Everything that I experience becomes a bud on the tree of my imagination. One single experience may not seem significant enough, but when it grows among clusters of other unfurling buds, it makes an important contribution to the whole. The greatest impact on my life and art have been the existence of falcons in the sky, art and literature. Even before a saw a real falcon, I was in love with their sharp wings and dark eyes. I found them in heavy books full of John James Audubon's paintings, and painstakingly illustrated in ink by Peter Parnall's hand. A life of yearning for more nature than found in the island of suburban neighborhoods spurred the obsession with trees, leaves, acorns. Oaks represented the old and arboreal, with a mythological sacredness to hidden creatures.

Autumn became a time where the world around me, no matter how cluttered with houses or choked by the growl of engines, burst in color that rivaled any paint or pigment. There seems to be a warmth, felt only visually, when the leaves turn to orange and gold. This piece, created for the ArtOrder "Inspiration" challenge, embodies the concepts, emotions and ideas which represents my own inspiration - a collection of buds that when pieced together, create a poem where wings and leaves and autumn light are the words.

Acrylic on board, 16X20 inches