If you believe in “The Mystery of Autumn”, then I’m sure a harvest moon becomes part of a spectacle of nature.  Changes.  This is how I think of the mood of this season and how the nearby Shenandoah River becomes a different kind of a natural paradise to explore and express watercolor.

Watercolor transparencies, plants, moon, water, bring reflections.  This became the subject of River Barges and in the process of painting, I used crayon-like watercolor sticks that are intense with color and added colored inks to refine details and for the pleasure of line – drawing with line using the fragility of a crow quill (a small pen) loaded with ink.  

Color is in the beginning and in the completion of a work since I let watercolor flow on very wet paper where it floats in an imaginative way before arriving exactly at the composition and subject.  In the end it’s how the color looks to me and I think about the flow of the river in autumn when the water is low and feel its sense of calm.