There is a particular week every year — usually right at the end of September — when the light changes and I notice it before I notice the calendar. It comes in lower. It turns everything a little warmer and a little more golden, and it makes ordinary things look like they have been waiting all year to be painted.
That is my favorite season in the studio. Soft pastel was made for this light. The pigment sits right on the surface of the paper with nothing over it — no varnish, no glaze — so when I lay down a warm gold it stays warm gold. It glows the way late-afternoon light actually glows.
So here are the pieces I keep pulling out this time of year. Some of them are the obvious ones — old trucks, weathered barns, golden fields. A couple are quieter than that. All of them are originals, which means there is exactly one of each, and most are available as fine art prints as well.
Daisy River
If you only look at one piece from this list, make it this one. A whole hillside of orange and gold blossoms running down to the water, painted at the moment when the flowers are past their neatest and are just doing whatever they want.
I did not plan the color the way it turned out. I started with the river and the flowers took over, which is usually a sign that a painting is going the right direction. It is the warmest thing in my gallery right now, and in a room with white walls it is a small fire.
See the original · Fine art print, 8 × 10″
Country Truck
Somebody’s grandfather drove a truck like this. That is what I hear over and over when people stand in front of it, and it is never the same truck twice — but the feeling is identical every time. Somebody who loved you, and a vehicle that had no business still running.
I painted it where I found it: sunk to the hubs in tall grass with pale tree trunks standing up behind it. The rust is the whole point. That particular red only happens after about forty years of weather, and you cannot fake it.
See the original · Fine art print, 8 × 10″
Tractor Barn
An old blue tractor parked beside a barn that has clearly been leaning the same direction for a long time. There is a dirt track running past both of them and you can tell somebody still uses it.
This is harvest-season work to me. Not a postcard farm — a working one, with a tractor that gets started and a barn that gets opened. I spent most of my time on the boards of that barn. Weathered wood has more colors in it than people expect: blue, violet, silver, a little green where the shade sits.
See the original · Fine art print, 8 × 10″
Peace Pond
Still water, dark trees, and a sky going peach and rose at the edges. Reeds in the near corner because that is what you actually see when you stand at the bank — you never get a clean view, there is always something in the way.
This one is about that fifteen minutes before evening when the sky does something extravagant and then quits. If you have a room where you sit down — a bedroom, a reading corner, the wall you look at first thing — this is the painting for it.
See the original · Fine art print, 8 × 10″
River Rocks
The water is low here, the way creeks get by September, and the rocks that spend most of the year underneath are all showing. Gold grass along the bank, hills stacking up behind.
Painting stones is patience work. Every one of them is a slightly different color and if you make them all grey the creek dies. I like this piece because nothing dramatic is happening in it — it is just a place you could walk into and stand in.
See the original · Fine art print, 8 × 10″
And for the end of October: Winter Barn
Fall always ends the same way, and I would rather be honest about it than pretend. This is the other side of the barn from earlier — same weathered boards, but under snow, with the trees gone to frost and the sky heavy over the top of it.
It is almost entirely blues and whites, and I will tell you the truth: it is a harder painting to sell in September than it is to love in January. If you are the sort of person who is already looking forward to the first cold night, this one is yours.
See the original · Fine art print, 8 × 10″
A word about originals
Every piece above is a one-of-a-kind soft pastel painting. I cannot make a second one — not really, not the same. Pastel does not allow for it. Whichever of these ends up on your wall is the only one there is, anywhere.
If the original is spoken for, or if you want something for a smaller wall, the fine art prints are made from high-resolution scans of the same paintings and they hold the color beautifully. Either way you are getting the real thing, just at different scales.
Come take a look
If one of these has been sitting in the back of your mind since you scrolled past it — that is usually the answer. Autumn is short, and the good light is shorter, and a painting you keep thinking about is a painting that belongs with you.
Have a look through the full gallery, and if you want something painted just for you — your place, your barn, your truck, your stretch of water — tell me about it. Commissions are open through the fall.
Thank you for looking. It means more than you know.
— DawnE