I’ve been cranking out the artwork. It has been fun. Somewhat outrageous.

I made a decision to make what I am intrigued by. To paint what thrills me. To engage with what interests me.

The results have been somewhat surprising. Nothing EVER turns out like I planned. I am wrestling with colors, warring with shapes, and just agonizing over textures and brushstrokes that do not want to do what I need them to do.

Everything has changed. The brushes, the paint colors, the paint consistencies, the mediums entire performance.

I use a range of mediums and styles. If I love it enough, and think I CAN paint it, I do.

I paint in oil, acrylic, and watercolor, using many methods and techniques. I make paintings with oil pastel, chalk, colored pencil, and felt pen. I sketch. I do line and wash. I’m experimenting with several other methods.

Two recent works:

This is Dark Fall, and it is a textured oil painting. Unfortunately, the camera DESTROYED the coloring, and it does not show the texturing. But the overall image does show what I painted. Based on the works of another artist.

This is Blossom Melodrama, and making WAS kind of a melodrama. I put in purple, and then hot pink, and then chose the closest lighter pink that I had that might work. It was a somewhat salmon pink. The thing colored in SCREAMING ORANGE! But I worked it anyway, it is a strangely cool flower. There is no purple in it anymore, the orange blended the purple to a near black. But the camera, once again destroyed the painting, and added in neon PURPLE.  This “painting” (they are all paintings, you know), has no white. It is all colored. The highlights are just lighter colors. It is a fun style to work, but painstaking, and very meticulous.

I’ll have more, as soon as I roll up my sleeves and load my palette. I have works in progress which I am motivated to finish, and works I just really want to do, all lined up ready to slather with paint or glue, or ink, or crayon.

You can find these works at: http://firelightheritagefarm.com

I was taking my daughter to work in Laramie, driving her there in the morning, driving her home in the evening. One hour each way. Sixty full miles, because that is how Wyoming is.

We passed Rock River each day, and there is a creek with trees running down it. We had been in to Laramie on Sunday, I forget why, and the trees were GREEN, all the way to the top. This is somewhere about September, in Wyoming.

Monday morning, the tops of the trees are just starting to yellow. It was kind of cool, they were just pale greeny yellow. By evening, they were bright yellow.

Tuesday, the tops of the trees are starting to brown, and the upper half is all yellow.

Wednesday the bottoms are green, the mid section yellow, and the tops are fully brown.

Thursday, the tops are starting to shed, the upper middle is brown, the lower middle is yellow, and there is barely any green left at the bottom, and it is kinda yellowy. If you were to paint a picture of Autumn in Wyoming, this would be all the trees.

Friday morning the trees are just barely yellow at the bottom, and the top half of all of them is completely bare. By the time my daughter comes home from work, the trees are branches, and there are no leaves on them.

Five days, from yellow green tops, to fully bare.

There are no golds, there are no oranges, and there are no reds. Just greeny yellow, bright yellow, brown, and bare.

There are no avenues of golden aspens either. The aspens do the same thing. Corridors of trees that go from yellow tops, to bare, in just a few days.

No splendor. No grandeur. Just an unbelievably rapid decline and fall. You can almost hear the “Whump!” as the trees shed their leaves and they pile upon the ground.

No, no one goes to Wyoming for the changing of the leaves. Even if you could predict JUST the five days in which it will occur, it happens so fast it is anything but lovely.