The Architecture of Breath

There is a specific, brittle clarity that arrives in late October, just before the first frost settles into the soil. It is a light that strips away the vanity of the summer, leaving the world exposed in its most honest, skeletal form. In the north, we learn to watch the trees during these weeks; they become like ink drawings against a pale, washed-out sky, their branches tracing the invisible currents of the air. There is a quiet desperation in the way they reach upward, a structural longing that mirrors our own need to find order in the vastness of the atmosphere. We are often told to look for the fullness of life, the bloom and the leaf, but there is a profound emotional truth in the bareness that follows. When the clutter of the season falls away, we are left with the essential geometry of our own existence. Does the sky feel heavier when it is finally allowed to touch the earth?

Jack Hoye has captured this quiet transition in his work titled A Sky Of Limbs. The way the light filters through the reaching branches reminds me of those final, crisp days before the long winter sets in. Does this view make you feel smaller, or perhaps more connected to the air above?