By The Light of The Full Moon

Well, here we go then. It's winter, the fir is in the wood stove, the fur is on my unshaved legs. 

The night before last I went for a walk under the almost full moon, and was entranced beneath the silver grey spotlight that lit up the dirt road at the top of our drive...serene, sparkling slate silence. The house we rent sits in a dell-like clearing at the bottom of a steep driveway. Standing at the top of the drive, one can look across this dell at a dozen-filled row of poplar trees reaching up their stiff tendril branches. In the evening light these branches were like white ash veins knotted through long skinny fingers clawing toward a charcoal glinted sky, gently tickling the rolling bellies of the tumbling night clouds.And I thought what past master would have managed to capture this scene on canvas? Van Gogh perhaps. I can often see the painting, I know whose style or talent might portray it, but rarely can I convey it, except to use too many adjectives in a struggle for verbal description so you too can see what I saw.

I love to paint, but don't very often finish anything. Even so, paintings burn in me all the time.  Maybe I'll start to paint this nature around me. Until now, it's been whatever comes into my head...faces, patterns, still lifes. But here on Gabriola, this is where I will start to make my tracks, like the deer who wink at me and encourage me not to care how I go about anything. And my life is yours too of course.