Image of the Week: Autumn in Shandaken
© D. Yael Bernhard
I painted this landscape a year ago near my home at a place where I walk my dog (see photo below) – a beautiful private property with a spacious view to the southwest. The mountain in the distance is Panther Mountain, with its multiple peaks (the smaller ones are called "false" peaks – having climbed them, I can confirm they're quite real). If you're familiar with the Catskills, you may have heard of Giant Ledge, a popular lookout point that sits on the far side of Panther.
In my early years as a landscape painter, spring was the only season that piqued my interest. I found the green of summer monotonous; the colors of fall predictable; the dead of winter muted and too cold to paint en plein air. Spring was the time when the most subtle and interesting hues emerged from the budding landscape – and I couldn't wait to get outside.
It's probably no accident that as I've gotten older, I've grown to love autumn painting. Orange, yellow, and red are still not my favorite colors, but I find the gradients that exist among them – across a swath of forest, or within a single tree – so lovely. If backlit by the sun, it's breathtaking. I cannot deny the poignancy of the season. The blush of color that pleases my artist's eye is the harbinger of death. I, too, am waning. As a tree closes off the flow of sap to its leaves in preparation for the long winter, my own body is also sending out signals of finitude. Can I make my artwork bloom with glorious color as I begin to fade?
As for the painting itself – there are three things that every artist handles differently: hands, clouds, and foliage. These three subjects are all worthy of lifelong trial and error. If you study just about any school of landscape painting, you'll find as many styles of foliage as there are artists. I still struggle with it myself. After all, even if it were possible to articulate every leaf, what effect would that yield? How do you suggest a texture of thousands of clusters of tiny colored shapes?
Fortunately and unfortunately, there's no set formula for painting foliage. I'll just keep wrestling with it – and enjoying the view while I'm at it.
A good week to all . . .
D Yael Bernhard