Evening signals an interval of harmony and announces the end of the day. Color relationships become saturated and complex, shadows lengthen, and their movement accelerates. During midday hours light seems suspended and unchanging, making it easier to deny that time is passing. Evening is different. Look away for a moment and gray has overtaken the landscape. As a result, it has become my habit to be present and to witness with intense awareness the quality and variation of light during the hours between five and eight. I want to delay the transition, and hoard the color, but that would be like holding breath.

There is an aesthetic and psychological challenge to observing evening light that is often accompanied with both wonder and sadness. Pay attention when the tide is high and reflects the red sky, when the water has ebbed and the mud becomes violet, and when the clouds, rocks and trees catch the last gold. Pay attention to discern that moment when the color has finally faded to gray, when light shifts from sun to moon, and when artificial light dominates our space. Once evening has passed I am resigned to the absence of the day’s light and reminded that time moves forward.

Nina Jerome