Yesterday as I was driving home from my studio I received a call on my cell phone from my oldest son. He was wondering why there was an ambulance, a fire truck and a police car parked in front of our house. Pretty sure that it wasn’t my house on fire I turned the corner and sure enough, there must have been a 911 call because there were all the emergency vehicles. When my husband got home from work, he stopped to talk to one of our neighbors and got the news. We live in a townhouse community and as it turned out one of our neighbor’s grown kid (20 something?) had shot himself with a rifle in the head. So sad. It’s hard to imagine, or maybe not, what can make a person so desperate to end their life.
And then this morning I witnessed something I never expected. As I was driving to work there were cars stopped in the road. It was bizarre because there didn’t appear to be any kind of accident. Then I saw a policeman get out of his car, stand in the middle of the road, point his gun and take two shots at a deer. I’m guessing he was trying to put the deer out of it’s misery from being hit by a car. I was still feeling pretty shaken from what happened the day before and this kind of freaked me out. We are on, then we are off, forever.
Thinking about how depressed that poor kid who killed himself must have been, made me remember when I was kid in middle school and how tough it was. I was not a gifted athlete, I was a chubby kid, and was 12 when my family moved to New Orleans. Talk about a deck stacked against me. Every day I dreaded going to school, facing the bullies and the humiliation that ensued. I felt so incredibly alone, and yes, I had thoughts about killing myself back then. I also had hope. I had to believe that things would get better. In the eighth grade things had gotten so bad I could hardly stand it. Then, one day when I was riding my bike home from a friend’s house, I was hit by a car. It was bad and I mean bad. I had a serious head injury and was laid up in the hospital for almost 2 weeks. I was out of school for about a month and had lost a ton of weight during that time. When I came back I looked like a new person. Not even the vicious asshole bully bothered me anymore.
Weird thing is, during those really hard times when I felt like I had no friends and the world was against me, I always saw the light at the end of the tunnel. Though the tunnel was so damn long, I always felt like I had some kind of destiny, whatever that meant. My one solace was that I had my art. I had always believed in myself as an artist and no one could take that from me.
Okay folks, here’s an opportunity to watch as another of my paintings evolves from blank panels to a finished work of art. This painting, Echo XXIV is on two square panels and it’s total measure is 72″ wide by 36″ tall. This piece is also inspired by my trip to Mexico last summer.
I’ve had a fabulous day of painting, so here is day two…
My oldest son lost a tooth yesterday, one of his molars. Since the tooth fairy still visits the house, he found $5 under his pillow. I’m not sure how many more teeth he has to lose, but at the age of 12, I don’t think it’s many more.
Well, I’m still home since I’m not much of a painter on a rainy day. It’s really kind of a bummer, but rain really effects my mood and my creativity. So up here in Maryland, and it seems all along the Eastern Seaboard we’re having a particularly wet day. I’m quite a go getter and I hate not feeling productive, so on days like this it really becomes about the house and the laundry. I think I’m going to whip up a good chicken and sausage gumbo too, it’s a perfect day for that.
I’ll be heading back down to Louisiana in November, something which I always look forward to. Lots of work to do for Frederick l’Ecole. So many good things are happening with the organization. It will be exciting when I can actually talk about some of these things as they come to fruition.
Back in August during the fundraiser “New-Nu’s is Better than No-Nu’s” at The Blue Moon Saloon in Lafayette, the hosts of the event got the idea to create a video that would “speak” to the producers of “Extreme Makeover Home Edition”. Of course the hope is that they will see what we have lost when our building burnt down and hopefully they will also see the great deal of community support we have for our organization. If you feel so inclined, please share this with your friends. It’s pretty amazing.
It always feels good when I’ve gotten past the halfway point in a painting. My painting speed definitely picks up when I’m more finished, than not, and increases exponentially until it’s complete. It’s funny, my paintings used to go so fast, and now it seems that my style and my methods have taught me to have a lot more patience. It’s odd that I’ve even allowed myself to slow down on my work like this. I’m such an impatient person, in general. This patience thing, if I do say so myself, has all been for the better.
Echo XXIIIoil on panel
48″x48″
I’ve been toying with the idea of painting on canvas or linen. Toying so much that I’m removing a window in my studio to extend a wall so I can set up my canvas there. Why am I doing this? Well, I LOVE my panels, I mean LOVE. Painting on wood was a love I discovered one day when I was working in my studio in Baton Rouge. I haven’t put a brush to canvas since maybe the late 90’s. My hopes in moving back to a fabric surface is that this will help to alleviate the risk of damage and also make shipping a lot easier. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the surface will lend itself to my style and we will work well together.
Up to Thursday, September 16th of last week my friend George and I had been working tirelessly on a grant to help rebuild our little non-profit cultural education organization, Frederick l’Ecole des Arts. George delivered the package to FedEx to be delivered overnight and in their hands on Friday morning. We are now holding our breath to see if our organization makes it to the next round. So, for the rest of Thursday, I kind of felt like someone had let all the air out of my tires. It was weird, it was like all that crazy, frenetic, 5 hour long phone conferences, staying up till one the morning stuff, though it exhausted me, gave me a sense of purpose. When all of it was over, I felt kind of sad. But then Friday morning came, the sun was shining, I put on my music and picked up my brush, and got back to work on my poor, neglected Echo XXIII, YAY!!!!!!!!!!
Okay, so this weekend my family and I headed to Wheeling, West Virginia to visit with my mom and dad. It’s a kind of difficult thing to do because, well, my dad is getting really old. He’s only 73, but he’s been suffering with all kinds of problems. He recently had surgery on his spine. He’d been having a great deal of pain couldn’t walk because of stenosis. At least now the pain is pretty much gone, but he’s struggling so hard to regain his strength. His muscles had atrophied so much. On top of his physical problems, he is also having signs of memory loss and other related issues with the mind. My dad was a very powerful attorney in his day. A really smart man with quick wit and incredibly handsome. He looks so much like George Clooney that when I see George Clooney in a movie, it’s like watching my dad.
So we spent hours talking to my dad, engaging him in conversations and watching old home movies. In the movies I watched as my sisters and I used to spend hours doing handstands against the wall, turning cartwheels, playing in the snow, swimming and just goofing around. Looking back at my mom and dad in their youth. It was great to reminisce about the past, and I really enjoyed seeing us dressed in the styles of the 70’s and early 80’s. Oh man did we kill a lot of plaid!
The one lesson I am taking from this weekend is that I don’t want to wait until I retire to do the things I want to do, travel, live in exotic places, learn new languages, etc… My dad never got to enjoy his retirement. He worked up until he couldn’t anymore, and now he is old and struggling to maintain some type of quality of life. My husband’s father had a similar experience, dying in his sixties as a result of radiation treatment he had received in his thirties for cancer. He too never retired, worked up until the day he had his heart surgery. Unfortunately, the damage and calcification was too great. He was never able to fully recover and passed four months after the operation, never being able to leave a medical facility because of his fragility. Life is precious and short. I know my days are numbered and I want to be able to look back and know that I have done it all.
