October 29, 2023
By Arthur H. Gunther III
There is – can be – a moment lying in an old iron bed of the very early 1900s, mattress high off the wooden floor, fall morning after a sneaked-in summer-style night, when a whiff of the autumn chase comes to say hello. It is brief, like an unexpected kiss that is deeply romantic because its memory lingers long after.
That scene was not my intention when I painted “Breeze,” principally because some deliberation is involved in most artwork, and I had not conjured up a window with a curtain flowing in the gust. But all creativity, for better or worse, involves intuition and a pulling of self from within your own art language.
The youth of my time saw little air conditioning, and windows open well into October, even the first days of November, was common. The smell of fall – a better word, “fragrance” – that visits with early sun can be carried in by a poof of air, lifting the thin cafe curtain worn from both season and washing.
The moment, and its repetition(s) will go with the arrival of winter and a closed window as it will when the grown-up child, now adult, leaves both the antique iron bed and all the dreams within.
But linger it will that memory of a fall morning and a diaphanous curtain.
The writer is a retired newspaperman. (ahgunther@yahoo.com)
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