September Stubble - Oil on Canvas

September brings such mixed blessings - the mist, yes, and the mellow fruitfulness, red-orbed apples gleaming on the orchard boughs, but also the sense of an ever-sinking sun as the summer bereaves us. It is always sad to say goodbye to the swallows. Soon the first frosts will begin to cast their gossamer-lace veil of powdered ice upon the woods and fields and nip the lush-leaved gardens, until winter finally draws near, probing earth and tree to the bone.
But usually, especially so these last twenty years, the sun fights on bravely for a time, and often it seems that summer will remain, though the light fades a little day by day, and the evenings draw in. Here in the south-west of England a good summer comes from North Africa, France and Spain, but September is the month when the Atlantic reclaims its supremacy. The onset of autumn later in the month almost always brings with it large skies and bowling winds from the great ocean to the west.
Two or three times a week I try to get out for a few miles' walk in the nearby lanes, crossing fields which in September are easy to negotiate now the harvest is in. The silver-grey and golden stubble gives the land a look of threadbare dignity, and strongly contrasting striations between bands of cut-corn stalks and earth and new-sprung grass sweep and comb the rolling fields as if an artist were playing with the perspectives. Gone are the fluffy rounded cumuli of summer's lazy lordship, and now low clouds piled in ever whirling scoops come scudding over the hills, jostling for possession of the sky and occasionally parting to let the sun burst through. The wind is once again fresh on one's face, the air exhilarating in the lungs, and the pace of walking quickens after the fatigue of summer's heat.
All around us in the little valley of the Yeo rise hills and heights in all directions, Whitestone and Telegraph hill above Exeter, from the top of which at night the city lights appear as if one were landing an aircraft there, Dartmoor to the south-west, and the bluffs above the Teign gorge, and the great hills above Bickleigh to the north-east. So always a walk opens out onto a distant view. As I painted this picture I wanted to capture something of the "zing" of the fresh air in a September Atlantic wind, and the ever changing contortions of the clouds as the harmony of the summer sky breaks up, and to honour the distant hills, which are magical in their ethereal blue softness, and to rejoice over the stippled patterns that fill the empty cornfields.

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