"Gather" - Class September 20th


The word for this week is "gather." This word -- along with the image of the haystacks that we looked at in class last week, and the Ryder painting of the cow in the "ambiguous pasture narrative" -- remind me that fall is coming quickly. But, to be honest it has also felt like fall ever since I began graduate school about a month ago. The beginning of school has always felt like fall to me.

Fall brings pronounced changes to the landscape, even in Northern California. There is still a shift in the quality of light and a chill in the air here. Leaves on deciduous trees still fall here. Fall has always seemed to signify both "beginnings" (the beginning of a new school year) and also "decay" as we approach winter (something that I would begin to anticipate with horror when I lived in Boston).

The image I chose to draw this week is of some dried flowers that I snapped a quick photo of when I was in Lafayette in the east bay about a month ago. To me, these flowers, along with the haystacks, and the Ryder painting, all have aspects of these dual qualities of fall described above. I wanted to draw the gathered flowers as I saw them -- at the height of their beauty; at the beginning of fall.


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