When I visited the curator for the gallery in DC, she looked at my work and said to me, “We’d like you to show your work here. And it must be in spring.” She was looking at the colors in the very small work that I brought her. She saw spring colors in it – and the plan was set.

Last fall I dug up a few of the geraniums that look so festive in my outside planter. I wanted them to brighten my winter, but indoors. Thank goodness they are blooming now: hope for summer. Here it is March 24 and I went outside to shoot a photo of that forlorn looking planter that sits on the way to the dock:

Look closely. Yes, snow is falling.

I grew up in Virginia. Spring is it’s best season: long and slow. When I drive south next week, I hope I go from white covered ground in the north here to increasingly green and vibrant colors as I head south. Maybe not all the way to the pink-red geraniums, but perhaps bare ground, then green grass and maybe a daffodil or tulip?

I’m wondering how close to the colors that are in the landscape of DC my piece will be? The part of Virginia I lived in is mountainous. It’s one thing to see the sun hitting the mountains at dawn at any time of year: it’s the radiant pink initially. And then, in spring? As the light increases at dawn, you see the actual colors of the trees but intensified. Saturated. Around this time of year in Virginia, the new leaves come in glowing with that chartreuse that I worked into my piece so emphatically. And then, little by little, as the light of each day increases, the colors of the landscape become less intense; dawn has become day.

In my piece that I’m carting to DC, that’s the path of light I trace across it, from left to right. I start with the pinks and reds and then move across to the intense yellow-greens in the middle. Finally at the far end the greens lighten and end softly.

I don’t have my piece hanging now. All I see is the white of snow falling. It makes me yearn for these colors again – in the art and definitely, in nature.