Autumn: A Season of Changes
Paint and Share, Paint and Share, That’s my Mantra and Habit
In the last blog, I shared small landscapes currently on display at Cafe ArtySana. This week Jardín Botanico, also in the Ruzafa neighborhood of Valencia, is hosting 7 of my acrylic paintings. 1/2 Dream, 1/2 Awake is a small group of works based on images that arose in that time, early in the morning when dreams linger, before I started the day. One is based on my father in Santa Fe, one is a city taken over by jungle, while others are inspired by shifting moods during the lazy pandemic days, and, still others were influenced by poems and strange dreams. With each piece, I display a paragraph describing the inspiration and ask what images haunt the viewer when they awaken from dreams. If you are in Valencia, I hope you drop by to see it.
What Do I Mean by Paint and Share?
Don’t overthink, don’t over research. Choose something, paint, and share it. That may be as simple as an instagram post or blog description. It may be a local exhibit. It may be gift giving or sales. It may be hanging it on my wall or making prints or free downloadable posters for email subscribers. The point is to not think it has to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be ready some long day in the future. I’m too old for that waiting for perfection or permission and I see it as moving the energy out. Why sit on it or squirrel it away in the closet? Life is too short.
Which brings me to the heart of my art- making and this season of embracing the habit of paint, share, repeat…
My husband put it well when he said, “Ever since you had cancer, art has become your major priority.” Yes, exactly, there are so many interests and ideas and mediums to explore with art-making and painting. Something about finally feeling the limits of my time here put a fire under my feet. And I knew it was time to step into it. Like many women, I’ve encouraged the creativity and dreams of others- the children in my classes, and my spouse. I always wanted to help and assist, and facilitate, but rarely during those years did I step fully into my own creative passion. I dabbled, I fit it in after work, I daydreamed. Then, with retirement, I realized I had the time, I had the freedom. There are many things we seem to have to let go of as we age, but in many ways, we gain so much. We gain insights and freedoms. So I picked up a paintbrush in my fifties. It filled the hours of the COVID lockdown. And when the lockdown was lifted, I kept at it because I was hooked on it. Then, with the cancer diagnosis and surgeries, that habit kept me going. I sketched in bed just days after surgery
I joined a drawing class and quit after 2 sessions because I didn’t want to sketch cylinders, pens, and empty vases.
I wanted to go outside and paint trees and flowers. I wanted to watch the dogs in the park and the shifting light against buildings. “I don’t have time to sketch cylinders,” I told a friend. If I were 20 and thought I was working towards perfect, realistic, masterful cylinder pictures, that would be the path I’d take. But at 60, I realize the preciousness of each day. And I’ll be damned if I sit in a darkened room sketching tiny objects. Now I go outside with friends to paint, or I sit in the sun of my studio (converted from a guest bedroom) and paint for an hour, usually 4 or more every day.
So What are the Changes?
Paint and Share, Repeat. Later this Autumn, I’ll be exhibiting Animals, At Home and in the Wild. This will be a large collection of pet portraits and a variety of wild animals in watercolor, gouache, and acrylic in a cafe in my barrio. I’ll post holiday cards for sale soon, too. Recentl,y I’ve been sketching and have begun painting illustrations to a book about a dog. It is time-consuming and a new set of skills working on up to 40 paintings for this every day. Today was horrible- I felt like a robotic AI and needed to step back and evaluate, pivot, change course, because the pieces were no good and it wasn’t fun. This is all part of the process. It is expected. It is okay. It’s real. Not Instagram. Growth involves changing things up, discomfort, and even pain sometimes.
Well, why don’t you just relax in retirement? Why grapple with this? Just read, just travel, just visit coffee shops and music shows…What? That would be like a life of sketching cylinders.
This is my dream life. I have no desire to stop painting, sharing, painting, sharing…