The luxury of colour

Fall garden riches
8 x 8 inches
acrylic on canvas
Barbara Muir © 2009

My day today began with a drive beside fields turning a miraculous
ochre colour touched with edges of orange, or rusty red, or bright
yellow in places. The trees are starting to turn, and although
the growing city is invading every green space with huge
earth movers, pavers, and who knows what to tear down every
tree, enough beauty remains to lift my heart. The supposed
"greenbelt" around Toronto is a complete sham. Developers
are ripping into land that once belonged to food crops, hawks
soaring, every kind of wildlife, and skillfully slipping between
legal loopholes to cover Ontario's prime farmland with shabbily
built large houses.

This makes me a bit sad. But then I'll emerge from one of
these new vast, empty, treeless neighbourhoods, my mind's
eye filled with a vivid image of the farm that was there just
a year ago, and I'll see the trees. Maybe there's just a stand of them,
four or five, but in places a whole wood flames with orange, red,
and burgundy leaves. Then I permit myself to quit my internal rant
against the destruction of my beloved landscape, and just enjoy
the beauty we still have. That beauty is so overwhelming
that it's impossible to understand how anyone could want
to mow it down. And that beauty makes me want to sing,
dance, and paint.

So holding that great rush of happiness on this very windy
day, I had a marvellous day at school, and now I'm painting
again, feeling vigorous and inspired.

I hope I get tonight's painting done. It's another little flower
painting, a tribute to the market lady's garden. I don't even
know what some of the flowers are. Some huge headed pink
thing, looks like civilized milkweed. But that's the story...

It's finished. Thanks for waiting.

Have a loving-the-beauty-in-your-world day.