The Sombre Melancholy of November

The weather is shifting, it is November, the darkest month of the year, and different shades of blue are seeping into the days. As I work in my studio, I am mesmerised by the small fragments of snow drifting down, each one a whisper of the season’s quiet intent. It has been a spectacular fall, with colours that exploded across the landscape, copper tones on the leaves mixed with deep yellows that seemed to glow from within.And now, the first snow arrives, leaving a delicate map of change on the ground.

In this stillness, I find myself suspended between the vibrant memories of autumn and the hushed promise of winter. The snowflakes are writing a new narrative, one that is full of possibility and quiet contemplation.

I am here in my studio, witnessing it all, trying to capture the essence of this fleeting moment, this intersection of light and darkness, colour and quiet.

Maybe it is a sign of a harsh winter coming through, and I find a strange comfort in that. Nature is preparing itself patiently and predictably. I like Novembers, it is a time for reflection, for time to slow down, to light candles in the morning when you taste your morning coffee. I think this is the favourite month I have as an artist, it is time to think, to light a bonfire in the woods. November gives you melancholy, a melancholy that is both sorrowful and sweet.

The first layers of snow are transforming the landscape, softening the edges and blurring the lines between reality and imagination. The world is wrapped in a silence that is almost palpable, a silence that is broken only by the occasional creak of a tree branch or the distant call of a raven. And I am here, wrapped in this silence, listening to the whispers of the season, trying to tap into the mystery that is unfolding.

The snow keeps falling, gently and insistently, covering the earth with a blanket of white. It is a reminder that everything is impermanent, that change is the only constant. And yet, in this impermanence, there is a strange kind of freedom, a freedom to let go, release, and surrender to the beauty of the unknown.

And as I glance out my window with my paintbrush in my hand, I think of T S Eliot’s line from the play from 1935, Murder in the Cathedral:“This golden October declined into sombre November...”The words echo in my mind, a reminder of the cyclical nature of time, of the passage from light to darkness, from life to death, and back to life again.

The seasons turn, and we turn with them, caught in the eternal cycle of birth, growth, decay and rebirth.

“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”Julian of Norwich