“The Gift”

“The Gift” (20" x 18.5") by Susan Brubaker Knapp
Copyright 2014

“The Gift” is done. I call it “The Gift” because this is how I think about the sights and sounds I encounter on my morning walks. This piece is based on a photograph I took in the fall of a leaf on the sidewalk, when I was walking my dog. (See previous posts for a shot of this photo.) 

There are days that I feel incredibly blessed to be alive simply to experience these small gifts. It is a feeling I attempt to cultivate, because there are also many days that I can cave in and feel sorry for myself. I am a very emotional person, and feel things very intensely, as I imagine most artists do. I seek out beauty around me as a way of keeping myself sane, balanced and happy.

To me, there is something exquisite and yet breathtakingly tragic about leaves in autumn. They are going out with a bang, in an explosion of color and texture. Very soon they are completely dead, dry and brown, and then they are mulch. Like all of us, I suppose. 

Here are some detail shots:

“Every blade in the field – Every leaf in the forest –
lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up.” 

– HENRY DAVID THOREAU –

Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/leaf.html#3zgVKVxlX7PHFS6h.99