Autumnal Liminality and the Open Road
A Year Later: Fall Nostalgia and Reflections on My Cross-Country Art Journey
“Fall's juxtaposition of warmth and oncoming cold, vibrant life and inevitable decay, can create a complex mix of romance, bittersweetness, and a sense of something ending.”
This fall I’m feeling wistful, even more so than usual. I find myself unexpectedly reliving and processing moments from the Septembers of my life. I'm seeing them with fresh eyes, laced with a deepened appreciation of the autumnal liminality they represent.
First days of school, anxiety and excitement intertwined, imagining the seemingly infinite paths laid out before me. Countless memories of significant personal moments are tied to this time of year too, but nothing is more present in my mind than my experiences just over a year ago, travelling across the country to exhibit at The Other Art Fair in Los Angeles.
I recently discovered that the flood of memories and feelings that accompany the change in season is a common human experience, and it has a name: Fall Nostalgia.
“Fall nostalgia is the sentimental longing for past times associated with the autumn season, often triggered by its unique sensory elements.
This emotion is connected to positive memories of simpler times, the bittersweet feeling of transition, and the comfort of familiar rituals as the year turns.”
While looking back through Art Insider newsletters from this time of year, I was struck by something I wrote in October of 2021:
“This month is so fleeting. Maybe this is why I cherish it so much.”
I had just released The Wanderlust Collection, a series of coastal landscape oil paintings exploring my feelings of nostalgia around the life-changing trip I took to California way back in 2017.
My experiences painting that collection were, in many ways, as profound as the trip that inspired it. Reflecting on this collection helped me realize that, much like the tides, we all face countless highs and lows on our journey through life.
It is one of the essential truths of the human experience.
You can read more about The Wanderlust Collection here. If it speaks to you then I’d love it if you subscribed to my Art Insiders newsletter for upcoming collection releases and intimate glimpses behind the scenes of my life as an artist.
As the days grow shorter, I find myself overtaken by waves of this bittersweet fall nostalgia. The body keeps score: the smell of woodsmoke, the taste of the crisp air, and the beauty of the changing leaves. These sensory triggers bring with them a flood of vivid memories and a powerful urge to reflect, to relive, and to process as much as I can from my experiences last September.
A year has passed since setting out on an incredible cross-country journey to California, crossing eleven states and travelling more than 9, 000 kilometres with my husband and our dachshund Oliver, with a trailer full of paintings in tow. I’m filled with a deep sense of longing for the highs of that adventure, and an appreciation for how rare that type of experience is. There’s a part of me that feels a deep sense of longing to return to those moments, to remember every detail of both the travel and the experiences that would follow.
Memories from our days on the road
Crossing the border into Michigan the night we departed was the first moment where it all started to feel real. After the stress and uncertainty of preparation, I could finally begin to soak in the excitement of a grand adventure.
I can recall so clearly the way the landscapes shifted along the journey. After days of travelling across the flat plains of Iowa and Nebraska, something started to change. It was dark as we were coming into Colorado, so it wasn’t until the following morning when we got back on the road that the rising altitude became apparent, letting us know we had reached a monumental new leg of our journey.
From the road, Colorado, USA
As we ascended through the mountains, it felt like we left summer behind, finding ourselves deep in the heart of autumn. Not long after that, we got our first breathtaking views of the snowy peaks of the mountains, a memory that I can recall clearly.
Descending from the high altitudes of Colorado towards Utah revealed an immense range of new landscapes. On our way to St. George (our last stop before making it to Los Angeles) we drove along winding roads through deep red rock canyons carved out by the passage of time.
Outlook in Utah, USA
The desert landscape from Utah to Los Angeles offered an otherworldly variety of tones, and I long to return and explore these areas thoroughly. Though we were determined to reach our destination quickly and often wished for more time to linger, I couldn't resist taking advantage of the vista points along the way.
Somewhere on the road between Nevada and California.
Memory is a funny thing. When I look back it’s the perfect moments and feelings that stand out first, some moments and feelings are so vivid that I can picture every detail with perfect clarity.
But there is another kind of memory that is just as vivid in its own way. Fear and uncertainty while sitting in a Lowe’s parking lot in Iowa, holding Ollie in my lap and watching my husband try (and succeed!) to find a way to brace the wheels on the crate containing all of my artwork.
The scraping sound of metal and the panic that followed in Topanga when, on the morning of the show, we hit a pothole and the trailer detached from our car. Feelings of relief that the safety chain held, that we were going uphill at the time, and that nothing was damaged.
Sunrise in Topanga Canyon, CA
The challenges of those experiences grounded my perspective, reminding me of the importance of embracing the flow and acknowledging that there is something to gain from every experience.
As I sit with these memories, I’m struck by how quickly the mood shifted once we arrived at The Other Art Fair. There was a visceral sense of relief—the kind that only comes after months of preparation, crossed state lines, and near-disasters handled with determination, hope, and a little luck. Suddenly, I’m on cloud nine. After everything I had gone through to get here, this felt effortless. I could set aside what had come before and whatever would happen after. It was there that I savoured every moment.
To simply be there meant everything.
Opening Night at The Other Art Fair LA (2024), Santa Monica, CA
P.S. As I was reflecting on this trip, I found a post I shared on Threads a year ago summarizing some of the challenges I faced while preparing for this exhibition:
With Love,
Kristi