I haven't posted in a while, not because I didn't want to, I just have so darn busy meeting the demands of deadlines necessary in my painting work life. My life whizzing by in a crazy way. Which leads me to my painful point.
Suddenly, in the middle of all this art/professional mayhem, a lot of it amazing, governing your time and then some, heck, your priority, shows, great commissions, new teaching posts, etc...your breath is taken away by life making you catch your breath. And making you stand drop dead still. And think. And cry. And deeply regret.
In the space of a month, two people, both husbands of good friends who were so much part of our earlier lives with young/teenage families, Halloween, birthday, holiday parties, trips away, carpool etc..., quite frankly all the things we did at the that time to raise our kids the best way we knew how, suddenly died in very difficult tragic circumstances. I found myself painting very sad and shaken.
Most of all sad that I had let painting overtake that phone call I should have made so many times. Sad that suddenly good old friend times had given way to just working, achieving. Painting in the obsessive compulsive way that I do it. I regret this.
I feel disappointed in myself that I let friends go...and then they are gone forever. You can never pick up the phone again. You are left at their memorials. Feeling dreadful. As an artist, we work, work, work. In a solitary way. I have at times felt myself becoming reclusive and thinking, accepting, this was OK., too tired at the end of the day to reach out to my immediate family yet alone anyone else. My art life more important than keeping ties.
Sadly not OK.
So, in the midst of this, I found myself taking the time to finally paint something I had always wanted to paint but somehow never found the time to do it. My eldest daughter, now 22, and a delight in every way.
This photo of her had stared at me EVERY morning when I woke up. I had thought for years, I needed to paint that. Yes, it is cutesy. But that I should really do it. Not for gain. Just because...
Well, I woke up in the middle of all this yuk stuff, in the middle of intense deadlines, and just did it in five hours. Because I kinda had to.
I like it. My agency hates it.
But that's fine. If I keel over tomorrow which is highly possible, at least I did something that I knew needed to be painted. It will be in our family forever as a moment in time that mom bothered to paint finally.
Most of all my daughter likes it....and that is the best.
I will be taking the time from now on to make that phone call.
Check out the September issue of American Artist Magazine. I am thrilled that they have just published a great feature on the previously mentioned Hall of Fame Series painted for The Players's Club permanent collection in New York.
