Nature's Inspiration

I promised myself and I kept to my promise. Sundown this evening finds my promise complete. Yay , that's one for me. The basement workspace (otherwise referred to as the "hell hole ") is cleaned up. I guess I should qualify that statement a bit and say that it's cleaned up as much as it's gonna get cleaned up. And that's pretty darn good. I can actually see surfaces that had gone missing in action many long months ago.

Now I must get back to work -now that I can work in there. The Mister has been slowly and steadily preparing all manner of furniture for me to , as he says, "work my magic" upon. So as I pass by the piled high stack of big & small chairs, tables , salvaged old medicine cabinets, stools,benches and so on, I try to imagine how it is that they wish to be clad. My mind has locked on to muted , nature-inspired colors , even though when I picked some of those pieces last summer, late, and early fall , I think I remember envisioning bright , vibrant colors. Now , now that Winter is truly upon us and I'm ready to begin painting anew I see a soft palette, perhaps shot with just a wee bit of light, metallic or opalescent; just enough to add a touch of sparkle.

This photo I took in November, as Fall was descending into Winter. The creamy white of the hydrangea darkened to parchment, but the first frost adds a twinkle to the edges that softly delineates each petal shape.

I'm thinking that a sweet little wooden cabinet that I found at a yard sale would be properly dressed in colors such as these. I can even see it in my mind's eye in a room painted that almost- watercolor blue-green of the background.

Jack Frost delicately coated the foliage here so that we can clearly differentiate the textures in this 8 square inch patch of landscape ; long grassy texture that could suggest tentacles in an underwater scene; small button-like moss gone silver could almost be miniature sea urchins; velvety gray-green moss tempting us to reach out and touch . I can almost even see a star fish nestled beneath silvery purple foliage.

As I look at this now , I wonder if I hadn't subliminally been influenced in my choice of paint color after having seen and photographed this. It was just around the time of taking this photo ( about mid November ) that I painted a lovely little table in a gray-violet color with silver accents. I do believe now that I had internalized this frosted scene and reimagined it in my paint choice .

I recall that last year I was nearly swooning over the glistening whites of the early snowfalls (that sooned grew old) . After having found a magazine layout of an all white shop , I went full throttle into painting whites -white on white , cream on white. It didn't last long, but

unfortunately the snowfalls did. I found myself yearning for more color, even as the snow whites continued to pile up outside my window , or maybe because it continued to pile up. As Spring approached , those colors that I yearned for manifested in the clear , clean pastels of new spring flowers and grasses.

Today, however , I am aching to try my hand further to produce the soft , muted tones I see in these photos; the whites muffled by gray bark , oyster-colored fungi embellishing the fallen log like ruffled sleeves, and silver green lichen accenting the whole as though it were a scarf about the neck.

I've got a dining table that could be just the vehicle for this color scheme - a pale gray, with a frosty lichen green in the leg grooves, overpainted in opalescent topcoat. I can see it. Can you? I'm anxious to get a start. (Hope to show some pictures as a finish each item. But I do work s-l-o-w-l-y. Don't expect it too soon.)

I must be off, perhaps to organize my paint cans. Thanks for dropping by and giving me a chance to dream aloud.

I wish you a good evening ,

Cyth