This is the largest abstract painting I’ve completed to date. It was inspired by the poem by Robert Frost called “Nothing Gold Can Stay”.

Nature's first green is gold, 

Her hardest hue to hold. 

Her early leaf's a flower; 

But only so an hour. 

Then leaf subsides to leaf. 

So Eden sank to grief, 

So dawn goes down to day, 

Nothing gold can stay.

My interpretation of the poem is different from most. Here in East Tennessee, spring is days away. March 1st marks the first day of meteorological spring, and March 21st is the official start of the season.

The color of the earliest leaves of spring! It’s a delicate, incandescent green, and when the sun hits it just right, it can even take on a golden yellow hue.

That very, very first spring green is unlike any other! It is as rare as gold - as hard to come by as earth’s most valuable metal. Truly, gold is nature’s - and people’s - hardest “hue” to hold, literally and figuratively. Riches do sprout wings and fly away. Spring golden-green grows deeper and different by the day. It disappears.

As bittersweet as they are, I see in these words a celebration of sorts. There is no celebration without appreciation, and there is no appreciation without a clear sense that the most beautiful things are also the most rare and transient.

Here is where my interpretation of the poem differs from most: “Eden sank to grief”, that’s true. Yet I know for sure that Eden will be restored. Eternity stretches forward far more than an hour. Today at age 52, and then at 62 and 82, I will have no less days ahead of me than when I first began.

All that matters most to you and I will, because of the grace of God, always be ours to have and to hold.

Nothing gold can stay. But it also can’t stay gone forever.

This piece is available here