Fall birch

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You don't have to be able to put into words why you like something. Leave that to the gallery folks or the critic who writes a piece for the local newspaper. All you have to do is know that when you see something, you like it.

Chances are, it's the color, subject or the way the artist has composed the visual elements that attract you to a visual piece. Later on in this blog I'll discuss some of those things as I post my pictures. But for now, all you have to do is to be ready to react to something and recognize that you have had a reaction.

Now that sounds strange, but there are some people that are so conditioned by others' reactions or by the so called art education of what art is, that they subconsciously shrink back from their own reactions and adopt the reactions they learn from others.

The inspiration for this painting was the contrast of the trees. Not just the color, but the type of trees and how they grow. This birch tree not only had contrasting leaves, but birch branches point down. This constrasts with the maples that around this tree with branches that grow pointing up. The other contrast is the blue-gray bark of the birch and the dark bark of the maples.