Local Painter Greets Spring with New Work

Autumn Kegley kicks the wintertime blues with springtime blooms.

"I find in the early spring, I usually get into a serious creative funk," she said. "The best way to kick start my painting is to buy a beautiful flower and bring it home."

She makes that flower the centerpiece of her newest works.  For example, this spring she was attracted to orchids.  Thus, her newest works this spring, Emergence and Emergence II, feature orchids as a major element.

Flowers have long intrigued Autumn. 

"They're what I find inspirational and beautiful," Autumn said. "I love those magical moments when you're out hiking and you come across a teeny little lady's slipper. It's a gift."

What's intriguing to me is that both works feature a woman emerging from the heart of the orchid. Now, I've known Autumn's work for years, for we met shortly after she opened her frame design store on Main Street in the downtown.  We've had many long, rich conversations about mythology, wood lore and Renaissance themes in art.

In fact, I've long grown used to seeing nymphs show up in her works.

What fascinates Autumn about the female form is "the elegance of the curves," she said. 

Indeed, a great source of inspiration to Autumn is Czech Art Nouveau painter Alphonse Mucha, who came to influence so much of the art deco scene with his iconic portrayals of women.

Autumn's work this last decade has increasingly featured an intertwining of human and floral elements.  Her painting Under Mast, completed ten years ago, depicts a woman with a tulip bloom for hair. 

And her Maidenhair, also completed at that time, features a woman whose hair is a large palm frond.

"It's basically showing the importance of a human figure to be no greater and no less than the importance and fabulous beauty of a palm frond," she said.

I've also watched Autumn's brushwork steadily grow in confidence over that same period of time.  Interestingly, she is one of the few painters I know who works equally well in watercolor and oils.

"I enjoy them both, a great deal," she said.  "Each one has a totally different feeling."

She feels more at home in watercolor, if only because she has worked in that medium since childhood.  She also enjoys the intensity of the colors.

Oils came later, during college.  "I became very attracted to it," she said.  "It's an incredibly sensual medium."  She also appreciates the ability to create such complex images in oils.

Whether watercolor or oils, however, painting is very much Autumn's artistic home.

"Painting really is, for me, my spiritual path," she said.  "No matter what, I'm always going to paint."