Beyond Autumn Gate

There are places that touch you so profoundly, they become a part of your personal, imaginative geography. Some years ago in my travels through the English Cotswolds, I found a wonderful old stone gate – simple and evocative, mysterious and inviting – that inspired my celebrated painting The Autumn Gate. When I first came upon it, I knew that I must paint it.

While I painted The Autumn Gate from memory I’m my California studio, I became obsessed with knowing what lay beyond. Nanette and I had to return to England and make a pilgrimage to that ancient gate in order to discover what lay beyond the stately, ivy draped stone manor house I celebrate here in Beyond Autumn Gate. Here is the perfect companion painting to The Autumn Gate, and a splendid evocation of how gracious, courtly, and distinguished it must be to live as “Lord of the English Manor.” In my daydreams, I often return to this favorite spot of mine.