Winter leaf

A single winter leaf, mottled and patched, lingers on a twig. It is a lonely image that also speaks of endurance. Though the leaf will soon drop, it still glows with an inner light.

My personal title for this painting is ‘And every fair from fair sometime declines’ from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Some people will doubtless see this painting of a winter leaf as sad. I have no problem with that. It is sad because all beauty is transient. I think we need to reflect on that much more in these days of climate disaster.

You might also like these red berries or these November leaves.