Enchantment

 

This week has been good for painting.  I finished the oranges, Enchantment, inspired by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' Cross Creek:

 

Enchantment lies in different things for each of us. For me, it is in this: to step out of the bright sunlight into the shade of orange trees; to walk under the arched canopy of their jadelike leaves; to see the long aisles of lichened trunks stretch ahead in a geometric rhythm; to feel the mystery of seclusion that yet has shafts of light striking through it. [...] Here is home. An old thread, long tangled, comes straight again.

 

I began this painting in late January after a trip home where picked oranges in the yard.  It is one of those memories I will always have of growing up in west central Florida.  Around that time, an article by Jeff Klinkenberg was in the Tampa Bay Times about the citrus industry of the area.  It just seemed natural to paint them.   I completed most of this painting in a week, but let it sit for a month and then I returned to finished it.  I think that I will still play around with a few of the oranges, but it won't have any major changes.