This piece was born in a rather unconventional way. 

In addition to being a painter, I am also a fine art photographer, who happens to be obsessed with surfaces and textures, in the tiniest spaces.  I am a noticer of the tiny things, and I love to magnify those tiny details with my macro camera lens, or whatever I can get my hands on to magnify the beauty I find.

This piece is actually a happy surprise, unplanned, and beautiful all by chance.  It all started when my family and I went on a fall hiking trip to Mississippi Palisades State Park, in Savannah, Illinois.  It was late fall, and we had even had snow that morning! We spent the day hiking around, the boys finding things to climb on, and me, trailing behind, marveling over all the colorful leaves on the ground and the fuzzy mosses that filled the nooks and crannies of the forest.

Later that afternoon, my youngest son and I hung out in our van, "my mobile art studio" while my oldest and my husband went for one more hike.  My youngest and I opened the sunroof and windows, and just listened to the birds and watched the leaves dance through the air as they fell from the trees.  It was a beautiful site!  I should mention that my youngest was also entertained with the Merlin bird app on my phone....making all kinds of bird calls!

As he played and listened to the "birds" and the real birds, I got out my paints, and started mixing colors, in various shades of yellows, reds, blues, to develop a palette of fall colors. 

Here's the happy surprise: I was using oil paints, so I had to keep cleaning my brush in the paint thinner, and blotting the brush in the rag to dry it.  A few hours after we arrived home that night, I was looking at the rag that I was blotting my brush on, and I was so amazed by the colors on the rag!  So much so, that I had to capture a 1 square inch area with my camera!  This image is the result.  The textures from the cloth and the colors were magnified in such a wonderful way, that I was compelled to share it with you in the form of a print!