Potential
@ 2026 j.g. lewis
Archival Inkjet Print
signed + numbered
limited edition of 11
Image size: 9 ¾” x 15 1/5″
Canvas size: 12″ x 18″
$135.00 (unframed)
plus shipping
payment by e-transfer or Pay Pal
email:
j.g. lewis is a writer/photographer/printmaker
based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
It hits, annually, about this time of year.
Could be the third week of August; at times, earlier. It hurts. You feel it. It’s that time of the year; summer is, again, nearing its end.
Now, calendrically, there is still a good month left to the season, but the signs are showing up now. Naturally. Last night the thermometer dipped to single digits. All those events you had lined up over the summer are done. Most of the produce has been picked from the garden, and the flowers don’t boast that friendly same fresh appearance.
As a Gemini, summer is the first season I experienced. My childhood memories are full of summer: bikes rides, sailing, water skiing, days at the beach (because the beach was right there). Family vacations, camping our way across Canada; sweltering in the family station wagon in the days before air-conditioning. My first summer job, and the one that followed; my 17th summer remains one of my most memorable. Decades later, as a parent, I shared many similar memories with my daughter.
I believe my life is marked by summer. It is, or has always been, my season. Mid-August, to me, has always marked its end.
As a kid, even a teenager, it was knowing you were going back to school in a matter of weeks. You tried, especially as a teen, to squeeze a little more life into summer, staying up later, pushing the boundaries of your curfew or lamenting that baseball season was over.
Summer is a feeling, more than a season.
Now, as a full-fledged adult (I recently celebrated my 65th summer) I’m feeling it a little more. There is less to look forward to: no new classes, no new back-to-school wardrobe. Yes, it has been like this for a couple of years, but it hits a little harder, as a senior citizen, this year.
These past couple of days I’ve been rather lethargic, even unmotivated. I’ve struggled to even do the stuff that I enjoy doing.
For the longest time I’ve associated Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) with winter but for me, I can feel there is a tinge of depression that comes with the end of summer. I’m even feeling it a good month before it happens.
Yes, right now, I am stuck in the sadness of summer.
© 2026 j.g. lewis
I treated myself to lunch the other day at Cindy’s on Portage Avenue. It’s a ‘close enough to a greasy spoon’ that has been located close enough to downtown Winnipeg for decades.
The location that was once one of the many Junior’s restaurants that dotted this city when I was a teenager. I had my first fresh-cut fries at Juniors and those memorable burgers kept me coming back to the local chain.
Cindy’s Burgers & Subs does the same sort of thing, and it does it consistently. It’s a family restaurant in the sense that there is family behind the counter that greets and serves you, and family hovering over the grill. It’s the kind of place that exists less and less in these days of trendy foods and national and international fast-food chains.
It is nothing fancy, but it’s clean and convenient.
It’s the kind of place that needs to be supported; and Cindy’s is. Noticeable are the local patrons who frequent the place. You’ll see moms and dads with a couple of kids from nearby Wolseley or the West End out for a meal. Google reviews rave about the burgers and the souvlaki and list it as a “go-to place”. I keep telling myself I should try a sub, or the souvlaki, but I keep longing for burgers that are so close to home cooked.
I ordered the Fat Boy Special (chilli and all) with those fries smothered in gravy; it was just what I needed.
© 2026 j.g. lewis
Ambiguity counts when nothing is clear. Each element contains
a hint of the unknown, thoughts mainly rented and never owned.
Frequently we live in this state, an indescribable location, where
all that becomes accomplished has no reason, probability, or space.
Open to interpretation, abandoned by the muse or inspiration, a
hesitating reality too far gone. Accountability is obviously vacant.
We do not talk about specifics. We speak more in generalities.
Conceptually abstract, conceivably incomplete, yet bewildering.
The art has a greater dimension than the canvas or its substance.
© 2026 j.g. lewis
Tiger Lilies in the lane: not wild, but uncared for. Growing; uninterrupted essentially. Surviving. Living and prospering through the winds, humiliating heat, and dreadful rains of this summer. Up until now.
These are not the flowers you see along the crescent in well-tended garden beds full of iris, rudbeckia, snapdragons, or common daisies. These are the flowers that creep out under fences, or stand tall beside the bike racks, garbage bins, or garages alongside parking pads. They own the space they borrow. Pushing up from the soil through the spring, sharing pleasant greenery as the seasons arrived, the lilies continued to capriciously fill space in our lives.
Part of our landscape. Noticed, but not truly acknowledged, these flowers have spent past days withering in the heat, and still show off a genuine beauty. Even now they share a simple joy, if you take the time to notice.
Often, we don’t.
The resplendent colours are difficult to ignore. There is a hint of fuchsia (is it purple or pink?) revealing itself through the amber or xanthous, a golden orange so otherworldly, yet entirely natural.
Is there another colour, or another summer flower, that does what it does to the senses?
Probably not, and not for long.
It is only as the lilies in the lane begin to fade away that we take in how much a part of our lives they have casually come to be through the weeks. We simply walked or drove by.
The month will change in a matter of days.
In maybe a week, the laneway lilies will be gone. There will be less beauty to sustain us.
August seems to take away more than it offers. Summer will slowly lose its vigor, like the lilies, and we will have to wait, again, for next year.
© 2026 j.g. lewis