Michaelmas Daisies by Lynn Rushton-Reed

Original Oil on Canvas
30×36 inches Unframed

This work is inspired by Michaelmas, a moment of balance in the turning year—when light and dark briefly hold equal weight and the world pauses between abundance and rest. Falling at the edge of the harvest and the beginning of the inward season, Michaelmas has long marked a time of reckoning, gratitude, and quiet courage.

I am drawn to what happens in the margins—the spaces between seasons, between what is finished and what is beginning. Michaelmas is a threshold marked not by spectacle, but by blessing: a gathering of what has been earned, a gentle accounting, and a readiness to release what cannot be carried forward.

The Michaelmas daisy, blooming late and unapologetically at summer’s edge, becomes both symbol and companion in this work. Its persistence and color feel like a final benediction—beauty offered just as the light begins to thin.

This piece holds that fragile balance: brightness and shadow, abundance and restraint, gratitude and letting go. It honors the quiet grace found at the margins, where endings are softened by blessing and change arrives not as loss, but as promise.