What do we build in our lives? A bridge? A fence? A pathway? Often I feel as if I am building a fortress, stacked high with unreturned phone calls, missed opportunities, fear. Time alone. The fortress, under the steel grey sky against which we seek a ray of light. The streets are cold and damp, yet one comes upon a towering pine. Life, in its soft greeness, seems a gift, a blessing. In the greyness of the sky there still contains a hope. A hope of some fulfillment in this life.

Always looking for something

Should we accommodate our fears or fight them? Are people really changeable? That boulder in your life-do you move it or lean on it?

Where are our comforts in life? Not the sofa kind, the soul comforts. We take care of so many, and then there is us. We walk alone. Ultimately.

The tree stands outside, devoid of opinion, and yet we give it one. We give it a feeling. In winter it stands for loneliness, for a world bereft of that comfort we want, it shivers in its bareness and not even the bird will give it solace. But come back in the spring. It will have warmth and joy, and the birds will make their home there. And yet it is the same tree. So different now.

We look for someone to make memories with.

Ghosts

It's funny how revelations can come to you almost anytime, at unexpected occasions. I was folding sheets a couple of days ago when I realized what my recent art was about. For the past several months I have been preparing for the show at the Carnegie Arts Center in Covington. I have been working with paint and collage; old textbooks, outdated maps. Discarded hardware. Bits of toys that no longer have any use. Is this what happens to people? Outdated, discarded, invisible, yet still with 2 feet on the earth, they move about like living ghosts, longing for the true ghosts that left the world long ago. Special to no one but themselves, they seem ethereal, unseen, but still feel pain, still cry, still have the requirements of a living body. These ghosts have the burdens of life and few of the joys.

I have just returned from 2 weeks of intense art making at Arrowmont, in Tennessee. One of the suggestions of our instructor, Andrew Saftel, was to go over old sketchbooks and incorporate some of the personal symbolism that may be in them. Of course, to go into those old sketchbooks is to delve into the past! Sketches and clippings of friends, travel writings, totally wacked out oil pastel drawings. And dreams. Lots of accounts of my dreams. Almost more than the drawings they reflect the state of my life at the time. Many were of my mother who died in 1996. One dream was of an old decrepit chair that had been left in a garage, ready for disposal. It was a cheap imitation of a more expensive piece of furniture that my mother had always wanted. Maybe that's what I thought of my mother's life- full of disappointments and compromises. Had life indeed dealt her the bad hand she believed she had at the end of her life? Or maybe this is just my interpretation. Maybe we never really know what our parents wanted. And maybe that is their secret to keep.

In these sketchbooks were many pictures of Jamie. Also some sketches that he actually did. Here is a sketch I did of him-1980.

A New Year

We now enter the door of a new year. This holiday was much easier to take than last year. I actually enjoyed much of it, although sadness often comes on those dark snowy days as I am still struggling with aloneness. I finished a painting today that looks something like the crazy work I did when I was in school. When I painted with little thought to markets, buyers, and "prettiness". I watched a film on Patti Smith several nights ago, and I was struck by her lack of vanity, her total commitment to her art, her courage. I think that real genius largely consists of, not only talent and hard work, but bravery. Permission to be gutsy in the face of a disapproving public can only be granted by oneself, but I often think it would be hugely helpful to be in an environment that was friendlier to experimentation and pushing boundaries. The Pendleton has become a building of tricked out galleries filled with safe art, pretty pictures, and poor painters who constantly look over their shoulder at what the market is buying. Very little courage here-although it does exist, in spite of the atmosphere.

New Year's resolutions? Maybe it should be just to paint from the inside out.

Art and the Spiritual

I often think of how the creation of art relates to spirituality. Creating a painting has similarities to meditative practice. The clearing of the mind, while one awaits an image. It's a paradox- that to create a work, or to meditate takes discipline, yet within that discipline one must totally let go and become expansive. I am also often struck as to how many times in painting must I let go of attachments. There will be elements and parts of a painting that I just love, can't live without them! But they are hindering the whole work, they just don't fit. They get painted over, that little area that was so beautiful and precious to me. So similar to life when we like out possessions, our habits, our addictions, our stuff. Can't live without them! But what are they doing to our life's canvas?

So it has been a year. A year since Jamie died. And the magic date has come-and gone. "Don't make any decisions or moves until a year is up". I had a year of solicitous friends who remembered me, invited me, included me. For a while I never wanted to be alone in the house, so if I was not out, I had people in. My friends were happy to humor me, and we enjoyed good times.

So now what? How am I supposed to feel now? No more crying? House totally cleared out? Ready to spread my wings and fly to all corners of the world, independent, joyous and free? Hell, NO! I need an extension to that "year of grief" rule. I am not ready to greet the world as that person that I thought I would be---not sure who that is, but I can tell you, it's not happening. Paradoxically I fear, yet treasure, being alone. I want company but often don't want to leave the house. Phone calls from friends have diminished, but that's OK. Now they are dealing with their own tragedies that I must help them through.

So how much time to "they" allow you to grieve, anyway? I must consult Martha Stewart. I'm sure she has an opinion on this.