Autumn’s Best of Cheer

By Carrie Jacobson

I know that autumn is inevitable, but every year, it excites me. And now that I paint, it excites me even more.

It’s more than the colors in the fields and in the trees. It’s the pleasure of kicking through fallen, drying leaves; the thrilling snap of a frosty morning on my cheeks and in my nose; the way the stars gleam sharp and brilliant in these clear and chilly nights.

But painting the fall is the best, and this scene is sort of the quintessential autumn painting for me. It’s a study for a larger painting I am doing as a commission. And for all of you in the mid-Hudson Valley, yes, it does look familiar. It’s on Route 17A, on the left as you’re heading into Florida.

I took the title of the painting from a poem by Helen Hunt Jackson. You can click here to read the entire poem; the stanza I lifted the title from is right here:

By all these lovely tokens

September days are here,

With summer’s best of weather,

And autumn’s best of cheer.