It's nice here this morning. Our skies are mostly clear. It is a gentle and coolish summer morning, always these days with a hint of Fall. Just a hint. Maybe it's the shorter days, the longer shadows, the quality of the light, or a change in smells, or the obvious coolness, but really, who knows what we perceive and understand on a subconscious level. We are after all animals: human, goose, heron, muskrat... all of us expressions of the same "something"... all of us part of the same "whole". 

That’s what was running through my mind just a few days ago while canoeing on the Dix River.   The above painting was done from a combination of photographs, feeling and memory.  Fall colors aren’t due until next month here in Kentucky, but because I pushed the warms in the sunlit areas and cools in the shadows to get more of the feel of strong sunlight I ended up with a painting that carries an “end of Summer/early Autumn look”. It might not be coincidence; that “look” reflects many of the feelings and thoughts I was experiencing while there on the river. 

Maybe this painting will evoke end of Summer/early Autumn feelings in you too, and if it does, then perhaps the subject of this painting has become something "more than a River".