oil on canvass, 70x90 cm

About the painting

Autumn is a distinct mode of existence in which the world and the human meet as equals.

It is a time between. Between fullness and emptiness, between light and darkness, between life and its fading. Autumn seems to offer a chance to see life more clearly, stripped of summer's bustle and spring's fervor.
It does not promise eternity, yet neither does it take away the last shred of hope. It simply shows things as they are—bare, transparent, smoking with the bitterness of lingering warmth.
Everything superfluous gradually falls away, like leaves from the trees, leaving only what is essential.
The autumn air is crystalline: every sound carries farther, every color is seen more deeply, every thought rings clearer. This is the air of metaphysical clarity. In autumn, we see farther than usual—not only through space, but through time, and into ourselves.
The autumn sky does not forgive self-deception. It demands honesty. Beneath that high, pale-blue vault, it is impossible to hide behind words. All that remains is to be—to be who you are, in this final, pre-winter nakedness.

Autumn lays bare the essence of things. Trees that have shed their leaves reveal their true architecture—not adorned, not concealed, but honest and austere. So too, if we allowed ourselves, we might shed the superficial: the busyness, the illusions, the excess attachments—and reveal our own authentic core. In this existential nakedness, we become transparent to ourselves. Like the forest through which we now see far into the distance, we finally glimpse our own depths—those hidden in summer beneath the foliage of distraction.

Autumn has its own distinct scent—the scent of smoke. Smoke from burning leaves, smoke from the first fires of the season, smoke of farewells. In this scent lies all the bitterness of time. It reminds us that everything passes. That we had summer, but it is gone. That all which did not burn with love will burn now—in this gray, smoky haze, redolent of childhood and loss.

The bitter smoke of autumn is the smoke of time. Time always smells of bitterness, for it is irreversible. We can only breathe it in—and feel, with each breath, how something irretrievable slips away. Yet in this bitterness there is also a strange purification. Autumn asks the important questions for which summer left no time.

In autumn, melancholy arrives. But melancholy is not a sickness; it is a capacity for depth. It is not depression, which devalues everything, but a particular state of the soul in which it becomes capable of genuine experience. Perhaps it is only in quiet sorrow that we can see things in their true light—not in the rosy light of hope, nor in the black light of despair, but in that clear, twilight light which is the light of truth.

Autumnal melancholy is wisdom without illusions. It does not deny joy, but places it within the context of finitude. It does not reject love, but knows its fragility. It does not curse death, but learns from it—learns to cherish each day as if it were the last.

Autumn is also an aesthetic of decay, a chance to see beauty in farewell. The Japanese call this mono no aware—the poignant beauty of things. It is the ability to see beauty in what passes. In this lies autumn's great gift. It teaches us the intensity of presence. When you know that everything will soon end, you begin to live truly. You do not postpone until tomorrow. You do not wait for the right moment. You do not waste time on the trivial.

Winter will come and erase the last colors, the last hopes of warmth. What will remain of autumn? Clarity of vision, purity of breath, the bitter smoke of wisdom.
We have grown lighter—we have shed what is excessive, unnecessary, illusory. We have grown quieter—we have learned to listen to silence. We have grown more honest—we have seen ourselves without embellishment.
And perhaps, in this quiet transparency of autumn, the most important understanding reveals itself: life is beautiful not only in its fullness, but also in its fleetingness