied perceptions of the season that took place over the years.
So we do not see things exactly in the same way but we do see things similarly because of our humaneness, Yet, there are always those uniquely individual perceptions because of our combinations of unseen brain activities, pasts we subconsciously recall, and the immediate experiences of our present. We therefore look at and create our worlds from our different points of view.
Our days vary – some being more emotionally uplifting than others, and our commensurate moods – and world views – are accordingly affected. We therefore paint our individual perceptions of the sky above us with our own emotional palettes. Indeed, I painted “Autumn Aglitter” according to how I perceived autumn at a time which followed an exceptionally hot summer. For me, following a record-breaking summer of 113 days of temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, autumn was all aglitter and replete with promises.