Autumn

I finally finished the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail (OCA). This trail follows the path of the old water delivery service between the Croton Aqueduct and New York City. The aqueduct went 29 miles from bucolic natural land, through the suburbs of Westchester County, and ended in the city. The aqueduct is no longer used, but the land it was on has been wisely converted into a long trail that serves as an escape from the hectic congestion of New York. Beginning in the Bronx and going in a fairly straight shot, one can feel many miles away from hte world of concrete, taxis and construction.

Before Iris was born, I walked about 20 miles of the trail. Since then, I haven't had the opportunity to finish the OCA. Last week, however, Iris was in daycare and there was a clear sky and moderate temperatures. I pounced on the opportunity to walk in the woods.

Getting off the commuter train at Scarborough, I picked up the trail and immediately realized I had chosen the best time possible to walk the OCA. The woods were ablaze; leaves were falling and in full fall splendor. I reached for my camera right away, but to my chagrin realized I'd forgotten it. So I decided to make some sketches in the little sketchbook I always carry with me. Every so often, I'd stop and do a quick scratchy sketch of something that caught my eye. But these weren't enough. There was something of my experience of the trail that was missing: COLOR.

I began grabbing leaves from the ground and looking very closely at them. I was amazed at the variation, of course, but also how the variations spoke to a lot of my current artistic concerns.

Off symmetry: Autumn leaves can look like Rorschach tests. Green splots mirror each other on brown leaves, almost perfect mirrors - but not quite. There are slight variations on the symmetry that makes the leaves more dynamic and alive, in process. There is a classical beauty to symmetry, and the variations make them seem more in motion.

Soft and hard: When I would bend down to pick up a particularly interesting leaf, I frequently wouldn't know if I was going to feel something brittle or soft. Leaves on the ground are dying and turning crunchy, but frequently they were soft and wilted. Usually the darkest browns, reds and purples would feel dry and the lightest greens and yellows would be moist. But it's not always the case. Feeling a yellow leaf with dark brown edges is always surprising and intimate. One gets to know where the leaf is in its life.

Two colors: Like an exercise by Joseph Albers, leaves can "fool" your eyes. I picked up an ocher leaf and thought it had blue spots. I looked closely and found the spots to be a different color when isolated, a more neutral green. But these two colors together effect each other in our mind in ways that aren't true. No color lives in isolation.

Edges: My paintings are always exercises in how edges are formed. Do colors bleed into one another, forming a soft boundary, or do they sit next to each other with hard boundaries? This is an untrue question. Look at an impressionist painting and you know why. Those pointillist canvases of little flecks of color are thousands of "hard" color decisions that add up to a soft effect. The idea of an edge truly depends on perspective, and I was surprised at how the microscopic colors of leaves reinforce this idea. Look at the spine of a leaf and you might be surprised to find how the leaf's colors reinforce the hard edges. For instance, a dark brown spine might look dark only because there's a soft border of yellow that bleeds into an equally dark brown on the leaf.

Complements: Thank you, thank you! No, really. Please, I don't deserve all this adulation. Stop. Who told Mother Nature that green and red are complements? And yellow and purple? Is it coincidence that color theory, which says complements make each other more intense, complements the color of leaves when they're at their most brilliant?

Line: Leaves can have such an astounding color rhythm. But it probably shouldn't have surprised me how much of the color is determined by the structure. One can look at a leaf like a painting and see the Renaissance war between desegno and colore. It all comes back to Venice and Florence! The Italian masters were forever debating what makes a painting special -- the way it's designed and laid out or its use of color? Thankfully, leaves provide a very clear answer: these ideas are inseparable. The most beautifully colored leaves come from a relationship with the way the veins unfold.

I could go on, but writing all of this makes me want to paint. Below is a painting I did after coming back from the trail, and the quick sketches I made in lieu of a picture machine. It's good to get out of the city once in a while.

Chicken envy

I feel like Seattle is clucking. Here's a great article about raising chickens in a city. It's illegal for us New Yorkers to have chickens in our backyards (although that doesn't prevent a lot of people, as witnessed in former Times food critic William Grimes' excellent little book "My Fine Feathered Friend"). There are some crazy and beautiful chickens out there, and I encourage everyone to order a dozen little ones and see what happens.

Hey you urban gardeners

So, all my plants are dead. We moved into a dank, infested apartment that killed plants I had kept for over 7 years. Now I'm ready to give it another whirl (especially, once we move in a few weeks). How about some urban compost? NYC Compost has some great tips for the space- and soil-challenged. Here's the most important thing: protect your food scraps from rodents and pests!