Relinquish- Autumn Leaves Painting

Title:       Relinquish

Madium: Acrylic on panel

Size:         76cm x 76cm (30"x 30")

About this painting:  Relinquish is a warm, comforting painting of golden acer leaves in Autumn. It emits a soft glow of comfort & relaxation & makes an eye catching focal point to a room.

Relinquish; to let go, give up, cease to keep.

The beautiful Acer tree brings interest all year round, but in Autumn it explodes with a riot of vivid colour & warm tones. Before it lets go of its cloud of palmately lobed leaves it creates such a stunning show that it takes your breath away. when the leaves drop, Winters grip leaves bare branches. But this state of hibernation is a process of regeneration & when the sap rises again in Spring it returns with a new spectacle of wonder.

Painting these leaves, before they fall away,  turned my mind towards the impact of letting go in life. We naturally want to hold on to things , especially if they are beautiful like the acer leaves. There are so many things we hold on to; material things, emotions, feelings, people... desperately clinging to the familiar & known.

Holding on can be detrimental to both our physical & mental well being. Clinging to beliefs we have about people or situations can keep us stuck in negative patterns & painful experiences.

It's not always easy to just part with our attachment, but we can purposefully take the time to stop & think about what clinging on is costing us. when it becomes clear thats it's only ourselves we are hurting by refusing to part with what we know as familiar.

Letting go can be the most powerful thing we can do. Giving up on toxic relationships, parting with material things which just clutter our lives, renouncing whirling thoughts which poison our minds. when we let these things drop away into the ether, like falling Autumn leaves, it creates space & energy for positive new things to flow into our being.

The Autumn leaves fall away & sitting with our feelings & placing each harmful thing to a leaf & imagining it detaching from the tree & drifting away is a beautiful way of clearing away the unwanted, unnecessary, clinging negativity in our lives.

The physical & mental space created by letting go brings us the opportunity to fill our lives with new, positive habits. It open our minds to new ways of doing things. It lightens the load of emotional baggage we carry.

This simple painting of golden leaves can bring that focus to ponder on what we need to let go of. Bringing freedom & comfort to our minds.